About fifteen years ago, Tom asked me for space. What he actually said, after I’d spent a few days not hearing him, was that if I didn’t back off he wasn’t sure what he was going to do.
I had a speech ready. I’d been working on it for a while. It was some version of please don’t, look at what we have, look at what I gave up to be here.
I didn’t give it.
A few months before that, I had broken down my whole life in Utah and moved to California to be with him. Then something happened in our family that neither of us saw coming, and the shape of what we were building changed overnight. He needed time to sort out what it meant for him.
What I was actually afraid of
I want to say this plainly, because I suspect it’s what you’re afraid of too.
What if I give him the space he’s asking for, and he uses it to decide he doesn’t want to come back?
I was terrified.
He wasn’t deciding whether he loved me
Here’s what I didn’t understand at first, and it’s the thing I’d most like you to take away.
Tom wasn’t deciding whether he loved me. He was deciding whether he had the capacity for what had just landed in our lives.
Those are two different questions, and the person doing the waiting almost always hears the first one. You hear: he’s weighing me. He’s working out whether I’m worth this. And so you set about proving that you are, which is the most natural response in the world and also the one that makes everything worse, because now there’s pressure in a room that already had far too much in it.
What I had going for me was that I’d already done the other version. I spent years in my second marriage trying to get somebody to become the partner I wanted him to be, and I knew exactly where that road ended. I talked about that in episode 289, and it’s the reason I was able to catch myself this time.
So I backed off. Not gracefully. Not all at once.
What giving space actually feels like
I want to be honest about this part, because when people describe giving someone space it can sound serene, and it is nothing of the kind.
I spent a lot of those evenings dancing by myself. I’d put music on and move around the room, and sometimes I cried while I danced, and then I’d laugh, and then I’d keep dancing. It wasn’t a wellness practice. It was the only thing I could think of to do with everything moving through me, because the alternative was picking up the phone.
Brooke says it better than I do on this week’s episode. Every cell in your body is screaming at you not to let go. It feels like watching somebody walk into a dark room when you have no idea what’s going to come back out.
That’s the part nobody prepares you for. Not the decision. The waiting.
The question I’d ask you to sit with
It isn’t the one you probably want.
Not how do I get them to come back.
Whether what you’re doing right now is making it possible for them to genuinely choose at all.
In the episode, Tom tells his whole side of this, including what he was really weighing and the moment he decided. I’ll tell you the sentence I kept repeating to myself to keep from chasing him. And we get into what the two of us worked out afterward, which is that we never did solve the problem that started the whole thing. Something else happened instead, and it turned out to matter a great deal more.
Questions people ask me about space and separation
What does it mean when my partner asks for space?
Usually less than you fear and more than they can explain. Sometimes it is the first step toward leaving. More often it is somebody who has hit the edge of what they can carry and has no language for it yet. You cannot tell which from the outside, and trying to work it out by reading their behavior will cost you weeks you could have spent steadying yourself.
How long is space supposed to last?
There’s no standard, and anyone who gives you a number is guessing. What I will say is that space with no agreement at all about how you’ll check in tends to go worse than space with one. Not a deadline for their decision. Just some understanding of what contact looks like in the meantime, so that both of you aren’t inventing the rules every single day.
Should I text them?
Ask yourself what the text is for. There’s a difference between letting someone know where you stand and checking whether they’ve changed their mind yet. The second one is the one that costs you, and most of us can feel which one we’re writing if we stop long enough to look.
Does asking for space mean they’ve already decided?
Sometimes. Not usually. The thing I’ve watched most often across a lot of years is a person who still wants the relationship and genuinely does not know whether they can do what it would take right now. That’s a different problem from not loving you, and it needs a different response from you.
Can you take space while you’re still living in the same house?
Yes. We did. It’s harder in some ways and easier in others, and it looks like real distance in the daily routine rather than one person moving out. Plenty of people assume space has to mean separate addresses, and it doesn’t.
What am I supposed to do with myself while I wait?
This is the question almost nobody asks and the only one that’s actually yours to answer. Waiting with no plan turns into checking their location at midnight. Having something to do each day is what keeps you from spending the whole stretch trying to manage a decision that isn’t yours.
If that’s where you are, this is the gap we built the Love in Limbo 30-Day Roadmap for. One day at a time, so you can stay steady and come back to yourself. Tom and I are on live calls with you every Monday night for the whole month, and you can start any day you’re ready.
And if you honestly can’t tell yet whether this is a rough patch or something more, start with the Better Love Quiz. Twenty-two questions, about five minutes, free and private. Your partner doesn’t take part and is never contacted.
