One of the hardest parts about living with your romantic/sexual partner is maintaining a strong sense of personal identity. It’s so easy to eat every meal together, watch the same shows, and just generally blob into the same person.
I happen to be a mega-introvert who needs a lot of space. I easily feel overcrowded when living with people. My partner and I live together and both work from home, so we’ve had to get creative in how to create the feeling of space when sharing an apartment.
In this post I’ll share 4 strategies that we use to create space when we need it.
This article should be helpful if you need space from your partner or if you want to give your partner space.
The Value of Taking Space
You know how when you light a candle, it smells really nice?
But then after about 10 minutes, you kinda get used to it. And you stop smelling the candle at all.
And then, let’s say you leave the room for a few minutes to take a doodoo. And when you get back, all of a sudden you smell the candle again! And it smells great again!
Relationships are kinda like that too.
If you never take space, you stop noticing and appreciating each other.
But taking a little space and coming back together can help you see each the relationship clearly again, appreciate each other more, and just generally reset.
It’s not always clear when to take space. But generally, if one of you feels too crowded, or has a hunch that taking space might actually restore your connection, then give it a shot.
With that said, here are 4 tools to try.
1. Ice Cold Turkey
Spend a few days away from home and go “no contact” with your partner.
It could be a solo camping trip for a few days, or renting an Airbnb with some friends for a weekend. Take the space to create a hard reset and rediscover who you are when you’re not leaning on your partner.
Even a weekend without seeing, texting, or calling each other can make a huge difference.
2. Hit Pause on One of Your Relational Dynamics
Your relationship is made up of a lot of dynamics. Sometimes you and your partner snuggle. Sometimes you talk about your day. Sometimes you go deep and ponder the meaning of life together. Sometimes you go on adventures.
It’s possible that you don’t need space from your entire relationship but just from one of your relationship dynamics.
For example, my partner Angela and I have a strong play connection. We’ll often become kids around each other. This can be fun, healing, and cathartic. But when we do it too much, we become non-sexual and we start to throw too many tantrums. Frankly, it just becomes annoying!
So sometimes, we’ll take a break from “kid energy” for a few days.
Is there a dynamic in your relationship that you can take space from? Play, sex, heady conversation, logistics?
(If you need some ideas, this article touches on the 5 dimensions of a relationship.)
3. Compartmentalize the Relationship
For this tool, you simply engage as per usual but don’t spend time outside of the relationship reflecting on the relationship.
The time you spend thinking or reflecting about a part of your life is actually a way of engaging with it and letting it impact you more deeply.
If you read a book and then deconstruct all of its ideas for the next hour, you are letting that book impact you more deeply. Even just pondering the book later in the day is inviting more impact. But if you read a few pages, then don’t think about it again, you are limiting the mental real estate it occupies.
So, for this tip, continue to connect with your partner, but take a break from thinking (or talking or journaling) about the relationship while you’re not participating in it.
4. Noblie Silence
Make an agreement to not talk with each other for a few days. This is a norm used by many meditation retreats. It’s a way to cohabitate with others while staying in your own personal universe.
Essentially, you’ll still be living in the same home but not engaging with each other.
Clarify the norms with your partner beforehand:
- Do you want to make eye contact and acknowledge each others’ presence when in the same room?
- Do you want to smile at each other when you cross paths?
- Do you want to share texts?
- If a logistic comes up, then what?
Angela and I just did 2 days of noble silence and it created a profound shift in our relationship and allowed us to unhook from some patterns we were caught in.
You can do noble silence every once in a while or even systematize it by doing it every Thursday, for example, to embed space into your relationship.
Stay in Touch!
I hope you found something useful in this article 🙂
If you’d like to stay in touch, consider subscribing to my newsletter, where I’ll send you about one message a month to help you become a more skilled relational being 🙂
đź’• Mike