Ex to friends but now no contact from him

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Hi everyone,

I was with my partner for 12 months until he said he needed to pull back from the emotional and intimate intensity. We cried together, he said he loved me but our life doesn’t align and he is scared to lose me and wants to be friends. I had a feeling he had been building a close relationship with a good friend and was pulling away from me to give himself energy to focus on her. The pull back was 2 weeks ago, and the depth of separation was deeper than I expected. Initially he still messaged me regularly but kept it surface, continued to check in but hope you’re okay vs how are you curiosity, then a few days gap, a 10 minute call and a lie that said he was on his way home but snap showed he was in an area he’d been at more often. He ended up staying there Friday to Sunday and has ghosted me since. I had previously set a boundary that because my emotions were so raw I needed to step back to safely heal if he was seeing someone else. He had reassured me but seeing all the pieces together I said I’m going to step back a little and look after myself but I will still be his friend in a low pressure way. The message didn’t get read, but I know he saw it. It’s been 5 days since no contact. I have checked in once a day in a light way but I am going to stop for now. I understood the risks going in, and I completely understand why. I had an amazing 11 months with him he was my best friend. It is such a confusing shock to the system to be discarded abruptly though. Psychosomatic symptoms and grief cycle have been intense.

Keen to hear experience on trying to maintain a low key friendship with someone after a rupture like this. That is if he chooses or has capacity to reconnect with me.

[Lifegivesyou26]

Hi everyone,

I was with my partner for 12 months until he said he needed to pull back from the emotional and intimate intensity. We cried together, he said he loved me but our life doesn’t align and he is scared to lose me and wants to be friends. I had a feeling he had been building a close relationship with a good friend and was pulling away from me to give himself energy to focus on her. The pull back was 2 weeks ago, and the depth of separation was deeper than I expected. Initially he still messaged me regularly but kept it surface, continued to check in but hope you’re okay vs how are you curiosity, then a few days gap, a 10 minute call and a lie that said he was on his way home but snap showed he was in an area he’d been at more often. He ended up staying there Friday to Sunday and has ghosted me since. I had previously set a boundary that because my emotions were so raw I needed to step back to safely heal if he was seeing someone else. He had reassured me but seeing all the pieces together I said I’m going to step back a little and look after myself but I will still be his friend in a low pressure way. The message didn’t get read, but I know he saw it. It’s been 5 days since no contact. I have checked in once a day in a light way but I am going to stop for now. I understood the risks going in, and I completely understand why. I had an amazing 11 months with him he was my best friend. It is such a confusing shock to the system to be discarded abruptly though. Psychosomatic symptoms and grief cycle have been intense.

Keen to hear experience on trying to maintain a low key friendship with someone after a rupture like this. That is if he chooses or has capacity to reconnect with me.

[PeteWitsend]

Hi and welcome.

Do you think he's BPD?  I'm curious because you haven't really described any behavior from him that would seem to be problematic in that sense, though I can certainly understand why you're feeling shock and grief over losing him.

But, as far as whether there's any issues with him, it sounds like he either: 1) tried to let you down easy, or 2) decided to keep you around in the event he changed his mind, or (assuming he was going after someone else) it didn't work out.  But it's not possible to know which at this time. 

[Lifegivesyou26]

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?

[Under The Bridge]

I had an amazing 11 months with him he was my best friend. It is such a confusing shock to the system to be discarded abruptly though. Psychosomatic symptoms and grief cycle have been intense.

With a normal relationship - ie with a non-BPD partner - it's easier to stay friends afterwards because you're 'out of each other's system' amd don't want to e involved romantically with each other but as you'll know, a BPD relationship is not so easy to make a clean break from because at the time it was the most intense and seemingly perfect relationship we've ever had.

Because your relationship was so good and intense, you'll find it hard to simply close it down and will want to rekindle it - as we all did when it happened to us. For the BPD partner, though they may have feelings for us they also see us as a commodity; a resource to use and fall back on when and if needed. That is the nature of their illness and we have to be aware of this. They can come back to us only to promptly drop us again as their emotions dictate.

Even if they're seeing someone new they will keep us 'in reserve' rather than end up being totally alone and we can never be sure they're keeping contact with us for the right reason.

If you're willing to accept this then by all means try to be friends but try not to read too much into his responses. I'd limit any contact to just the occasional 'Hi, how's things?' and if he doesn't respond then don't press it any further as the ball is in his court. The more you put into it the greater chance of you being hurt again. Just my thoughts.

[PeteWitsend]

...

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?

The typical BPD-ex-friend situation I've read here is that the pwBPD will test those boundaries in unhealthy ways.  Either they'll be constantly trying to get back together, or they'll more or less ignore the other person (until they need or want something from them), but they're not going to be friends according to the dictionary definition of the word.  They're not going to be there for you. 

I think you're looking at this more as a game, with some sort of artificial rules of behavior, when really, you need to consider what you want and go do that.  Are you hoping to get back together with him?  It seems like he communicated a pretty clear "no" to you about that.

Do you really want to talk to him regularly, even if he's not there as a romantic partner for you?  Then try that, and decide whether it's working or not.

Remember: boundaries are for you; you need to decide what you want, and what you will and won't tolerate.  It's up to you to decide whether you're getting that from him, or not, and if not, when to end it.