 

At the start of November my girlfriend of five months decided, much to my surprise, to break up with me due to her ongoing battle with BPD, PTSD and depression. I say that this event was a complete surprise because there was no glaringly obvious indication that she felt the relationship to be threatened by her troubles. Indeed, as she lives in Ireland and I am British I spent the month immediately before the separation in her house trying to find a job that would allow me to move country and be more conducive to the survival of our long-distance relationship.

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A matter of days before I returned to the UK (not in reaction to split) everything seemed completely normal, though she did reveal that BPD might be a problem for her for the first time and consequently talked of a new plan to see a therapist twice a week. During that entire time, and the several previous trips we had enjoyed together in Ireland/UK, we revelled in each others company, were firmly devoted to one another and I was the happiest I had been in years.

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Quite early in our relationship, she did reveal that she suffered with mental health issues for most of her adult life and that these could likely be attributed to an array of quite harrowing traumas. Sometimes this would cause her to feel agonising insecurity about her body, to feel that people were disparaging her behind her back or that she was incapable of making friends. She certainly perceived me to be a stable rock she could rely on for reassurance and I started to describe my own struggles (mostly overcome) in an attempt to console her alongside performing the role of listener anytime she felt overwhelmed. There were a couple of occasions in which certain presumably innocuous comments of mine caused her to be reminded of past traumatic memories or misinterpret things as personal attacks, after which she would invariably need space to calm before explaining her feelings (see bottom for last of these). We moved on from these incidences fairly easily afterwards but they were the first warning sign that I needed to handle her more sensitively.

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After I went home she said that she needed to some time to herself for a few days and I obliged. Three days later she messages me saying that she doesn't feel able to be in a relationship at the moment as she feels 'unable to have conversations' and that she wishes it could continue but she needs to focus on herself. I talk to her and explain that her mental health doesn't affect the love I have for her and that whatever conditions she needs me to fulfill in order to support her I will gladly provide, but she is adamant recovering may take a while and me being so closely connected to her for perhaps up to a year would not be fair on me. We resolve to keep in touch.

 

Though I began to be crippled by self-doubt, suspecting that I had somehow made a big mistake to alienate her; what confirmed the veracity of her perspective was that she called me the next day, utterly distraught at feeling alone and then continued to message me over the following week viciously blaming herself for what happened. She would ask if my family hated her and berated herself for being 'a heartbreaker' by 'messing things up' and hurting me. I told her that my feelings for her hadn't changed and that her feelings were just a consequence of her being in a bad place. She called me the week after this to have a general chat and I assured her at the end that even though I was focusing on my own life to give her space, she is welcome to give us another go if she ever feels healthy enough to. I reiterated my boundaries again days later when she reassured me that nothing was my fault and that her negative frame of mind had been intensifying for a while prior to us splitting. Again I said that am just a phone call away if she needed support for anything, that I don't judge her for bravely wanting to confront her problems head on and that the door is open for her should she ever want to return. She still reaches out to me to ask how i'm doing and recently thanked me for the Christmas card I sent her.

 

The prospect of reuniting she has not directly addressed (aside from vaguely thanking me for all my assurances) but I assume if she was opposed to it she would have voiced that concern by now. I still love her so much, she is the best person I have ever met and I try my best to show her unconditional support if and when she approaches me so that I don't smother her. I fully appreciate that giving her the space to heal will be of great benefit in her quest to feel better but I can't escape the anxiety that I should occasionally reach out to her. She told me a few weeks ago that she still doesn't talk to her friends about what's plaguing her and I worry she may be suffering alone for fear of not wanting to bother me. Simultaneously, I think she is getting proper treatment and I don't want to appear overly invasive during this time. Does anyone have any advice for how to proceed or any insight into similar situations? She is just really important to me and I don't want to fail her/give ourselves the best chance of reconciling in future.

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Lastly I want to say that I have been consumed by anxiety lately as the more I research BPD (something I didn't know she might be suffering with until mere days before we split), the more I recognise how her few unpredictable reactions to things I commented on are explained by her torturous fear of rejection. Indeed, I am wracked by guilt knowing that on the last night I saw her I tried to express how much I missed her after she went away for a few days, saying we hadn't spent much time together and that I could sense a bit of uneasiness in her. This caused her to feel threatened in a way I had never intended as she calmly accused me of being ungrateful and lamenting that I had said a 'shitty' thing. She has told me several times that this incident had no bearing on her decision, that nothing was my fault but I feel terrible that I couldn't assuage her fears and explain that I wasn't abandoning her because I didn't understand the dynamics of BPD at the time. I desperately want to apologise for this but again am worried about the conflict with space.

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Apologies for the length of this post, thanks for bearing with the detail!

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TL;DR - Had a wonderful 5 month relationship with long distance partner, she ended it wanting to focus on her mental health, now I don't know how much space to maintain between us/how to stop blaming myself.