Hey y’all so this is my first time posting here so please bear with me as I explain my situation:

This person (M 23) and I (NB 23) met a year or two back pre-panini over the Internet on a “popular gay dating app” wink wink and it was pretty good. We had some really nice conversations, he explained he was on there because someone had taken his photos and used them to catfish and it was all good. He even sent a risqué pic of himself and tbh I thought he was really cute. He said that he was gonna get off said app and asked for my Snapchat and from then on we talked virtually every day just about life and what we were both doing. However, this changed and changed pretty dramatically. (For context, he moved from one state to another and I’m sure he felt isolated as he would tell me later, more on the in the next couple of sentences)

From one moment, we talked often and the next moment, his responses were sparse which then culminated in him deleting his snap all together without any warning and, as a matter of fact, all of his social media. This honestly hurt me so much because I developed feelings for him and for him to kind of drop off the face of the planet with no context kind of broke me. Eventually, over the course of months, I was able to readjust my life and finally get through the emotional hole I was in. Life was good and I had started the end of my college career. That’s when it happened.

I was swiping through Tinder, minding my business when all of the sudden I saw his profile. And I kind of got pissed but, on a whim of self-loathing, I decided to swipe right and we matched. And for even greater context, we matched because he had chosen me from his top choices (For more context for those who don’t do Tinder, every day they have a curated list of people that you may be interested in and from there you can choose who you’d want to match with, indicated with a gold diamond on their profile when said person matched with you). So we get to talking again, with him saying “Hey Bestie” and I found out, as stated, he was going through a deep depression but he moved back to where he was to continue a new job that he felt like he was in a better place. We exchanged numbers and from then on, we’ve been talking periodically.

Now smash cut to now where… I feel like I’m in this liminal space with him and how he feels about me and visa versa. I tried to make a conscious decision to refer to him as “friend” as to stave off more intimate feelings for him but honestly it hasn’t worked. And he talks to me about my issues and problems and I talk to him about his problems, mostly have to do with his exes LOL. But the way he comes across when talking about them, it seems not malicious but taking them as lessons to learn from and take them positively. Recently, he’s asked if we wanted to meet up for drinks because I don’t have any friends where I live but every time we plan and I ask a question, he doesn’t answer. The last message I sent him was if a bar we knew was an okay place but I received no answer and I don’t think he’s even seen it because he has read receipts on.

So here’s my question: is it even worth trying to pursue him? Is it worth telling him that I have more than platonic feelings for him even if he rejects me I can move on and just live my life? I truly care for him but I cannot read how he feels about me, even though we’ve talked for a total of 2 years.

TL;DR: My friend I met on Grindr had a great relationship, even flirty until he fell off the face of the planet. Now that we’ve reconnected months after on Tinder, romantic feelings have come up for me and I don’t know if I should confess my more-than-platonic feelings for him.