What to do if he vanishes after you complimented him

The silence tells you little. His last reply tells you a lot. If he wrote thanks and stopped, he treated the compliment as the end of the exchange, which is the most common version of this. If he added a detail about his day or asked about yours, he was engaged and dropped off for an ordinary reason like work, a friend in town, or a text he forgot to answer. Plenty of people also feel a compliment asks for one back, and freeze because they aren't sure how strongly to respond. Check whether your message was mostly about his looks. If it was, he may have read it as more intense than you meant, which makes a clean reply feel awkward for him. Either way, your next move is about giving him an easy way back in, not working out what went wrong.

A good follow-up does three jobs, and each one is a move you can make on purpose. First, it picks up a specific detail from his last message or from the original photo or post, so he can see you were paying attention and not just reacting to how he looks. Second, it asks for something small and concrete, like a recommendation, a plan, or an opinion, because a question he can answer in a sentence is easier to answer than an open ended one. Third, it keeps the tone where it was before the compliment, so the thread feels like the same conversation instead of a second attempt. Skip any apology, any reference to the silence, and any second compliment. Each of those makes him feel he has to manage your feelings.

If he replied at all, give it about a day before you send anything, and pick a time in his daytime, not late at night when a message reads as more loaded than you intended. One follow-up is fine. Send it as a normal message, not a check in. If he answers, match his length and keep going. If nothing comes back, stop there. Don't send a second message asking whether he got yours, and don't send another compliment with a question mark on the end. Give it about a week before you consider the thread closed. If he comes back later, treat it as a fresh start rather than picking up the awkward exchange where it left off.