I recently started texting a boy I’m totally in love with but I ruined everything with him in high school, or so I thought. We are both now in college and haven’t spoken for maybe a little over a year. I decided one day to text him; obviously he’s been on my mind ever since we broke up and he swore to never speak to me again. I literally had nothing else to lose by sending a simple “hey.”... Not expecting an answer, less than 10 minutes later, my phone goes off and he’s texted me back. We spoke from about 9 pm to 2 am the following morning. We mostly texted about how our lives are going and how things have changed and what not, it was sort of awkward but then it felt normal again but it also felt like we were both avoiding to talk about anything other than ourselves as individuals. At 2 am we both obviously needed sleep so I told him that I needed to go to be and I asked if that was the end or if he’d like to talk later. He responded with a “We’ll see” to which I confidently came back at him with “I’ll take that as a yes and I’ll talk to you later” and we’ve been on and off texting ever since. That was around Labor Day. I’ve invited him to meet for lunch and he hesitantly responded with he didn’t want to see me yet because he had shaved his beard and he didn’t want me to meet him beardless... Slightly annoyed I just told him to tell me when he’s free after his facial hair had recovered, he agreed to that and we didn’t speak for a week or so. Finally, I texted him saying it had been long enough and asking what the deal was. He explained that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to see me it was he didn’t want to become vulnerable again, essentially believing that the best thing to do for himself is keep his guard up and avoid pain at all costs. I respected his wishes and only responded with how I felt and how it seemed from my point of view. We didn’t speak for another 2 weeks. The other day I shot him a text just out of curiosity if he would answer or not. I asked him about a band I put him on to and if he still listened to them. Quickly he responded yes and we went back and fort on the obscure topic until I just couldn’t bare texting him and ever so obviously avoiding what we both seem to not want to talk about yet; so I just stopped replying. Later that night he began to text me, which was odd because I generally text first, he began telling me about his dead dog and about how he felt about coping with grief. We were both drinking at the time it seemed but I was a bit more gone than him and along with that I’m a pretty blunt person. A drunk blunt person is not a great thing. All I could reply to his three paragraph long text about his dead dog and how he believed to cope with grief appropriately was “I love you and I’ll always love you”. Needless to say we haven’t spoke since and I just need help. I need some sort of direction or advice for my crappy little love story. (There is a lot more to the story just this is the current happenings and our first real means of communication in a while)