[Victoriahollen]

I have been dating my boyfriend for 9 months and the last 3 have been long distance. We were doing great until about a month into the long distance phase of our relationship when all of the sudden he got extremely busy at work and was always tired and wanted to sleep instead of text me or talk to me. I was OK with that for the first little while but then it got ridiculous, he'd make plans to text me late at night after he got home but instead he'd end up hanging out with friends or talking to his dad until really late. I'd be waiting up for him and he would finally text me and tell me he was too tired to talk. This got old fast. Sometimes he'd go the whole day without texting me and text me the next day pretending nothing happened.
After a couple times of that, I got really upset. I felt like I wasn't even a priority or important to him at all. I tried to tell him how I felt about it but he just thought I was being ridiculous and insecure.
About a month ago I was hanging out with some of my friends, one of my exes happened to be there. I told my boyfriend that he was there and he freaked out! He didn't talk to me for 3 days. Silent treatment, which I read is emotional/psychological abuse. When he finally did talk to me, we got into a fight but made up and everything was good for a couple days, we didn't talk much but he wasn't still upset with me. But things weren't the same, now he needs space. Apparently his life is too stressful and busy to include me in it anywhere. He needed a few days of space to just deal with all the clutter in his life and I agreed to it, he didn't text me at all but after our space was over he texted me one night and it was a good talk. But after that, he disappeared again.
I finally got a hold of him and he told me things were still rough- he was going through a lot of ups and downs in his life- and he needs one or two weeks of space, AGAIN!
Am I being a total doormat? Is he trying to avoid being the boyfriend/commitment but still keep me around just in case he might need me later? What am I supposed to do if he has absolutely no "use" for me unless we're physically together? Advice please :)