Did he cheat on me?
For context I am 24F and he is 24M.
I've been struggling with this situation for a year now and I need your opinion.
A year ago my boyfriend and I decided to go on a break (more my choice), because I caught him lying about deleting messages from a girl on his phone. I also caught him texting his ex girlfriend to meet up behind my back (but claiming he is just a people pleaser and didn't want to be mean). Other than this he was always so nice and sweet and always fighting for the relationship to work.
I thought it best to take a break and we agreed that we work on ourselves, not see other people and talk again in a few months to see if we could move forward. But after a few days of the break he was saying that he maybe just wants to breakup fully and work on himself and that he needs to be "independent" right now. I kept asking him if there was someone else, he kept reassuring me there was no one. 2 weeks later, he broke up with me claiming he never loved me throughout our whole relationship etc. I was heart broken and confused (we had been dating for 3 years). I asked if there was someone else again, he said no.
After a two months of being broken up and me struggling a lot mentally (which he knew because I would reach out), he texted and asked to go on a date to at least say that we "tried". We would continue to go on "dates" for the next month. But he was cold and distant and kept saying this "would not work out". At one point he even said "would it matter if I broke up with you now, or in 2 months?". Unfortunately, I stayed and kept trying to make it work. I kept asking if he was seeing me exclusively (because we agreed that it would only work if we put our all in this) and he kept saying yes and claiming he was "trying his best to make this work".
At the end of the month he broke up with me. I asked him about a girl that I saw on his spotify, and he said she was just a friend. He kept lying and his stories kept changing. I eventually had to call the girl myself to get the truth. For which he got mad at me for, saying that it would ruin his reputation and his friends (who were her friends too) would judge him.
Apparently he asked this girl out A DAY after we went on a break (what we agreed we wouldn't do). They had been texting the whole time we were on a break, broken up and dating again (when he said he wasn't seeing anyone). She apparently didn't know he was seeing me again either. He apparently asked her out 3 times and she kept declining because she said she didn't want to be the rebound (he kept promising her she wasn't). But they flirted and texted this whole time. He would delete their messages when he would see me and he even hid a book under his bed that she lent him the whole time we were seeing each other again.
After I found out the truth from her, he refused to tell me the truth himself. I told him it was over and he left. The SECOND he left the house he apparently called her to apologize that she had to find out like this.
We later talked and agreed to work on the relationship, and that he would have to put in a lot of effort. When I ask him why he did what he did he said he was just avoiding his feelings and trying to convince himself he was over me, to make the breakup easier and that he never really liked this other girl. He regrets what he's done and wishes he never did it.
Fast forward a year later (now), he only really started putting in the work and effort a month ago. But I don't know how to trust him anymore. I feel my resentment build more and more everyday. Not only because of what he did, but because it took him 10 months to step up, all while knowing what it was doing to me mentally. He was not consistent with his behaviour and didn't make time for the relationship until a month ago.
Am I being dramatic? Is what he did cheating? It all feels like a gray area and I don't know how to move forward. I really want this relationship to work out, because we fit really well together and it used to work so well.