He doesn’t know where you stand in regards to your feelings for him.

In indirectly telling you his feelings, he is gauging you to see how you respond to what he is saying.

He is looking at everything.

How you look at him as he is indirectly telling you his feelings.

How your posture changes or doesn’t while he is talking to you.

The speed, volume, and cadence of your voice as you respond to him.

He is looking for as many clues as possible to get a better idea of how you feel about him.

This is a guy that is worried about jeopardizing his relationship with you.

To this end, he is threading lightly and cautiously in how he mentions his feelings for you.

He is going about it indirectly.

By using this tactic, if you seem uneasy, he can quickly pull back and act as though he wasn’t telling you about his feelings.

He doesn’t want to risk losing you as someone that is a part of his life.

He believes that telling you his feelings directly puts his relationship with you at risk, and this has led to his hypervigilance.

Sadly, he isn’t confident that you feel the same way about him too.

There have been several times that he has looked for signs of romantic interest from you with inconclusive results.

There have been days where it seemed like you were showing signs of romantic interest towards him.

But those days would be quickly followed up by days where you barely acknowledged him or seemed to be in a foul mood.

This would throw him back into a cauldron of confusion.

Whatever confidence he had built up to directly tell you about how he felt about you suddenly dissipated.

He was back to square one, and held off.

All the while, continuing to observe you.

Over and over, there were moments where he wanted to believe that you were showing signs of romantic interest.

But, he repeatedly ended up talking himself out of telling you directly about his feelings for you, once your body language reverted back to one of nonchalance around him.

Finally, he realized that he couldn’t keep this up forever.

This is what has led to where you are now.

He has finally come clean, somewhat, in telling you about his feelings for you.

He doesn’t want to go any longer without getting this off his chest, but he doesn’t want to jeopardize his relationship with you either.

In telling you indirectly about his feelings for you, he is threading lightly, giving himself the room to back off, should you respond to his words with negativity or unhappiness.

He wants to get a proper idea of how you feel about him.

It took a lot for him to make this move, albeit indirectly.

If you don’t make it clear and in no uncertain terms that you like him too, he won’t take this any further.

He will resolve himself to having a friendly or platonic relationship with you, and nothing more.

Since you probably like this guy, be unambiguous in showing him that you do.

And moving forward, be consistent in showing him signs of romantic interest.

When you adopt this strategy, he is emboldened to finally ask you out on an official date.