For some context, my girlfriend met up with me to dump me because she was too overwhelmed with her work-life balance and she admitted to not being able to fulfill my needs. She thought I deserved someone better and it was true that I was feeling a bit unhappy and I found her to be a bit emotionally avoidant. I still wanted to try to understand her point of view and so I continued asking her questions to convince myself that it wasn't salvageable, or to see if maybe we could reach a compromise because I'm a bit of an optimist.

She was telling me about how spread thin she is and how she can barely keep up with her PhD work along with having to work 20 hours a week. For the past month or so, she always brought up how stressed she felt, so at this point I became very concerned for her well-being and that she might burn out. I told her that that sucked and then asked if she was seeking any mental help while we were walking. She then stops, becomes speechless, and turns the other way and storms off.

To make matters worse, I fell into an anxiety spiral and kept messaging her to apologize and that I didn't mean any harm or disrespect. She eventually told me she needed space. I backed off for like a day and a half and I made the stupid mistake of reaching out again, which she then took very badly, leading her to tell me that she does not want to talk and to not contact her again. For this part, I admit that I was an asshole and an idiot. But for the first part, how am I the asshole here? My guess is that she thought I was labelling her as just another crazy woman, even though that was not my intention in anyway. I feel really bad about it.