FA with quiet BPD deactivation split or permanent detachment?

[Ronnie Lo]

Hello everyone,

I've always appreciated the thoughts being shared here, so I've decided to share my complex and painful story.

About 2.5 months ago, my relationship with a high-functioning, fearful avoidant with quiet BPD (22M) entered a rupture. During our relationship, we were living together for most of 2025 and had been romantically seeing each other since 2024. The beginning of the relationship was quite the textbook love bombing. I was initially reluctant and a little guarded, because I had never had anyone put me on a pedestal like that before. Eventually, I fully embraced it. We actually didn't really label it a relationship at first. We just spent a lot of time together and made each other feel equally comforted and needed. Maintaining this was easy because we were neighbors at this point, living in the same apartment complex. He listened to my needs and toned down the intensity a little bit after some time of smothering. Things were pretty good, despite my knowing something was a little off and he had a sordid past, which he was still mostly hiding from me until he became more comfortable, rightfully so. He was taking medication from prior therapy and awaiting the results of his diagnosis, which was later confirmed as BPD. Soon he stopped going to therapy.

When I met him early on, I was informed that he had a rocky relationship with his mother, whom he was splitting on when we first met. She was a source of abuse during his childhood and was often not present. As far as I knew, she moved away with a new boyfriend and didn't talk to her son for months thereafter. He also had a dream to live freely in a van, but money was tight. Eventually, he needed a place to stay and so I decided to run the risk and help him by letting him stay with me. I was actually in the early stages of moving myself, so we had decided to officially become roommates in the next place (i can be a little codependent). At this point, the connection was still going strong and we found a lovely apartment in a nearby town. I vividly remember this next moment when we shared our first breakfast in the new apartment. He was quieter than usual and I sensed some anxiety and doubt on his face, almost as if he knew or feared what was inevitably going to happen 6 months later. I think he is aware of his cycles. Two weeks had gone by from that moment and his best friend had suddenly committed suicide. The moment he found out, he came to me for comfort and we just lay together for a while, in silence. The grief he experienced later was delayed, and came in intense bursts. He tried to shield me from it, but sometimes the cracks showed and I was quick to soothe. He would sometimes reject my help, only to later seek it. I found myself managing micro crisis after micro crisis. This started becoming a turning point for us and I found myself needing more and more reassurance as I felt him periodically pull away or go cold without explanation. My knowledge on BPD was very little at this point, so i often internalized a lot of this and thought I was doing something wrong. Then it would be followed by immediate bursts of passion and connection-seeking again. So it became a push-pull dynamic if you will. He stopped taking his medication at this point as well, after the first few grief and emotional bursts. I obviously questioned this decision but there was little I could do. He would not budge.

Then things become more extreme: suicidal ideation, medication withdrawal, insomnia, lies, manipulation and socially rebelling by not telling me where and what he was doing and being gone for several nights. I wanted to make sure he was safe and I needed to feel secure on where we stood. I realize his behavior was mostly in reaction to me having gone on a road trip for a day beforehand and coming back later that night than expected and planned. He knew days in advance where i was going and what i was going to do. His abandonment fears must have been activated, judging by his sudden behavioral shift. This was the point where the most friction occured. Several arguments, although never demeaning or personal attacks, were just general frustration and fear. I worried he was cheating on me, but he was always the introverted type, not sexually driven either. Usually I can tell when he lies to avoid confrontation, this time i was sure he wasn't. It took him a long time to get comfortable sexually with me, but ultimately he built that connection and trust really intensively. He has a sexual abuse history, which he painfully shared with me a few weeks before it all crashed down, so him being sexually vulnerable was a big deal. After a week of this behavior, he stopped the escapism and we communicated and became extremely close and comfortable again for a while, until I started to notice something else...the next storm. His mother had one random day reached out. The two of them entered a new cycle of their connection. He was eager to show her the apartment he had managed to live in with me. She came to visit him for lunch and they spent some quality time together. I was slightly surprised but also happy for him. Unfortunately later i realized where this was heading, because I also saw that he was a bit riled up by her. I may have overstepped here, but we argued about her. I saw how he began submitting to her inquisitive requests, without holding her accountable. He was defending her when i exclaimed that she wasn't reconciling, but rather sounding a bit demanding. He is quite the yes-man, so he jumps at anything. A month before the rupture, he suddenly became curious about the rental agreement again, which had me questioning and fearing the worst. He assured me it was to "just go over something", but I called bs. I believe he was considering leaving at that point. I became anxiously attached and felt possible abandonment incoming. The dust settled for a few more weeks until we went to visit his hometown (where we also met), and that is when his eventual shutdown changed gear rapidly. I could tell he wanted to move back to his hometown, which took me by surprise, because when we first met, he could not wait to leave it. He began re-idealizing things he had previously run from. I felt hurt and every attempt to reconcile, understand and seek reassurance was met with defensive deflection and little empathy.

Two weeks later he has a sudden psychosis event. Stress began compounding for him (the relationship, financial trouble due to job instability, adult responsibilities, best friend's suicide, missing home, etc). This was scary. He was unrecognizable, unapproachable and living in a different reality. Paranoia became the norm for him for several consecutive days. I did not know what to do. I tried to reach out for help from someone he knows, but he has always kept very few people close to him. When i retreated to keep to myself for my own sanity, he'd eventually snap out of the episode for brief periods and want to be near me for comfort and he did seem concerned with how I was feeling too. I should add, there were many moments during our relationship where he was extremely caring and empathetic. It only gradually started declining the more overwhelmed he became.

