He Left Me for Himself and then His Ex

I'm a 20-year-old college student who got into her first relationship with a guy who was very similar to me and felt like my dream guy. We met on Hinge and clicked right away. We spent about 13 hours facetiming before we went on our first date. But before we started going out, we had an intimate conversation about him getting out of his first relationship that lasted a year, 3 weeks before we started talking. He said the relationship was going south for months and she didn't have the self-esteem to think she was good enough for him, as well as him realizing he just had different standards he wanted to set for himself in a relationship. He said he was over it and was excited to meet people again, so I (being new to relationships) trusted him and continued getting to know him.

We dated for 2-3 months and the beginning was literal heaven. We had a great chemistry both physically and emotionally, and we became best friends to one another, and even called ourselves officially dating after date #3. Pretty early on, I started spending whole days with him and staying overnight at his apartment basically once a week. I briefly met his parents, and he introduced me to all of his friends. We got serious pretty quickly.

About halfway into the relationship, he realized he was burning himself out a bit and needed to pull back, which was a bit confusing to me after being love-bombed. It took a second for us to establish these boundaries, but it all seemed fine. But after a couple of nights of him crying to me about how he feels like a failure and how ashamed of himself he is for his lack of commitment to his education and career, he realized that he needed to take time to figure out whether or not he was actually ready for another relationship. He's graduating soon and realizes the stakes of what he has been putting off for years.

The next week or so, our relationship was in the fate of his hands as I was willing to be patient, but he needed to figure out of this was what was right for him. I was stressed, sad, and anxious all week. We had a very warm breakup, reminiscing about our memories and how happy we made each other the last few months. We even had a moment of admitting that what was brewing between us could have been love. We said that we would go no-contact and have check-ins in the future when we were both ready. I was sad and felt directionless, but I understood the situation.

A week later, I got a text from him stating that he realized after our breakup that he still has a lot of unprocessed emotions relating to his ex and that he viewed our relationship as a mistake. We met up to discuss it, and the interaction just felt icky. I felt discredited, unappreciated, and used. The way he talked to me after this point just felt gross, and he stated that fixing our relationship was at the bottom of his list of priorities right now, with making things up with his ex being the first priority.

We agreed to leave the door open for us in the future as long as we both tried to move on in our lives but so much of me just wants him back, despite being hurt so much by him. For the last month, I have been grieving this relationship and don't know what to do. I'm just very sad. I don't want to move forward with someone new, but I know I need to move forward and I am really trying to. I just feel so directionless and am realizing I need to find more personal purpose in life. I just want him back so bad right now.