Gravity bends space?

If gravity bends space (and therefore elliptic trajectories of celestial objects), then why do comets breakup due to tidal forces? Shouldn't they glide (stretching and shrinking) through the space as it is (bent or not)?

What does it mean for space to be bent? What does it mean for objects that exist and travel through that space.

Wtf, guize, I'm confused with relativity theory and all this gravity bends space thing.

nb4 troll. please, discuss.

tidal forces = stretch/shrink

It's usually the stretching that tears things apart.

Basically, all things have finite size; the part closer to the sun is pulled harder than the part further from the sun -> in reference frame of center of mass, there is stretch.  This is also true of Newtonian gravity, and is not a special feature of relativity.

space being bent = non zero Riemann curvature tensor at that point

what it means for something to exist = ontology shitstorm

Read the book by Wheeler, Misner, and Thorne.