Tl;dr *before* this ridiculous, gargantuan post: locked in a cycle of fake-outs with my ex in which we seem like we might get back together, before it painfully and spectacularly fails. She suddenly dropped out of contact without explanation or an obvious cause, and I took this as my fault. I ran into her, attempted to say hi, and get a better idea of what was going on, but she refused to acknowledge me and told me she felt I was making a scene while she was dealing with issues unrelated to me.

I (20M) am a college student. A year/two semesters ago, I was in a completely exhilarating relationship with a woman (20F) I absolutely adored. Our relationship started and moved very fast as we had jumped into it nearly immediately after each exiting 4-year, very toxic, long-distance-since-the-start-of-college relationships with our SO's from home. The relationship was a lot of high highs and low lows: she was my best friend and it felt like we had an incredibly romantic and passionate thing that really restored my faith in relationships after losing it due to my prior draining and toxic relationship with my ex from home. However, as the semester wore on we fought more and more frequently, and trust became an issue as she kept (fairly extensively) texting *her* ex from home.

By the summer after that spring semester, we broke up (after having already broken up once and gotten back together during the semester). When we returned for this past fall semester, there was immediately a glimmer of hope that we would get back together––when all our friends had moved into another room, she kissed me, then apologized, then I told her not to because it was what I wanted, too. Cut to the next day when we're discussing what happened and what was going to happen, and she tells me that now, the next day (and sober), she feels like it was a mistake and we should just be friends. 

We float on and off of speaking terms, eventually we reconnect and once again it seems like we're slowly inching towards one another. I won't say what I did because she's on Reddit, too (hey, dude. I'm sorry.), and I know that that especially was a painful experience for her and she definitely wants no record of it anywhere. Suffice it to say that I blew it spectacularly and in a fairly public way and I know I was the asshole in that situation. No need to consult the internet. We actually stayed on speaking terms for a full week following that, which culminated in another night on which we got drunk and kissed each other a bit, which was again followed by a conversation in which she told me she felt that was a mistake and she needed time away from me. We didn't speak to each other for a month after that.

Eventually, we resumed talking and so on. At the start of this current spring semester, we––once again––got drunk, kissed each other a little (just on the cheek this time, because *now*, we felt, we had learned to be cautious). The next day, you guessed it, a sober conversation: this time, though, we both said that we wanted to make it work between us, but that we both felt this required us to take it slow and be careful and work on rebuilding our friendship for a while before (as we both said we wanted to do, though obviously reserving the right to change our minds) trying to make the relationship thing work again. We agreed that it would be too painful for us to fuck this up again. Welp.

After about a week or so of hanging out a lot and getting along great, a couple things happen.

First, I should say, I have a bad, bad habit of instinctively looking at phones or other devices when a new message or text pops up. She (understandably) hates this about me and I have truly done my best to work on it. I think I am just so conditioned by my own devices that my first instinct is always to jump at the gratification of a new notification, even if it's not actually mine.

So, one night, she, my roommate (our mutual friend), and I are hanging out and working on a shared project of ours, and her phone lights up. I see it's a message from that same ex of hers, except, now, mans has a heart emoji in the middle of his name. Okay. We weren't together, she has the right to do whatever she wants, I think––but she knows that all of that business back when we were dating was very rough for me, and I feel as though, if he's in the picture, I should have been made aware of that when we had our conversation. In a brief moment when my roommate is out of the room, I tell her there's something I want to talk to her about later, but that it's too long and complicated to get into it before my roommate gets back. I know the enigmatic "we need to talk" is a bad look, and I realize this at the time, realize I'm being dramatic, and feel I should change course. Later that night, our hangout moves to another friend's place, along with my roommate's girlfriend. My roommate and his girlfriend leave, eventually, and she and I head out, as well. As she and I are saying goodnight, she asks what it was I had wanted to talk about, and I tell her not to worry about it, because I felt the way I brought it up was selfish of me and because all of this was predicated on me inappropriately seeing what was on her phone. I think I did say something like, "I just saw something I shouldn't have," which might be another no-good cryptic line from me.

The next night, we hang out again, we get drunk and I'm the only one there to notice that she's actually quietly crying. I ask her if she's okay and if I can get her anything, et cetera. At one point, while I'm watching my roommates play Mario Kart, she (as far as I can tell) reaches out and sort of affectionately touches me on the back, in a way she used to do. I, just being taken by surprise, flinch. Oops. But I try to respond after that making it clear that I didn't mean to, and that that was very much welcome and liked on my end. Later that night, in another brief moment when my roommate is away, I ask her what's up. This time it's her with the cryptic line. She tells me something about having had to "take a stun gun to her feelings," which I don't know if it has anything to do with me, or her ex, or something entirely unrelated to anything I can even think of. Then my roommate returns, and that's the end of that conversation.

In the days following, our contact is a bit more sparse, but one day, she messages me while I'm in class asking if I'm home. I say I'm not, but I will be soon, and once I get out she comes by and excitedly tells me all about how a professor asked her to do an independent study focusing on some kind of multimedia project (either a film or a series of podcasts). I am very happy for her, and as we get to talking, I mention that I am singing and playing guitar at an open mic the next day. She says yeah, she saw that on Facebook. Maybe I could have been clearer, but I thought it was pretty evident that it mattered a lot to me that she be there. As she was leaving that day, I said, "see you tomorrow?" to which she (pretty pointedly, my roommate and I thought) replied, "see ya." Ouch. I didn't really understand where that was coming from, but okay.

As expected, she didn't come to the performance. I didn't hear from her at all after that. Dropped off the face of the earth entirely. I assumed that it had something to do with the way I had cryptically brought up the thing about her ex, or otherwise something I had done. Which brings us to yesterday.

Yesterday, I saw her and her friend in our school's dining area. I actually ran into my roommate there, too. He was over talking to her when I came up, but I could tell from a distance that my presence was not welcome from her and her friend. Okay. I didn't approach further. Eventually, she and her friend get up to (presumably) go to the bathrooms down in the basement. Her friend returns first, and I then watch as her friend receives a phone call, goes back over to the door down to the bathrooms, and walks with my ex back to where they were sitting, in a pretty obvious defense against me talking to her. I am incredibly unclear on what is going on. I try to be friendly and wave––maybe she thinks *I'm* mad because she didn't come to the open mic?––her friend kind of uncomfortably acknowledges me. She acts like she does not even know I exist. They walk on.

Late last night, I write her an apology saying that obviously, whatever that interaction was was bad for both of us, and I'm sorry for whatever it is I had done, and even more sorry that I don't know what it was, but that I hope that things can be cool between us. (At this point, I have abandoned all hope of the relationship thing, for reasons that are probably clear.) She replies even later in the night (I am asleep) that she wasn't ignoring me and her mood wasn't in any way linked to me, but that she was dealing with some rough mental health stuff and talking to her friend about it. She told me she felt I was being extra, making a scene, and calling her out in public.

I responded in four too-long messages (can you tell I have trouble being succinct?) saying that that makes sense and that I'm sorry for misreading things and for doing anything to make a tough situation tougher for her. I also say, however, that it felt somewhat unfair to me to accuse me of making a public scene when I did not actually exchange a single word with her and no one in the entire cafeteria clocked our interaction other than her, her friend, and myself.

Brave Redditor, if you've actually made it to the bottom of this post, bless your good, sweet heart. I hope the vicarious turmoil of the last year of my life brings you everything you want and more. So please, tell me:

AITA?

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