My boyfriend (20M) of almost two years broke up with me, then reduced it to a break. Is he stringing me along?

Basically, my boyfriend is out of the country for nearly two months (now going to be about a month). We have been having a lot of petty, silly arguments since he has been gone. Leading up to his leaving, though, we were at the best part of our relationship -- so happy and in love. Well, two nights ago, we got into a big argument and I think he thought I was ending the relationship, so he sent me a long message basically breaking up with me — a very sweet message at that where he said I was the “love of his life”.

I did not want to break up and sent him a message clarifying that. He then responded with another long message thanking me for everything and saying it would be best for us to have ‘space’ that may make us realize we do need to get back together. I then called him out of confusion and at first, he stated it was a breakup, then downgraded it to a break. He said he will continue to tell his family and friends that we are still together, but he does not want to upload our couple photos on Instagram at this moment (he has them archived).

He said that I should come to the airport when he arrives so we can talk things out, and thinks there is a 90% chance we will get back together. However, at this moment, he does not want me to contact him, and he said he will contact me if he starts to miss me too much. He also said it’s better we take this space now that he is far and contact is minimal, rather than when he is back and we are close to each other again.

The crazy thing is that two days ago, he was telling me how he misses being with me and feels like he cannot live without me. He also said he couldn’t stop thinking about me.

Does this look fairly optimistic for our future, or is he stringing me along by trying to lessen the blow? I have been unable to stop thinking about this since it happened, because I would love to see us get back together.

TLDR; Boyfriend asked for a breakup over text, then called him and he instead called it a break with a 90% chance of reconciliation. I asked him to please be honest and tell me if he really just wanted to breakup and he said we can call it a serious break with the 90% chance of getting back together. He said this time might be good to realize we need to get back together. How do I handle this? Does it seem like he actually wants to get back together, or is trying to soften the blow?

Submitted December 21, 2019 at 10:52AM by mimio1125 https://ift.tt/2sVOHRq