My girlfriend and I had a heated breakup, got back together, but now she says she needs time. How should I handle this without pushing her away?

I’m looking for some outside perspectives because I think I’m too emotionally involved to see the situation clearly anymore.

My girlfriend and I were very close. We talked every day, played games together almost every night, had our routines like good morning messages, calls, waking each other up, etc. I genuinely love her and got very attached to what we had.

Recently things started changing. She began spending more of her nights gaming/hanging around with other people, including another guy, while our time together became less. I started feeling like her attention was going somewhere else. I don't necessarily mean she cheated or had romantic feelings for someone else — I just felt pushed to the side.

I became more sensitive to what she was doing. Eventually we had a pretty heated conversation. I told her how much everything had been hurting me, and during that conversation I said things that made her believe my feelings toward her had changed.

We broke up.

After the breakup, we didn't speak for about four days. Then she reached out to me because she wanted to understand exactly why I had ended things and whether there were any hidden reasons behind my decision.

I told her there weren't. The reasons were exactly what I had already told her: I hadn't stopped loving her or suddenly lost my feelings for her. I was hurt, frustrated and emotionally exhausted by what had been happening between us, and I reacted from that place.

We ended up reconnecting, but things haven't completely returned to normal.

There's still affection and contact between us. She still answers some of our usual calls, we still sometimes play together, and she hasn't completely disappeared from my life. But there's clearly a wall there now. She doesn't express affection the same way she used to, and she keeps telling me to "give her time".

That's the part I'm struggling with.

My instinct when someone I love is hurt is to reassure them. Send the usual good morning message, check on them, call them, invite them to play, remind them that I love them, etc.

But I'm starting to realize that constantly trying to reassure her might actually be putting pressure on her when she's specifically asking for time.

So I'm considering backing off. Not as a manipulation tactic and not to make her chase me. I don't want to punish or ignore her either.

I basically want to stop pursuing , let her initiate sometimes, be warm when she reaches out, and allow things to develop naturally instead of constantly checking whether we're "okay."

At the same time, I'm scared that if I suddenly stop doing our normal routines, she'll interpret it as me not caring anymore — especially because she's already hurt and questioning how I feel about her.

So I'm stuck between:

"She asked for time, respect that and give her space."

and

"She's hurt and insecure about your feelings, so disappearing could make things worse."

For people who have been on either side of something like this

How would you handle it?