BPDFamily.com

Hey folks, first post here.  During the pandemic, I developed a long-distance male best friend that I (female) talked to daily, typically for hours, and gradually started developing feelings for. 

In the beginning, he pursued the friendship eagerly and made me feel more seen, special, cared for, and valued than anyone else ever has.  The trust, safety, closeness I felt with him were incredible.  And he seemed to feel the same way, gushing with gratitude for the amazing connection we shared, and how quickly it had formed. 

Later on, he gradually confessed to me that he was sure he was a terrible person, that he ruined relationships, that he was trying hard to change but had only made partial progress, that he had anger issues, that he'd spent a lot of time hating himself after his relationship failures.  He had only been wonderful to me, so this was all very confusing.  He also started going cold and distant, basically just blowing me off, for weeks at a time sometimes, between spurts of lots of attention.  I gently tried to ask about this pattern of inconsistency, but he would never acknowledge it.

By six months in, I was struggling with all the intermittent reinforcement.  The closest of closeness, alternating with him going totally cold on me.  I pulled back a little, just to get more grounded myself.  He picked up on it immediately, became clingy, and pleaded with me to tell him about my feelings and needs.  I eventually shared that sometimes I felt like I was putting in more energy than him, that it could cause negative emotions for me, and I could also worry if I mattered to him.  I was just pulling back a bit to balance things out, make sure we were evenly invested, in order to keep the friendship healthy because it was so important to me.  He volunteered that he would instead step up his effort level and meet my needs more.  He talked about how I was "one of the most important people in the world" to him, that he "realized he wasn't showing me that properly", that he was "a work in progress", he would do better.  I just asked that he check in regularly and ask how I was doing.  That would meet my needs. 

He checked in excessively often for about a week, and then went completely silent for the next 2 months. 

Eventually, after 2 months, I got him to finally talk to me, and he said he'd realized he couldn't meet my needs sustainably.  He didn't know how to tell me.  He kept being overcome by fatigue whenever he tried to.  He was "hoping I could meet him where he was at" even though it wouldn't be what I wanted.  I said it broke my heart that he'd been stressing so much, and of course we would work things out.  I also reminded him that I hadn't actually asked him for more, he'd volunteered. 

But within the week, he wrote to me telling me he wanted to "deprioritize" me as a friend.  He wanted to drop regular contact, just catch up sporadically, maybe a few times a year.  He was busy, he didn't have the time anymore.  I was stunned.  Did he still value me?  He wrote me a long letter of all the things he valued about me, including that I was "such a joyful happy person" that he "couldn't help but feel happier when around me", that I had a "vast emotional maturity" that made him "feel grounded" and like he could really trust me, that I had "taught him what it was to feel really heard and supported by another person", that he admired me tremendously, etc., etc. He ended by saying "You've given me so much.  I only hope I've been able to offer you some sort of value in return."  I was touched, attempted to reassure him that he indeed had, and I tried to honor his "deprioritization" request.  But just 6 weeks later, when I asked him to set aside a few hours together sometime in the next several months, he abruptly said he'd "completely lost interest" in the friendship, that it "had something to do with the differing levels of effort we wanted to put into it", that "trying to keep up an appearance of friendliness anyway" was "pushing him into negative territory", and he wanted to just end it permanently.  He'd talk to me again of course, but no more than any other casual acquaintance.  I asked if I'd done something wrong, and he said no I hadn't.  I said I didn't deserve this, and he agreed with me, but said there was nothing he could do. 

After that, he further completely dropped out of the zoom games group that we'd met in, even though he had loved it and had never missed a single session in the two years since joining.  He has also ghosted me on any further communication attempts (I waited 8 months to reach out, hoping maybe he would have calmed down and we could repair a little.)

Does this sound like BPD?  To me, I see at least 4 symptoms of BPD in him: self-loathing, intense/unstable/overwhelming emotions, anger issues, and a pattern of relationship difficulties.  Maybe more.  But he didn't really act out towards me in the classic BPD way so much as just cut me off for seemingly no reason. 

If it is BPD, then I wonder if he left because of fear of abandonment?  Was it my gentle complaint about sometimes feeling like I was putting in more effort? (never mind that I was making adjustments myself to solve the issue!) That comment seemed to lodge with him and keep coming up again and again in our conversations, that he "knew he couldn't give what I could".  Or was he only pretending to be into his friendship with me all along?

And I guess the big questions I keep struggling with:
Could I have done anything differently to change the outcome? 
Is there anything I could still do?  (Seems unlikely unless he reaches out, but I have to ask.)
How could it not be at least somewhat my fault if he has managed to maintain at least some long-term relationships?  He does live with a romantic partner he's been with for 10 years (though even after all our months of daily conversations, he's never actually told me anything about her). But I keep thinking this means that he has good enough relationship skills and I should have been able to make it work. 

I really miss him. 

It sounds like you were his narcissistic supply at first. You provided attention, admiration, but when it came to expressing your needs and wants, then he withdrew because he wasn’t interested in putting in the effort.

That he spent hours talking with you on a regular basis at first, while living with a romantic partner, seems suspicious, to say the least.

Were you hoping for a romantic relationship with him?

I don't see enough boxes checked to say it's definitely BPD or NPD, but it does sound like that's what was going on.  On the flip side of that, we didn't see him in the real world so there's traits you couldn't/wouldn't know about.

While it's unfortunate that this happened to you, count yourself lucky that you weren't in a more serious relationship.  Many here wish they knew what they were getting into before 5, 10, 20+ year marriages.  While we all have different stories, the endings are strikingly similar to what you just described.

ColoradoGal,

This may help: https://bpdfamily.com/content/what-borderline-personality-disorder

You miss him and that hurts. Faith is the evidence of things hoped for and you hope that he'll reconnect, and possibly see the error of his ways. His thoughts aren't your thoughts if he has traits of BPD.

His reactions are rooted in core shame which has nothing to do with you. You weren't a couple, but you obviously invested important feelings into the r/s.

 Full Article on 10 Beliefs (https://www.bpdfamily.com/content/surviving-break-when-your-partner-has-borderline-personality#5)