My girlfriend is diagnosed bipolar. What type, she isn’t exactly sure. Her cycling does typically seems to be fairly rapid, but I am growing concerned.
We’ve only been together for a few months, and she told me about being bipolar pretty quickly. I did as much research as possible so I could better be there for her when she needs me and better understand what she’s going through. We’re basically living together, she’s out of a job at the moment, and we’ve been in a location that’s new to us both for the past month or so.
For the past two weeks, she’s been remarkably distant. She won’t speak to me, wont respond to me, and as soon as we start to speak again, everything will start off fine, then turn into her harshly insulting me, being very aggressively controlling, being annoyed by every little move I make, and then she goes back into not speaking – and when she does rarely speak, it’s only to say cruel things. This started for no apparent reason, but because of all the hostility, I can sometimes react without thinking, and be argumentative. This obviously puts her right back into silent mode with no apparent hope of speaking.
I try talking with her, showing her funny things, suggesting we get out and see a movie or go for a walk… She just shakes her head.
I’m doing a lot of research but i’m not finding anything specific to this behavior. I’m just trying to figure out, A) is this related to bipolar, and if so, B) what is the best way for me to interact with her while she’s in this state. Right now she’s easily agitated/annoyed and I don’t want to do (or not do) anything that would make this any worse for her.
Any insight would be greatly appreciated.