What is he thinking after 1 week of no contact?

Read the gap against how the conversation was going before it stopped. If the last few exchanges were short, joking, and ended with him replying slowly, then a week of nothing is a normal drop-off and not a signal about you. If the chat was flowing, he asked questions back, and then went silent after a plan was half made, the silence is more likely a logistics problem or a sudden busy patch. Look at what you sent last. If your final message asked him something he had to think about, he may be waiting for a moment to answer properly and never found one.

Also look at how much you have been carrying the thread. If you have been sending most of the messages, a week of silence is about the same effort level he was giving, not a rejection. Men often mirror the effort they receive without intending to. A quiet week does not tell you he is uninterested, only that the thread has not been holding his attention. What you do next should be sized to that, not to a fear that you have been dropped.

A follow-up after a quiet week should be light enough to ignore without it costing him anything, and specific enough to be easy to answer. Reference something from the last real exchange, such as a plan you floated, a place you mentioned, or a question you asked that he never got to. That gives him a thread to pick up instead of a blank message to decide how to respond to. Keep it short, one idea, no apology, and no comment on the time that passed.

It also helps to keep one foot out of the outcome. If the message is trying to restart the whole relationship, it will feel heavy to him. If it is trying to reconnect around one small thing, he can answer in two words and the conversation moves forward. Avoid anything that asks him to explain himself, rate the gap, or confirm that he is still interested. Those questions make the quiet week the topic, and you want the topic to be something ahead of you both.

Timing decides how the message reads. Send it at a time when a normal person would be checking their phone for ordinary reasons, usually late morning or early evening on a weekday. A message at 2am after a week of silence looks like it came from the same place as the silence did, and it hands him a reason to read more into it than you meant. Avoid sending on a Sunday night as well, when people are often thinking about the week ahead and not about someone they barely spoke to.

Once sent, give it a real window before deciding anything. Two to three days is a reasonable default for a casual thread. If he replies, match his length and energy and let the conversation find its own pace. If he does not reply, do not send a second message the same day. One unanswered follow-up is normal. A second one within the week turns the silence into a pattern you are chasing. If there is still nothing after one more week, let it rest and move on to other people, because the thread has told you what it can give.