Is it desperate to message him after he opened my message and never replied

A read receipt is not a conversation. He might have opened it during work and meant to reply later, then forgot entirely. He might have seen your message and felt pressure to say something good back, so he left it sitting. He might have decided he's not interested and didn't want to be rude. The worst part is these feel identical from your end.

Look at what happened before the silence. Did he start the last exchange? Was he engaged the day before? How long have you been talking? If he was warm and then went cold after you reached out, that's different from a guy who's been half-engaged the whole time. The silence itself doesn't tell you much. What comes before it does.

A good second message does one of two jobs. It either gives him a real reason to reply that doesn't feel like you're waiting for him to care, or it removes the pressure entirely by moving the conversation somewhere new. You're not trying to make him feel bad for not replying. You're not asking him to prove he's interested.

If you follow up, make it low stakes. Bring something new to the table, not a repackaging of the first message. Add a detail, ask something specific, or make a small joke about the original topic. The goal is to make replying feel easy and natural, not like he's making up for lost time. He should think 'oh, that's a good point' or 'I want to tell him about that,' not 'I need to apologize for being slow.'

Wait at least three to five days before sending a follow-up. Anything sooner looks panicked. If he hasn't replied in a week, the original message probably didn't land the way you hoped. That's the moment to decide if a follow-up makes sense or if you're just extending something that's already dead.

If you do follow up once and get silence again, stop. Two ignored messages is a pattern, not bad timing. After that, the ball is legitimately in his court. Don't message a third time. If he comes back to you later, great. If not, you already did the work of reaching out twice. You showed up. At some point you have to believe someone who shows you they're not that interested by going silent twice.