Chase Stokes is devastated after his latest split from Kelsea Ballerini, a source exclusively tells Us Weekly.
“Chase is heartbroken,” the insider shares. “It’s been constant ups and downs between them.”
Hours before news of the breakup broke, Stokes hinted at the drama with the “I Sit in Parks” singer.
“I’m blocked, I did nothing wrong. Sorry. I tried,” he wrote in a series of cryptic Instagram Story messages on Thursday. “I’m sorry for those who believed in us. It is what it is. Onwards and upwards.”
Stokes and Ballerini began dating in January 2023, marking the Grammy nominee’s first relationship following her 2022 divorce from Morgan Evans.
“I was ready to open back up [after my divorce]. I just felt, ‘Why not? I’ve never really dated. I don’t know how it works,’” Ballerini said on the Call Her Daddy podcast in February 2023. “I slid into his DMs. I just swan dived right in. His handle is ‘hichasestokes’ and I just said, ‘Hi Chase Stokes.’”
After roughly two years together, the couple first split in September. “It was a hard split,” a source told Us Weekly. “They had been arguing a lot recently, and their communication wasn’t great. Both were traveling so much and trying to juggle everything, and the arguments piled up.”
Within weeks, Ballerini and Stokes were seen together in Scotland and Croatia, though neither has publicly addressed their brief reunion. While Stokes has been filming the final season of Netflix’s Outer Banks, Ballerini has been celebrating the release of her Mount Pleasant EP.
I’ve absolutely fallen in love with making EPs in between albums,” Ballerini wrote on Instagram on November 14. “There’s such a freedom and unbounded nature to the process, from writing to production, that it has become both a creative exercise and a palate cleanser. Mount Pleasant is a collection of six songs I wrote over the summer, marking a chapter of heavy self-examination, longing, and stepping further into who I am as a 32-year-old woman.”
Ballerini conceived Mount Pleasant in the months following the release of her 2024 studio album, Patterns, and her first arena tour.
“I had the biggest dopamine dump of my adult life and months ‘off’ to really sit with the feelings that were surfacing in the stillness and quiet,” she explained. “While I love to be sparkly and confident, I was navigating waves of insecurity I hadn’t put to paper before. Feeling so seen by fans and music lovers through my more recent, emotionally honest music encouraged me to let it all out in the safest way I know. Mount Pleasant is a place, a feeling, an uphill journey, and an idea of what’s to come.”
