I will not answer this one, and I want to say why before you scroll down to find the part where I do. Will he come back if I leave him alone is a question about another person’s future decision, and nobody can see that, not me, not a card, and not the sites that answer it with a yes and a number of days. What I can talk about is the phrase itself, because leave him alone is doing something interesting, and about what leaving him alone does for you, which is real and worth the weeks.
The short version is that leaving someone alone as a way of getting him back is not leaving him alone. It is waiting, and calling it something else. Leaving someone alone for your own sake is a different thing entirely, and it tends to give you back your evenings whether or not he ever notices.
What the phrase leaves out
There is a piece of folk wisdom underneath this question, and you have probably heard it in several forms: give him space, let him miss you, men come back when you stop chasing. It has been said so often that it sounds like a law, and it is not one. Some people who are left alone come back and some do not, and the deciding factor is not the quality of the leaving alone but everything else about the two people, none of which the silence changes.
The advice also assumes that his silence is a reply to yours, that he is over there measuring it, when for all anyone can see from here he may simply be busy, or sad, or relieved, or all three on different days. I do not say that to hurt you. I say it because the picture of him noticing is doing a great deal of the work in this question, and it is a picture you drew.
The thing the phrase leaves out is who the leaving alone is for. If you are leaving him alone so that he notices, you are still in the conversation, you have just stopped talking in it, and you can feel that within a week because you are checking to see whether it is working. That is not rest. It is a plan with a result attached, and plans with results attached are exhausting to run while pretending you are not running them.
Will he come back if I leave him alone, and why nobody can say
Anybody who answers this with a lean is guessing, and I would rather tell you that than guess in a warmer voice. The honest thing is that his coming back, if it happens, will be a decision he makes for his own reasons on a day you cannot see from here, and the silence between now and then is not a lever. I know that is harder to hear than a timeline. It is also the only version that leaves you with something to do.
What the cards can see is your side. They can see what the waiting has become, how much of your week is arranged around a phone, and what you would want if he did get in touch, which most people have not asked themselves because hoping does not leave much room for it. The will he come back page draws for exactly that, and it will not give you a lean on him.
What leaving him alone does for you
It gives the noticing back. The first thing most people find in a stretch of real quiet is how much of their day had been shaped around him: the bag kept off the passenger seat in case, the food not bought because he did not like it, the show not watched because it was yours together, the plans made loosely in case a message came. None of that was silly. It was love, or something near it, running on after the thing it was for had stopped.
The second thing it does is let your own preferences come back, and they come back before anyone else does. People describe it almost sheepishly: wanting the loud music again, wanting the friend he found tiring, wanting the whole bed. That is not moving on, if that phrase bothers you. It is you coming back into your own life and finding it mostly as you left it.
The difference between leaving him alone and waiting quietly
The test is small and slightly uncomfortable. If you would feel a drop of disappointment on finding out that he had not noticed the silence, you are waiting. If you would feel mostly nothing, or a little tired, you are leaving him alone. Most people who type will he come back if I leave him alone are, honestly, somewhere in between, and they move along that line over a few weeks, and the direction matters more than where you are on it today.
There is nothing wrong with waiting. I only want it called what it is, because waiting that is called something else does not end, and waiting that has been named tends to run out on its own. I have written about the day by day of this in no contact day by day, and about the silence more generally in will he come back after no contact, and both of them refuse the timeline too.
What is worth doing tonight
Tonight, do one thing you stopped doing because he did not like it. It could be the show, the music, the food, the friend, or the side of the bed. Do it just once, without making it mean anything, and notice what it feels like to have it back. If it feels like nothing, that is fine, and you have still done it. If it feels like a small relief, then you have found the first thing the leaving alone is actually for, and it is not him.
Come back and tell me what you chose, and whether it was as good as you remembered.
Clara