How long were Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello together?

It’s over for Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello. After years of will-they-won’t-they tension bubbling into a full-blown PDA-heavy romance, the two stars announced earlier this week that they’ve decided to part ways as lovers and revert to best friends.

Mendes and Cabello shippers (or Shawnmila fans, if you will) have longed for the relationship for years, and to see it brought to life and taken away is sparking some complicated feelings. Obviously, fans want what’s best for Mendes and Cabello, but after an incredible turn to the romantic right before the pandemic, seeing the two stars decide that enough is enough is heartbreaking.

With all that chemistry in the air, just how long were the two together? Here’s what we know about their former relationship.

Mendes-Cabello was a long time in the making

Mendes and Cabello dated for a little over two years. Specifically, 28 months.

The Mendes-Cabello power couple came together in July 2019, four years after the stars first performed together in Mendes’ immensely popular hit “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” That single was followed by a cover together of Ed Sheeran’s “Kiss Me” in 2017, but rumors truly kicked up after the two revealed their far more explicit, far more sultry “Señorita” in June 2019, one month before Shawnmila became official.

While it took some time for Mendes and Cabello to come together, the chemistry was already there years before the pair finally started dating. Right before “I Know What You Did Last Summer” debuted in 2015, Mendes confessed that he would consider marrying Cabello during a round of “Lips, Wife, or Leave It” with U.K.-based radio Capital FM. The two were known friends for quite some time (in 2018, Mendes declared Cabello his “favorite person in the whole world” on Apple Music 1), although things truly took a turn after “Señorita” debuted, when hand-holding and plenty of PDA was spotted in public.

By September 2019, the two posted a video to Instagram showing how they “really kiss,” cementing their relationship status.

Mendes admittedly wanted more than just friendship for quite some time. In 2019, he admitted that he “didn’t even accept that I was completely in love with her” in 2015, despite it being “so obvious,” the Independent reports. Unfortunately, that love has come to pass, and the two officially broke up on Nov. 17.

Don’t worry too much for Mendes and Cabello, though. In a statement posted to both of their Instagram stories, the two announced that even though they’ve decided to end their romantic relationship, their “love for one another is stronger than ever.” The two stressed that they started their relationship as best friends and “will continue to be best friends” going forward.

Then again, once you’ve crossed that threshold from friends to lovers, making the jump back to friendship is a whole separate story. And two years is not a small chunk of time. For Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, 2022 spells a brave new world the two will have to face together, one step at a time.