Personally, when I was with my last boyfriend, we'd made physical contact every time we met, be it date or not... And the great thing is, it didn't have to be romantic contact, just physical contact between us showed that that was enough... I mean, sometimes, we'd head to Waterloo to sit on the grass, watch the London Eye and just talk through things. He'd sit on my coat and I'd lay my head in his lap and we'd just sit there for hours sometimes without realising that any time had gone by. Of course, we'd do all the basic things like hold hands and kiss and hug and those cute smiles across the room... We'd talk all day and all night. We'd just love life.
If you're not comfortable with just physical touching for a while and you think that it has to be romantic, pick another guy. I was with XYZ for five months and we were amazing. We both still think about the happy memories and cherish them... My point is, if silence isn't comfortable, it's just silence. If it's just silence, then it's just silence. There's no chemistry in the silence, which means that there is just awkwardness, which there shouldn't be... Not if you really like each other. If you're away from him, do you find yourself constantly thinking of all the other things that you could be doing with him, all the other places you could be seeing, how a walk on the beach would be so much better if it were hand in hand... That's love