Sage, I've been thinking along the same lines. I think that the level of intimacy we'd been getting to is frightening to him & he needed to pull back a bit. I'm still a bit ticked about him trying to fight with me (low blows included) even when it was obvious that I wasn't going to take the bait and fight back.
I keep remembering something Shiny said about him interpreting my proddings as messages of "how he is failing me" and I'm sure that has something to do with it.
