Do you feel “crowded” in your relationship? How much space should you really need? That depends on the type of relationship you have with your significant other, and the two people in your relationship. Some people do better when they’re together all the time, and other people want “space” even if they’re in a relationship.
It can be hard to find a happy medium that fits both people in a relationship, especially if each person’s needs for “space” are different. Of course, it’s very difficult if you each have very different ideas about what it means to be “together” or to have space. However, if you can compromise on the level of togetherness and independence each of you needs in a relationship, you can work through this together.
Some people don’t like to be alone at all, and are very happy to spend all of their time with friends, family, coworkers, and significant others. They feel a little lost and alone if they have to do things on their own.
Other people need their time alone, and in fact crave it. Without getting a little solitude every day, they may feel burdened and have a hard time simply taking it easy. They always have to be “up,” or they always have to be “on” for other people when they’re around them, which can be exhausting. That’s why they need time alone.
Of course, these are the two extremes when it comes to solitude versus “togetherness,” but there are still other people who strike a balance between the two somewhere. They love to spend time together with partners, and they also want some time completely alone.
If both people in a relationship fall into this third category of “happy medium” between solitude and togetherness, then it’s going to be pretty easy to define your space within the relationship. Similarly, if each of you falls into one of the two extreme groups, where each of you need lots of space or each of you likes being with other people a lot, then things are easier, too.
However, it can be a problem if one of you is a “people” person, and one of you needs to spend a lot of time alone. For example, if one of you is very social and one of you likes to spend a lot of time alone, you’ll need to be able to talk to each other and work out a compromise whereby each of you gets what you need. Each of you will need to understand what the other wants so that you can come up with a compromise that will allow both of you to feel comfortable.
For example, let’s say you need some time alone each day for at least a little while and your partner wants company around the clock. It can be a problem if you simply walk off to be on your own without making sure your partner knows this, and if you don’t, he or she may feel neglected or that you don’t want to be around him or her.
And if you hate being alone and your partner really wants some me-time, then by hanging around constantly you can start to make your partner feel smothered. Your partner might also think that there�s no trust there, and you won�t give him or her private time because you�re afraid of what he or she might do when you�re not around.
Either of these situations, of course, can cause problems in a relationship because your needs for privacy or company are so uneven. The task for each of you, though, is not to force one partner to give up solitude completely or conversely to give up “togetherness” completely, but to come to a good compromise for both of you. And if you talk about it, your partner is going understand why you need what you need, and viceversa.
And when he or she hangs around when you’d rather be alone, you recognize that he or she doesn�’t need the same kind of space in a relationship that you do.
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