Thanks a lot to all of you for your inputs! You gave me some food for thought and fresh perspectives, as well as confirming a few things that were already in my mind but I was skirting around having to admit.

Yes, it's probably true as GoldenWaves and others said, that he has some personality issues of his own, because of which he created this 'image' of me and then reacted so strongly to my not matching up to it. From what I know of him, it's not really chauvinism, but rather some form of narcissism - during his 'getting disillusioned' phase he kept getting irritated that I forget some of the things he tells me (trivial things like what he cooked last night etc), or misinterpret him sometimes, because he apparently expected me to understand him perfectly. I actually pointed out to him once that no-one can understand anyone perfectly.

Tbh, I wouldn't have been surprised if he started acting awkward around me AFTER knowing I have feelings for him, given that he doesn't reciprocate them - that's kind of natural - but his backing off happened before that, and apparently for more complicated reasons.

Possibly we both are lonely in our own ways - he's been single from years, with one failed relationship long back - and he needed a companion to vent his thoughts and frustrations. At some point he realized that I wasn't the perfect candidate for this purpose; but as some of you said, behaving badly with me at that point reeks of too much self-absorption and too little consideration.

I'm glad to have my suspicion reinforced that a relationship with him would have been bad for me in the long run, anyway. At the moment I'm just trying to be civil around him to the extent that our circumstances enforce.. and trying to get over the nagging sense of missing him. I probably need to seriously consider that I might have a pattern, since I have a past history of marriage/divorce with a distant, borderline emotionally abusive partner.

(To someone who asked, no, this doesn't have anything to do with caste or religion - we would be a good fit on those counts, even by Indian standards).