He wanted you. That part was real.
What he couldn't tell you, what he may not have even had language for, is that wanting you was exactly when it got dangerous. Not because of anything you did. Because closeness and loss arrived together in his nervous system so many times that eventually they became the same signal.
When he went quiet, it wasn't indifference. It was the only move available to a nervous system that had learned, somewhere long before you, that the closer you get to something that matters, the more there is to lose. Distance wasn't a rejection. It was a pre-emptive protection, one that fired before the threat even arrived, because waiting to see if loss was coming felt more dangerous than creating the distance himself.
The warmth was real. The withdrawal was also real. Both of those things lived in him at the same time. What looks like a contradiction from the outside is two responses running in parallel, one reaching toward you, one bracing against what you need to make possible.
Here's the part that's hardest to understand from where you were standing: it wasn't you he was pulling away from. It was the version of himself that needed you. That version terrified him. Not because he didn't want to be loved, but because wanting to be loved meant there was now something to lose. And a nervous system that learned to protect against loss doesn't wait for evidence. It acts in advance.
This is why "just tell me what you need" rarely landed the way you hoped. He often couldn't access what he needed in the moment you asked; the protection response was already running, and it doesn't pause for reflection. What actually changes this pattern isn't more communication in the activated moment. It's accumulated evidence, over enough time, that closeness with a specific person doesn't lead to the loss the nervous system keeps predicting.
That evidence takes time to build. More time than it feels like it should. And it can't be rushed by you trying harder, loving more, or making yourself easier to lose.
If you've been trying to make sense of the silence, the Relationship Guide is where that work starts.