friend with bpd broke up with me

met this person a year ago, he then moved to another state a week later. we stayed in contact, just casual texting and I've seen him when he has visited a couple of times. the last visit we seemed to get closer and the texting was upped along with phone calls now. 2 weeks ago he asked for a favor....at first i couldn't make it happen and told him that. then at the last minute it came through. when i told him he had changed his mind (that's fine) but he was dismissive about it. it was a lot of work on my part to do it. so i sent him a text saying he kinda hurt my feelings. he sent a long ranting text but i seemed to have cooled things down with my response. the next day he sent a text that "he had given serious thought to what i did" "we're not compatible" "pleasure knowing me...farewell". now, i could tell he was in his own head during the previous texts and he even said he was already stressed and angry. but he also said "don't take it personally..let's move on". after all reading i've done about this condition (wish i knew it before) i feel really bad for him and feel it's cruel to just not try something. what should i say and how long should i wait. i want to let him know that i'm not mad or hold any grudges. he was blocking my phone call that night but still reading my texts. don't know if i'm fully blocked now but he did "unfriend" me. thanks

I am assuming that you are speaking of borderline personality disorder, not bipolar disorder. You also mentioned NPD in your other post.

BPD and NPD have a lot in common, they are in the same sub-group of personality disorders. My thinking is that your statement that he hurt your feelings was taken as a narcissistic wound; people with BPD or NPD can be truly and deeply pained by such innocent-seeming comments. This would, I am thinking, be why he wants to cut off contact with you, to protect himself from another such injury.

It is nice of you to care so much about his feelings, but be aware that he is going to be consistently like this unless he gets treatment. In other words, he might get over this one wound but he will find and magnify other slights in the future. This is why partners of those with untreated BPD speak of "walking on eggshells".

With regard to what you should do now. I can think of two ways to look at this. One approach is to give him the respect of taking his words seriously. He asked you not to contact him, so you can respect his words and not contact him. If/when he is ready, he will contact you. In the interim, he will have experienced the consequences of his words/actions. He might learn from that, especially over time.

Another approach is to contact him again, as you said, to reassure him that you are not angry with him. You would not want to do this "too soon", lest he simply reject you immediately again. However, you could expect that he will gradually recover from this incident. It isn't clear how long that might take, but trying to contact him in a week might give a good barometer of what staying in contact with him will be like--will he carry the wound, and dissatisfaction with you, for a whole week?

Remember, though, that if you give him a pass on his words and behaviors because you see it as cruel not to, given his disorder, then he will have limited incentive to try to change those behaviors. Why should he change when you don't seem to see any need for change? It will eventually become a question of how much you are willing to put up with.

One of the hardest things about therapy is that clients usually are not responsible for their condition. Usually they are hurting because of what other people have done to them, and/or because of genetics. Yet, despite this, the client, and only the client, has the opportunity and responsibility to make changes. It is perhaps unfair, but that is, for better or worse, the way it is. If partners of people with untreated BPD are, out of their empathy and compassion, willing to accept pretty much any behavior from the person with the untreated BPD, they may inadvertently be keeping their partner out of treatment.