Men are Confusing

Men may be the most confusing things on this entire planet... Let me tell you a story.

The night I finally ended things with Dickhead, I invited over one of my best guy friends to talk things through with me.  I needed someone who would be honest with me, someone I could cry in front of without getting embarrassed, but someone who was not close enough to the situation to utter those terrible words of "I told you so."  So here he came, my knight in shining armor to pick me up, tell me I was beautiful and sweet and intelligent and any man would be lucky to have me, and to give me a nice long back rub that ultimately put me to sleep.  What a wonderful friend.

Only it gets weird.  Three days later I had made plans to go out with him and some of his friends to drink and have a good time and forget that my ex-boyfriend even existed.  There I was deciding what to wear for our night on the town when he called me up and decided to confess his love to me.  In detail.  With lots of "I know you're not ready for this, but I don't want to be friend-zoned" and "I've been waiting to tell you all this for months."  What the fuck.  Like literally, what the fuck.  Where did all this come from?  Why tell me now? And for the love of God, couldn't you just ask me out on a date like a real person instead of calling me to confess all your feelings over the telephone?  Plus, we live like ten blocks apart... Come over if you're going to get sappy.

So in an effort to pretend like this was completely normal behavior, I simply told him that I appreciated the honesty but that I needed time to figure life out for myself before I brought anyone else into it.  That was complete and total truth, but he was still hurt.  I barely heard from him for an entire week and a half, but in an effort to make things normal I invited him over to watch the game with me this evening.  And now things are completely back to normal... Like friendly, normal conversation.  Like he's my best friend who definitely doesn't have any feelings for me.  Even when he left he just left without any lingering moments of deciding whether or not to kiss me.

I'm not sure that I want a relationship with him, but I obviously know that we get along and I enjoy spending time with him.  I don't want to lead him on, and maybe I could one day see a future with us together, but I also know that right now he may be just what I need to get over Dickhead.  We're supposed to go to a theme park on Thursday - is it a date?  I'm not sure.  I'll be sure to keep you posted.

What do you think is going on here?  Is he simply confused about how to act around me, or is he trying to back off a little since I told him I wanted some time for myself?  And more importantly, how do I act around him?