TL;DR: Girlfriend of 4 months sent me a weird semi-breakup email saying she felt put down when I jokingly compete with her over things like cooking, video games etc. She's been known to run hot and cold. No final breakup and wants to talk later this week about it. How do I proceed?

Been seeing a girl semi-exclusively (I know, I know) for approx 4 months. Unfortunately, I like her a lot, I can't lie. She and I have exchanged I love yous, basically are a couple. She escalated everything much to my liking...she said the "I want to be your girlfriend," thing, she said I love you first, introduced me to friends and family as her boyfriend. Introduced and involves me with her kid (yup, single mom). Tells me her deepest secrets, always ALWAYS dtf and initiates sex constantly, prioritizes plans with me, jealous of other plates etc etc. It's clear we both have feelings for each other, strong ones. However she is a woman, and what happened last night has me scratching my head in terms of how to proceed.

She can be hot and cold because again, she's a woman and also she has a LOT of baggage from previous relationships. According to her, this girl has had exclusively shit ass relationships with people with addictions problems and/or super volatile emotional issues. Every single one has been abusive in some way. I am not like this...pretty steady over here. I've made the mistake of being the wise therapist daddy type, which means she tells me her problems and secrets and such and I counsel her to some extent. My family was in town to head out to a weekend trip in my area, and she ended up having dinner with my mum. The casual text convos we had while I was away after that showed me that she was going a bit cold again. I didn't bite on it but sorta thought to myself it would be what she's done once before, get emotional, I act indifferent, be the rock etc, she calms down. We were mid way through setting up plans for tomorrow when I get a text from her that she's sent me an email after "taking a few days to reflect." I was expecting something like "I'm just too afraid/fucked up to be in this relationship" but what I got was something entirely different.

Basically she said that being "the best at things" is not important to her and she brought up "3 key times" over the last few months where during conversation, I playfully told her I could beat her at things ie cooking, video games, etc. At the time, we joked about it but apparently this was deeply wounding to her, I'm assuming cause she's been in actual abusive relationships for so many years where people told her she was a worthless POS. She said several times throughout the message that she was confused because she has never been with someone more loving, supportive, etc etc and she loves me so much, but that me saying those things make her feel so small and shitty. She then followed up with "I don't know where to go from here, I'm not sure if this is fixable" essentially because of these incidents and the fact that she believes all I care about is being the best at things. She finished by giving the "woman power" speech: "the most important thing is that I don't lose sight of who I am and the confidence I have" etc etc. It was left open ended. No break up, but no not break up.

I didn't respond for a few hours and in that time she sent me a message that said "I want you to know that I love you and that message was really hard for me to send." I responded a while later and thanked her for sharing her thoughts. I know this is shitty game but I'd genuinely rather know and I wasn't about to cop to being overly competitive..wtf. Her reply was "<3 so where do we go from here?" I haven't responded yet.

I'm confused as fuck, cause this doesn't make any sense. This could be a red herring, potentially covering up some other issue (unlikely another dude in the wings but honestly who knows), but to me this seems like she's damaged as fuck and looking for a reason to end this. Is this the weirdest shit test ever? Power play? Maybe being nice to her made her sense frame weakness and she's trying to push to see how much I will try to keep this together. Spoiler alert: I won't.

Despite knowing better, I know I've made some key mistakes here which has probably allowed for this kind of bullshit to even ensue. I obviously have oneitis, never should have committed so quickly, and definitely shouldn't have listened to as much of her history/relationship problems/feelings as I have. I may have become the soft place to land that now is getting shit on. I also probably should have dialled down my competitiveness with her, but honestly this was a blindside. At the time of each of these incidents, she got bratty and I treated her like the BLS and we fucked. She gave no indication of actual issue with this until now. I thought it was fine.

Anyway, thanks for reading this novel. What do I do? She suggested we "sit on what she said for a few days and talk later this week if I like." I am not meeting or conversing on her terms, but this does need to be talked about at some point I guess...? My main concern is that this girl has no emotional maturity whatsoever (surprise surprise) and I am definitely not going to be a doormat that always tries to put the pieces back together when she does this again. Also that because I don't cause drama, she always will so things feel familiar. I know shit tests are a fact of life, but I don't do being fake broken up with.

Thanks in advance, guys. I really appreciate it.