Thank you for replying, for more context yes he has BPD diagnosed 4 years ago and is on medication to support himself. We went through the idealisation period and the honeymoon was great, even when he had periods of emotional lows and required first aide for self harm. He is experiencing a lot of change and family difficulties over the last 4 months, and was at emotional capacity. He went from I love you and intense to pulling back over a couple of weeks. I’m still working through the emotions but if I’m being honest with myself the last 4 months I have felt like I’ve been investing more and had to be very careful about what and how I said something because he would shutdown. There were signs he was hiding things from me which he hadn’t done previously but he was very good at either making me feel like I was seeing things that weren’t there or talked his way out of it. AndI wanted to believe him. It calmed my anxiety. Over the 2 weeks I felt suddenly devalued, not even friends. He had control over when he would pop up again and when he would suddenly disengage and I couldn’t work out the pattern. I’m glad I saw the location because it helped me implement my boundary of stepping back - I couldn’t heal while he easily moved on. But what I didn’t expect was for him to deliberately not reply or check messages that I did send because I believed him when he said he would be there when I came back. I understand his experience but for me the sudden shift has been hard on my nervous system.
I’m open to being friends if it’s healthy for both of us. But I am curious if others have successfully come back from the devaluation and silence NC stage and engaged in a healthy boundary friendship? And also any tips on whether complete no contact while he is not engaging or the occasional check in over the weeks or months?


