Hi MariannaR and
My background is that I have a best friend who is likely uBPD, or maybe uNPD, a nearly six year friendship in which I've been in near-constant therapy to deal with. I tried to work on communication, self-compassion and radical empathy, but I noticed myself not improving and getting more insecure, depressed, etc, as time went on.
I have had my share of romantic and platonic/non-romantic uBPD relationships; and it has been a long process to shed some of these relationships. The most recent one I left was one I've had on/off over the last 30 years. At this point it was really a shell of a relationship: she only contacts me when she's in need of some kind of validation and I've had to "bore" her away. In any case I can empathize with the difficulty associated with unentangling such relationships.
One perspective that helped me make such entanglements was accepting that it makes no sense to provide the other party "unconditional" love. The only chance I had in my life to receive what could have been unconditional love was from my parents -- which didn't really work out. And so I spent a great deal of my adult life seeking this kind of love from others. What I ended up finding were relationships that mirrored my relationship with my parents.
I've had to learn to give myself that which I sought. One big clue of what I needed was to observe what I seemed desperate to provide to these surrogates. For some I wanted to be their ever loyal friend. For others I wanted to show that there is good in the world in spite of all the rotten things that have happened to them. In retrospect, everything I sought to give, were the very things I sought for myself, only (in my mind) these things had to come from a specific kind of person, and not from myself. I have to learn to give to myself those things I sought and found in others, qualities that only augment my own happiness.
I finally decided that I deserve to feel secure and loved in my friendships and relationships. My T is trying to get me to see that my friendship follows a pattern of control and emotional abuse, and has always strongly encouraged me to get out.
I think you do deserve to feel secure and loved in your friendships and relationships. But you might need to seek out these friendships and relationships in places that are unfamiliar to you, with people that do not initially "click" in the beginning as they have in the past. You might be inadvertently seeking people who exhibit familiar patterns of control and emotional abuse -- never outright, but eventually these patterns may be revealed.
An aside - this never went both ways. She controls the communication amount.
Maybe in the beginning it wasn't control, it was more like assertiveness and apparent commitment, or dedication.
Finally she sent me a long message in which she wanted to treat me better and get therapy - with me - which broke my heart. She seemed sincere though I've received messaged like this before.
It might be thoughtful for her to offer this, but it is quite possibly outside of her abilities to ever provide such.
She mentioned I could "take all the time" I wanted to respond, but within a day she sent another message saying she guessed she had my answer in my non-response. Then she made her social media private and unshared some other things online.
When the carrot does not work, then the stick.
...my question is: Should I go no contact by unsharing all of my accounts? It seems cruel and might have blowback in other ways among our mutual friends. But I also don't see myself re-engaging in the friendship for a long time if ever... so maybe it would be helpful for her? A previous best friend did this to her (went no contact) and I have told myself (and her) a story that I "wouldn't do that to her."
If you cannot trust yourself to be deliberate about how you might respond to her if she should ever approach you again (as if nothing ever happened), then I would completely disengage and unshare everything.
If you can trust yourself, then leave those threads available to test yourself and your boundaries in the future.
In all of this, I'm very deeply sad, feeling grief and loss, and as though I'm breaking a promise to be there for her, though I've known for a long time this isn't healthy. Would love your thoughts.
Make only promises to yourself at this point. And promise nothing to anyone who is not worthy of promises or trust.
Best wishes,
Schwing