Why is he purposely ignoring my messages?

Start by reading how long he's been quiet compared to how he usually texts. A guy who replied within an hour and then vanishes for four days is sending a different signal than one who was always slow. If the gap is new, look at what happened right before it. Did you suggest meeting and he hedged? Did a conversation get heavy or deep? Men often pull back after a moment where they felt more pressure than they wanted, even when nothing was wrong.

Also check whether the silence is one-directional. If he still likes your stories, reacts to things, or is active elsewhere, he's not gone, just uninterested in texting you right now. That's useful. It tells you the gap is about the conversation, not about you as a whole.

Don't try to decode a single day of nothing. Look for a pattern of at least several days where his effort has dropped to zero while yours stayed the same. That pattern is the real answer, and you can read it without him saying a word.

The best reply after silence is short and asks something he can answer in a few words. Lead with the thing you were already talking about, so he doesn't have to reconstruct the conversation. Keep the tone neutral, the way you'd text a friend you hadn't spoken to in a few days. Leave out any reference to the gap itself, any question about whether he's still interested, and any apology for having texted first.

You can tell a draft is working when it asks about his life and not about the relationship. Questions about his week, a plan he mentioned, or something he said he was going to do all give him a low-effort path back. Drafts that mention the silence, even lightly, ask him to explain himself, and that is the part most guys avoid.

What to leave out: any message that sounds like a test, any message that brings up something he hasn't answered, and any second message stacked on the first. One message, clean, with a single easy question. That's enough.

Timing decides whether a reply looks casual or desperate. Send your follow-up during a normal part of the day, when a person with a job or friends would plausibly be checking their phone, mid-morning or early afternoon. Late-night texts after a long silence read as either lonely or like you've been waiting by the phone, and both make him less likely to answer.

Give it real space before you follow up again. If the first message went unanswered, a few days is usually a fair minimum, and a week is common for people who are simply busy. Do not send another message the same evening or the next morning, and don't send a series of short check-ins. One follow-up at most before you decide what to do.

If you get no reply to one considered follow-up after a reasonable wait, stop. Let the conversation end without a final message that tries to close it dramatically. Silence after two honest attempts is the answer. Move your attention to someone who is putting effort in.