I hope I'm not wasting your time - but this could be a difficult one.
I have been with my girlfriend for two years. She is on daily medication for her bipolar depression. A part of this infliction causes them to frequently break up with their partners - particularly when they are not 'thinking right' or having an 'episode'. The explanation is usually along the lines of its 'too much pressure to have a partner' / 'I'm not in love with you anymore / 'I need space'
This happened to me a year ago - she broke up for four weeks with me claiming it was 'too much pressure',then got back together again.
Last week - a similar situation occurred. My girlfriend was having an episode and decided that because I hadn't been staying at her place a lot lately and that I hadn’t been showing her enough physical attention – that we needed ‘space’ and needed to ‘begin again’ with each other.
She also told me she wasn’t ‘in love’ with me and felt nothing when I touched her.
What’s difficult to know is what is bipolar and what is not. I know sometimes I tend to pull back physically in a relationship and put up a bit of a shield. I also know that she wanted me to stay over at her place more and this had become an issue for her.
So any suggestions on how I should handle this? I have given her the space she asked for and haven’t contacted her for a week – I suppose I have ‘gone dark’.
But then should I be doing this if she felt she wasn’t getting enough attention from me in the first place? Am I not compounding the problem by giving her ‘less love and attention’ by having no contact. On the other hand she said she wanted ‘space'!
