Is he mad at me, or losing interest?🤔

So me and this guy have been talking about about a year. We’ll call him M. He said he had feelings for me awhile back, and I said I did too. We agreed to not date until we hang out more (he’s super busy), so I guess you could say we’ve been “talking”. Well, a couple days ago, we were in a group chat with a couple of my friends and his. One of his friends starts DM’ing me, telling me I’m pretty and stuff, and how he’d like to be friends. I told M about it, and he was okay with it, since me and him aren’t technically dating yet. But he doesn’t want me to “go for him”. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I let his friend know, that me and M have feelings for each other, but we could talk if he wanted to. Well, these last couple of days M has been super distant. He says he’s busy and stuff, but today he said “I’m not gonna talk to you today.” And he also always says “ily” to me. We always have because we’re really close. He didn’t say it, so I said it, and he left me on read. I’m confused by this whole thing and stressed out🤦‍♀️ what should I do?? Should I tell his friend we shouldn’t talk anymore???