Just because you don’t fight, it doesn’t mean your relationship is perfect. At the same time, if fights and arguments are your daily bread, it’s not the end of the world.
What I mean is: no matter what, there is always room for improvement in relationships, and the best thing about it is that this can be a really fun process.
But how to do this?
Sometimes it can get really hard to know what went wrong, and even harder to know what to do. Where do all the sadness, anger and fear come from? Why am I not happy in my relationship? Is it me, is it my partner, who is to blame?
Or maybe we know what we would like to change, but we don’t know where to start. Maybe we need more affection but we don’t know how to ask for it, or perhaps we just want more time for self care but we fear that we won’t have enough time left to dedicate to our lover.
When we share an intimate relationship with someone, finding time to look for answers can be challenging. We can get so deeply caught in endless worries and automatized routines and “being a good partner” that we start becoming lost, blind to solutions (“What’s missing, how did it end up like this?”), we don’t know where to go anymore, what to do, we can’t even think, we love them but we hate them — wait maybe we want to be single again (oh it would be so nice to be single again…) but who am I without him and besides leaving someone sounds like a lot of work and all of that makes sense but I don’t have the time to think about it and I can’t allow myself to even consider it but I’m suffocating it’s all unclear I just want to…
Stop. Sometimes, we just need a little bit of time for ourselves. And that’s OK.
Around the time when my relationship with Michal hit the 3 year mark, I knew I needed to spend time on my own. How did I know this? Well, I admit the main reason was a mix between confusion and intuition.
It all began when I started to feel attracted to other people. This desire made me feel both curious and guilty; how could I “do” this — and worse, hide it — to the person I loved the most? This guilt led to frustration and later on to a strong feeling of powerlessness; it didn’t take long before my deeply rooted inferiority complex started to resurface.
I started victimizing myself and I secretly blamed Michal for my challenging emotions — even if at a rational level I disliked the very concept of blaming. Whenever I was faced with the responsibility to take charge of my own life, I would explode in anger and then melt in sadness, and repeat and repeat and repeat again.
Although my affection for him never waned, my sexual drive was decreasing everyday. When we were together I wanted to be alone, however when he was away I couldn’t wait to hug him and tell him how much I loved him.
So you see what I mean when I say I was confused; the only thing I knew was that I wanted time to figure it all out, and for that I had to be on my own.
Taking some time off sounded great, but I wanted something more. Therefore I decided to combine this opportunity with traveling, quitting my job, and leaving the city where I had been living for over 2 years. Yep, that’s how much I needed change.
I was really scared of telling Michal that I wanted to take a break. I was familiar with the feeling of being rejected, but I had never “left” anyone before. Of course, I wasn’t really “leaving him”, but still I was afraid of hurting him, afraid of missing him, afraid of ruining everything and then regretting it. But I did it, and the fear didn’t last long; right after I communicated my intentions, I felt a huge relief.
We didn’t set a deadline; we didn’t even decide if we would ever see each other again. We agreed that we would like to feel free to see other people during this time apart (and for that matter, to do whatever else would suit our desires). We left it completely open, and today I am am really grateful for this decision.
At first, being on my own felt incredibly challenging. I genuinely thought my heart was going to implode from pain when I kissed Michal goodbye at the airport, and I relived the same feeling over and over again in the next few days every time I realized he wasn’t there anymore. I felt terribly lonely; I felt so lonely that I hated every happy couple I would see on the street, and I wondered why in the world I had made this decision.
However, the more I explored, the more I enjoyed being on my own, and the more I could see how precious this time was for me and how much I could learn from it.
I connected with different people and I explored different places, flavurs, languages and emotions. I went on a 10 day silent meditation retreat, and after that I spent a month in Thailand. I journaled a lot, and I made exciting plans for the future. I danced, I talked and I walked. I made last minute decisions, I fell in love and I explored different activities and routines. However, the most important thing I did for myself was to take time to sit with my emotions, alone and focused, relearning who I am when I am on my own.
When I saw Michal again, I immediately re-fell in love with him. But there was something different this time… there was fear. Now that I had found how strong I could be when I was on my own, I was afraid to lose this and go back to being my old confused self.
However, I soon realized that this fear was unfounded. After spending some time with Michal, I quickly learned that he wasn’t the reason why I didn’t feel this strength before; it all depended on me. Spending time on my own had showed me how to access this newly found feeling of independence, and being with Michal wasn’t going to take it away from me — I simply needed to adapt this skill to these new and exciting circumstances.
