Should I reach out to the girl that has been on my mind for a year?
I’ll try to keep the backstory as short as possible. I am 26M, and I met a girl on a dating app around March 2025. We really clicked, and it felt like we were both very into each other, but we were at very different points in our life then. We talked every day for three months before things fell apart, this is the story:
I was a few months from finishing grad school, was working 20 hours a week in a Grad Assistant position that paid for my school. Both school and work were winding down to the point where I had nothing but free time when I was talking to her.
She was established in a normal 9-5 office job on the weekdays and had recently picked up an extra job at a bar on the weekends. She had like 3-5 days off a month, and her schedule was super full with work, the gym, etc.
More backstory for myself: At the time I had a major problem with drugs and alcohol. I was high 24/7 on THC, got hammered drunk like 3-4x a week, and was doing acid and shrooms monthly. Mentally I was in a rough spot, and it didn’t help at all that I had no clue what I was going to do after graduation.
Fast forward to now. I changed my habits and quit THC cold turkey about 6 months ago, and have been in weekly therapy for that same amount of time. After my first post-grad job not working out, I was able to land an amazing job making six figures. My whole life has changed in the first half of this year, after I finally decided to grow up.
Now back to the girl. Everything about her is exactly what I was looking for, but I just pushed it way too hard. I was actively trying to win her love instead of just allowing it to grow naturally. I was not emotionally stable and I was immature in the way that I went about it.
I didn’t understand what it was like to be busy the way she was, and I wanted to speedrun things into a serious relationship. I scared her off and she took a step back in our conversations, and I could feel it.
So I did another immature thing… and sent her a paragraph that I was cool with ending things because I could feel that we weren’t clicking the same way. In reality, I was just embarrassed because of how poorly I had gone about things pushing it so hard with paragraphs all the time telling her how into her I was. I tried to get in front of it before I got hurt.
She was shocked by my message and said that it really hurt her. I went back on it and tried to apologize and talk it back, but she sent a message saying that she didn’t see us going anywhere romantically anymore. She said that she really liked me, but I had been too much those last few weeks.
She was right, I screwed up.
I said okay thank you for explaining where your head is at, I understand and I wish you the best. Then I blocked her number and her Snapchat, so I could distance myself and try to move on.
As you can see, I stacked a lot of immature moves on top of each other, and I lost a girl that I really felt like things could work out with.
15 months later, after a lot of work on myself, I want to reach out and try to reconnect. I am a different person than I was, and I would like to just talk to her.
I can live with it if it doesn’t go anywhere, that will give me closure. But at this point she feels like the one who got away. What should I do?