My uBPDxso and I had very little contact last few months.
She moved to a different city about a year ago but we still have many common friends and common interests and we remained friends on fb and that was quite a challenge for me to cope with as I was exposed to the new life she started for herself with a bunch of new friends, new relationships, etc. while she gradually disconnected all ties with me.
Last week, a common friend of ours announced that he's moving abroad to work on his master's degree and both of us (separately) communicated with him about throwing a farewell party - which eventually took form of a meetup with many of our common friends around our common interest and that will take place in a couple weeks.
I must admit that my gut reaction was panic as I know she is going to be there with her new bf (which I got to know briefly and he's a cool guy, nevertheless it's obvious to me she doesn't love him but rather adores him for his achievements and she likes his kids - she loves kids and works in children education... .).
Anyhow, we exchanged a few private messages around this and a couple days later I got a message saying that they invite us (me and my new gf) for dinner the evening before the meetup and we're invited to stay over in her place as it will be vacant while she'll spend the night with her partner.
I was very ambivalent about this. On one hand I was so happy to get this invitation as I still care for her very much and I would like to find a way to rebuild our friendship and stay in touch but on the other hand, being in virtually no contact for such a long time, it seemed so awkward to see each other in such a forum and I'd preferred to meet one on one first to break the ice.
I told my gf about this. She knows about my past with my BPDx and how hard the b/u was for me and she knows I do want to rekindle our friendship in a platonic way. All in all she was quite negative about this and I truly understand this. She must feel threatened by my ex and again, this is not a great way to socialize first time, and definitely not to sleep over in her place
I politely declined the invitation and mentioned I'd be happy to meet on a different occasion. I also asked her what's up and got a laconic response on the lines of "I'm great. The <new place> is doing good to me
" which immediately raised a around push/pull etc. But looking into my side of the story I realized that the way I put the "what's up" question with the lack of any relationship between us, pretty much invited such a response... .
Eventually, after deliberating whether to tell her that I miss her and would like to meet and talk, I decided to not corner her and I simply told her a little about a change I recently made in my life and how I feel about it. And magically, she responded by revealing a similar change she is going through (which isn't so perfect as you'd probably guess) and we had a short exchange of messages around this - with zero expectations for this to materialize into something else. Just simple mutual and friendly support.
I really felt good about this - letting go of any expectations and simply being good friends with someone I care about.