Fast forward, he abruptly moves out at the end of October and back into an enmeshed home with his mother whom I might add, is quite controlling and opinionated based on what I saw. I felt disrespected by her, despite my efforts to help her son and inadvertently be the caretaker that she failed to be during all of those months. I now became a bit of a scapegoat in this situation. A deliberate attempt by her to try and shift the blame and his guilt and get into his good graces, possibly to use this as an opportunity to turn him compliant and on her terms as well. The lack of accountability here is frightening. The triangulation of this now new dynamic between the 3 of us didn't last much longer. During this period I had moved back to a short-term rental in the same city where he and I both met, coincidentally a block away from where his cousin lives and his old neighborhood. About a month of periodic hanging out still occurred post-cohabitation until the end of November, and I saw him slowly regressing further. He was not so much in control of his life anymore, as if he is repaying a debt to his mother for reaching out to her during the psychosis event to have her help him move. During this time, he had been apologetic and still vulnerable with me. Maybe he knew he needed to reset, but just couldnt put it into words. I felt the push-pull he was experiencing between choosing her and me. I could sense regret, shame, and longing in him after he had given up and accepted his fate in his new home. The grass wasn't greener. Who would've thought running from your problems doesn't work! He gave up adult intimacy to a conditional environment that he also described as a "cage" shortly before the rupture, as he and his mother argued with him wanting to see me and her inconveniencing him about something else that particular day. He expressed instant regret to me for sharing their renewed drama. Moments of vulnerability and affection towards me still seep through up until here. He said he wanted to make things work with me, but didn't know how. He's even expressed wanting to grow with me and brought up living in a van or camper again, which he knows is a lifestyle I am also open to. Sadly, a major lack of skills and coping mechanisms is present overall, so the communication was always at a deficit.

The day the rupture happened, he told me he was going back to therapy, which he said he was apathetic about. I felt him being quite cold with me that day, so I called it out. I had to know what he was feeling towards me so I could firmly move forward and not be stuck in this anxious fog. Then he said he didnt want to hurt me more and that he felt he wasn't ready for a relationship, which was also addressed months earlier once (the not being ready part). A classic shame shut-down and deactivation line. However, this time it felt a bit final...like he was ready to discard me. Following this, he said he would "like to remain friends" with me, which to me momentarily felt like an instant knot in my heart. I immediately drew a firm boundary and said this was not something I could do, that I cannot minimize my feelings and that i wasn't forcing him to be or do anything he did not want to. I thanked him for finally showing me "how he truly feels". Then i proceeded to unfollow him and go dark for 10 days out of anger and hurt. This I feel, shocked him into a deep freeze where he is now splitting me. I reached out to him after 10 days, roughly 3 times. Once before Christmas and twice after in January, with the most recent having been 4 weeks ago. I said i was hoping he was okay and that i still cared and wasn't angry and that I'd be open to any capacity contact of his choosing should he ever want to. No labels, no expectations. It might be a contradiction to what he believes, but I still did not back down from my boundary. I dont think the silence is deliberate. He viewed each ping, but no reply. I have not heard from him in nearly 3 months. His social media appears largely frozen as well. Now I fear he has fully submitted to his shame and enmeshed dynamic, and with lack of object constancy, is probably suppressing everything to do with me.

The silence has been extremely difficult and painful because part of me wishes his anxious side would slip through and reach out, but he has completely disappeared. It has made me question my stance and decision and resulted in a lot of ruminating. The 1-year anniversary of his best friend's passing is fast approaching and if people with his profile operate on cycles (often to involuntary sabotage) then i am wondering if he is currently sitting in a pressure cooker, where another sabotage is inevitable. Once and if the dissociative fog lifts, i fear of being dragged back into the chaos, because it would not come from a healthy and regulated place. I know he loves me and I now know he likely used the friendship due to lack of capacity as an attempt to keep me close on his terms, likely knowing full well he loves me more than a friend. When I pulled the plug it must have properly shocked him. I know its not indifference, it feels like a young adult who has regressed back into a child-like trauma freeze. I know he is young, but he traded his adult life for control. Now he has to perform for his mother again.. Maybe they're turning a page and will improve their dynamic in slow progression, but I still felt massively disrespected and whiplashed. He is aware that I am moving again in a couple of months, because I only managed to find a short-term rental in light of the recent stressful transition. For my mental health, I have to move soon, because everywhere I go around here reminds me of him.

I miss him dearly and I can't stop thinking about him. My 29 years of life never prepared me for a relationship like this, despite my having prior relationship experience, whereas he did not. This experience, albeit traumatic, was indeed eye-opening. Despite everything that happened, I still don't see him differently, because I know he has no control over these things, but it may be time for him to be accountable. This experience taught me about my attachment style, and I am trying to move forward with that. The road is a long one. Still, I wonder, is this it? Is he truly gone and detaching, or is he avoiding the reality of what had happened, destined for a rude awakening? He certainly isn't thriving.

I would love to read what you think.

Thank you!

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