It sounds like you are asking about setting boundaries more than detaching.
For me it has to do with radical acceptance.
I think I'm trying to set a boundary in order to detach with love. Otherwise I do what you did: I get angry and then I step away in a fighting mode, leaving him behind quite confused. I usually get angry that I don't get enough attention, that he doesn't reply quick enough. If I've seen him enough in that week we're ok, but when I haven't seen him for a few days I think the 'object consistency' trait (or was it another one?) kicks in; he doesn't really miss me at that point. I notice it because the length of calls/texts is declining as you would expect it to grow since you haven't seen each other for a while?
An0ught, I think you're hitting it when you say that if I set a boundary for myself, I won't continuously question my course of action. A T once diagnosed me with 'impaired autonomy development' - not in a functional kind of way, but in the way where I wasn't able to express myself as a child and learn to trust my own decisions in life. Mix that with the constant feeling of not getting enough love and I'm constantly thinking: "Is he ignoring me? Why am I still in this? Am I settling for less? I should deserve more attention!" The hard part is that I know that's there with other boyfriends as well, so it's not a BPD thing, although he does trigger me with it.
How do these rules sound to you:
"If he is at work, I don't expect him to call or text until after his shift."
"If he does not respond to me in 8 hours, I send him a boundary/SET text." (something along the lines of:
It seems like you're really busy now, I get that. I would really like to hear your voice today, is that still possible? I go to bed/go to work/... +a timeframe."If he does not respond to me in a day, I give him a call and ask him how he's doing."
The difficult thing: he facebooks, he gets online on Whatsapp, without replying me, for hours. That hurts the most. Sometimes he even responds to a public Facebook post but ignores my more important request that I've texted. I feel ignored and unimportant. I think that's where the radical acceptance comes in... and I haven't really covered that quite yet.
@MissyM, thanks for the book advice. I'll look into it.