By being more aware of myself, I also started becoming more aware of my reactions to Michal’s behaviors. Nowadays — unlike before — when I feel triggered by something Michal says or does, it’s much easier to understand that it is not him who is making me angry or sad: those emotions are already in me, and he is only giving me a chance to become aware of them.
We have been rebuilding our relationship since we met again, and I know for sure this is the best relationship I have ever had in my life. Spending time away gave us both the chance to see our problems from a new perspective, and now we see each challenging moment as an opportunity to get closer to each other.
We both needed this time to think about our individual goals and plans, and it feels amazing to share them and see how compatible they are. Before I thought that being in love was enough, but now I know how important it is to me that my partner and I have common objectives and compatible dreams, and that we can work together to achieve them.
For a long time I thought that “taking a break” was as a sign that something was wrong, or that something needed fixing. However, after this experience, I see it as a gift to offer ourselves whenever the time feels right, and I definitely want to do it again. There is an immense potential in spending time on our own: we can get in touch with our needs more easily, experience new points of view and refresh our connection with ourselves. I see it as a beautiful supplement to the time we spend together — it gives us a chance to stay in touch with our individuality so that we can let it shine stronger in our relationship.
Just like so many other decisions we make in our relationships, taking a break can either have a positive of a harmful impact: it all depends on how we do it.
This is why I think it is really important to take some things into account when deciding to spend time apart from our lovers. I created a list of ideas — some of them I have implemented, some of them I wish I had — that I definitely want to try in the future, whenever my partner and I decide to spend some time separately.
1. See self time as a fun tool instead of a way to fix something that is broken.
Being on my own is a gift that I choose to offer to myself. It doesn’t mean that I don’t love my partner anymore, or even that we want to change our relationship: it just means that we are two humans that want to explore different alternatives and bring variety to our lives.
2. Make it intentional.
What makes us want to take a break? What is it that we want to gain from it? What can be challenging about it? I don’t want this time off to ever be based on charged emotions — I know that if I choose to go away because i’m angry or because I want to hurt my partner, it is likely that those emotions will still be there when we get together again.
3. Be completely open and honest.
Establish and agree on rules (even if that means that there are no rules). This way each of us takes responsibility for their own experience and emotions, and there are no unmet expectations or generation of unnecessary doubt. I also want to be completely honest and open about the reasons behind my need for a break (for example: if what I need is his attention, I won’t go away and expect him to crawl back to me; in that case, I would choose to ask him for this attention instead).
4. Get in tune with my needs.
This can be done both before making this decision and during the break itself. What needs am I having trouble fulfilling while being in the presence of this person, and what could I gain from spending some time on my own? What is it that I want from this relationship in general? What is it that I want from life?
5. Set some goals for myself and plan some things in advance.
After getting in touch with what I need, the next step is to think of ways to achieve it. What would I like to do when I am on my own? What cool things are there for me to explore? Do I feel like spending this time alone or do I want to connect with other people? Do I want to be in Nature? Are there any projects I want to be developing?
6. Play around with format.
Breaks don’t always have to look the same. I want to experiment with different duration — 1 week, 1 month, 1 afternoon, or even 5 months; I want to try different arrangements: do we stay in touch during the break? If so, do we do it through email, through letters, or through Facebook? We can agree to meet again in a nice and exotic place, or we can leave it to fate if we will ever see each other again.
7. Take short breaks frequently.
Being apart for this long made me reevaluate the importance of taking time for myself. I believe that lack of self time is often the root of much of my stress. Therefore, I want to make a conscious effort to take time away from my partner regularly by spending a weekend on my own, sleeping alone for a night or going out with my friends without Michal.
8. Combine it with traveling or other fun changes.
Going somewhere new, quitting an old habit or starting an exciting challenge can make it easier to fully experience the change. Besides, it can definitely make it more fun and create extra opportunities for growth!
9. Plan free time to just be with myself.
Time with no tasks, no goals, no expectations, and no plans. Time to just be.
10. Don’t judge my progress and accept impermanence and uncertainty.
It’s OK if I don’t experience any “big revelations”. It’s OK if there are no epiphanies or mind blowing conclusions. It’s OK if Michal hooked up with someone else and I didn’t. It’s OK if we don’t get together anymore.
