Why is this guy hardly talking to me?

[Anonymous]

We met through mutual friends. He acted interested. A few weeks later, I saw on tinder (premium) that he had put a like to my profile, I matched him and we briefly chatted, he said he would have like to get to know me better but he unmatched me the same evening. We saw each other again at the same friends a few weeks later, he joked about the tinder thing, was quite flirty (long gazes, giggles etc) and he told me he would have liked us to go out for a drink once. So a few days later I wrote to him I also would have loved to go for a drink and proposed a date. He did not reply. I saw him again at friends a couple months later. He apologized for never having replied and said he would really have liked to go out for a drink with me, at which I said ok next Tuesday after work and he said it was good for him. On that Tuesday night he wrote to say he had too much to do at work and wouldn’t have made it. After that we didn’t speak or see each other in a long time. I saw him again at a dinner at friends lately and he hardly spoke to me, he barely said hi at the beginning and answered grumpily the 1-2 times I tried to say something to him.

[Gene9]

If he’s talking to you with those long pauses in between that in itself is an indicator that he’s not interested?

[Asker]

Sure, but that’s not really what I’m trying to figure out. It’s starting to be weird because we hang out with friends in the same group but he’s acting colder and colder with me and we never had an argument or anything

[Gene9]

Does he know or think you like him?

[Asker]

Possibly. But I once mentioned to him that when meeting someone in a friends group, I prefer them to become my friends before thinking to date them. So I think it was clear that even if I liked him, I wanted to be friends and get to know him before thinking of other possibilities. But the situation has been very ambiguous, he has given signs of liking me too (for example, I saw his profile on tinder regularly and at a certain point he modified his bio in order to respond to a joke I had put in mine, a joke about what I considered a perfect man and he modified his bio as to include those “ridiculous” traits I had listed).

[In_Trance]

he doesn't like you as much as you think he does