Worried about potentially waning relationship with depressed and anxious girlfriend + other anxieties

Thanks for taking the time to try and help.

Context: I (28) met my current girlfriend (27) through Tinder about 3 months back. While things were initially casual, we connected intellectually, emotionally and physically and became officially together about 2 weeks into meeting. We have a lot of interests in common, but are different enough and our MBTIs were a great fit.

Things were pretty hot and heavy for the first two months with daily communication, exchanged nudes, fun dates etc. and have since been “less” in the past month or so. We live about an hour and a half apart and have been meeting up once a week with almost every other day being a videogame/streaming/voice chat day. She has been driving to me (by choice) due to it being more viable to be alone at my place.

We are direct and open partners with no real taboo in discussions about anything. We knew going in that at times are relationship could be challenging and have talked about all below issues openly, but they are still contingent.

I feel that our communication has been more one sided, moreso prompted by myself and this past month has only been 2 meetups due to her not feeling well as well as a vehicle mishap afaik.

**A. Issues on her end**

* She has depression and anxiety and has been involuntarily committed on two instances in the past. This is from anxieties over her current station in life as well as being a prior victim of abuse by her father, which led to her and her mother fleeing the situation. This depression can lead to periods of inability to communicate/do anything really and affects her energy/ability to sleep. She takes meds and actively goes to therapy.

* She is in the active process of divorce over a 2+ year relationship/marriage and still currently lives with her ex. From what she has told me, this is a long time decision in the making for almost a year and she has stopped being physically intimate for four months prior to meeting me. The context of this relationship is her giving up her schooling and moving across states to be with this person, which led to a relationship of gaslighting/not being heard that erupted into hurtful feuds that she doesn’t want to get into. Divorce has been in talks for almost a year.

* Financial instability. She is a part time barista who lives paycheck to paycheck and will have hard times incoming when her current living situation ends, however she has lived on her own similarly and will be able to make it work. We’ve made it clear to each other that she doesn’t expect support from me and we’ve generally been 50/50 on all expenditures.

**B. Issues On My End**

* Loner: I have been a life long loner with no real relationships My long time friend group has recently broken up due to abandonment and irreparable actions by a friend who has turned his life into a downward spiral. I am not all the way experienced with common relationship issues and can probably be clingy/needy.

* Direct INTJ type who has overcome hardship thru direct action and never really considered emotions on my own part even if I felt bad in objective based scenarios (work, schooling)

Everything else in my life housing, finances are stable.

**C. Anxieties on my end from the relationship**

* Going into the relationship, she informed me early on that she was going thru divorce and that it was not finalized. She later told me that the papers were signed about a month in, but later said that there were some paperwork errors that required resubmission. Therefore, she is still in active divorce/officially married and housed with her ex. I addressed this with her earlier this month and she confirmed it was still in process.

* While I have been able to talk and try to help out on her plans to go back to school, obtain more stable employment, financials etc, doing any of this has led to periods of anxiety on her part that have shutdown communication. Even though, she is open to talking about it, it feels like something that I have to make rare and not talk too in depth about. I am worried constantly as if this is how often we communicate in “better times”, what will happen in worse times?

* Time scheduling – she works a night shift/odd hours, while I work a 9 to 5 and this has led to limited communication when I can actually speak with her (12 to 1 am or so after she finishes work usually) and lack of opportunities to meet in person (we usually only have 1 day a week and if it falls on a weekday, she has to come later). If she doesn’t feel good/something happens, we don’t physically meet for the week.

**D. Recent Lack of Communication and Worries**

For the past month, we’ve only met up twice physically. She was not feeling good one week/woke up late/had anxiety and she had car troubles on another week.

I’ve also noticed that outside of that, I have been the instigator of our text conversations with once vibrant chats becoming more daily “how did your day go? Good” and many times, she has not wanted to talk (which I give her space) due to anxieties/burnt out more often.

We’ve had about two big fights so far due to this. During these fights, I’ve tried to raise up tangible actions she could take to make things better for her anxieties (go to full time employment, make a plan to finish her college degree) and have asked for things to help out our meetups (her potentially switching to a stable dayshift rather than me sleeping less to hang out).

What I came to understand from these fights were that a) a night shift is crucial to her emotional wellbeing and is not just a switch in hours, b) she won’t alter her life substantially for me in that way because she has done similarly for her ex and that was unhealthy for her, c) she does best when she works through things solo rather than having pressure. I essentially got the vibe that she will respect our togetherness, but everything must be right for her before she even considers my feelings and needs. But she did say she would be willing to sacrifice here and there.

She said that our recent common communications have likely been due to us transitioning out of the honeymoon phase.

I have tried to do multiple things to ease things during our relationship as much as possible. Buying a videogame she wanted to play together (she brought up the idea and we have not played), never challenged her if she voiced that she has felt unwell and not wanted to talk, suggested ideas for us to do in person and directly included things she’s suggested. I was the one who brought up the video streaming idea, which would allow us to be together apart with limited talk if we had nothing to really update.

Yesterday, I read up more on the honeymoon phase and tried to keep it positive and reaffirmed via chat some things we could do next time we see each other and that although our conversations have been more common, that I don’t feel any different about her and am still passionate. She responded in a way that indicated that she didn’t even read what I wrote and later said she is going thru a lot of anxiety hence lack of communication.

For people that have similar issues or similar partners, should I be worried? Is this commonplace and I should just let things be? What can I do to revive the relationship when everyday it seems more distant?

She has assured me that she would tell me straight up if I have done anything wrong and I have also asked on multiple occasions to gauge and remedy any of my interactions. I have also made it clear that if she ever wanted to end things for any reason, bring it up.

When we do meet up physically, its mostly awesome, however, I was physically down due to all of this during our meetup this week.

**TL;DR got into a relationship with a girl with depression and anxiety knowing that things would be difficult. Things have gotten difficult despite attempts to remedy, but moreso regular communications outside of expected difficulty has become stale and one sided. I am worried on how I should gauge if this is due to her circumstances, disinterest, wrongdoing etc.**