This is very repetitive. We are very close friends, probably the only close friends of each other. But still, this happens again and again. For example, last time I was traveling, my close friend did not contact me at all to ask how my travel, etc is going on. Then when my return transport got delayed, he finally messaged "are you still alive?". That was definitely not nice and I did not like it. So I got a little bit upset and did not talk to him when I got back. He also then did not talk to me for 1-2 days, until finally, we resumed to normal terms.
This is just one episode among many repeating ones. Every time we get into the no-talking phase, I feel that we are never gonna resume and I get scary thoughts that this would be the end of our friendship. But I guess luckily our friendship has survived through such phases. But I would definitely like to know how to stop such phases. I would really appreciate helpful suggestions.
So far, I haven't talked to my friend about it because mentioning this would bring back the not-so-great memories and probably make us too self-conscious. I would like to know a subtle way to handle this issue.