You Asked for Space and Now He Is Respecting It Far Too Well

“I need a little space” sounds wonderfully reasonable when you are the one saying it. And really, who could argue? Things have become too intense. He has been texting too much, calling too often, wanting answers you do not quite have, and somewhere in the middle of all this togetherness you would rather like to hear yourself think.

So you ask for some breathing room, Sir agrees, and for a while this feels like an marvelous idea. The sudden quiet is so complete that you could almost have checked yourself into one of those beautiful silent retreats where everything is pale linen, fragrant candles, herbal tea and exquisite calm.

Nobody is asking what you are thinking. Nobody wants to discuss where the relationship is going. Your phone has stopped demanding attention, and you remember that you once had entire afternoons without explaining your feelings to anybody.

It is heavenly, right up until you notice that everyone at the retreat has taken the silence rather too seriously.

The Quiet Was Lovely at First

For a while, the peace is exactly what you wanted. You get on with your life, enjoy having a little room around yourself and feel rather pleased that Sir has managed to understand “space” without requiring six further conversations about what it means.

Then the quiet begins to linger.

Nothing alarming. It simply becomes noticeable that the man who was previously capable of producing three messages before breakfast has developed an astonishing respect for silence.

And somewhere around here, a very small question wanders in: how much space did you actually mean?

Nobody wanted endless messages or missed calls followed by a paragraph beginning, We need to talk. But surely a man who cared deeply might find complete silence just a little difficult, right?

A tiny message would hardly ruin the retreat. Something restrained and tasteful. Maybe Thinking of you.

Perfect.

Enough to respect your space while making it clear that respecting your space is costing him dearly.

We do have standards.

Sir Is Disturbingly Good at This

By now, the silence has started to feel a little too comfortable with itself.

What you had not quite pictured was Sir carrying on with his own life inside all this lovely spaciousness. Perhaps he is out somewhere. Perhaps he is having dinner. Perhaps—and this seems unnecessarily confident—he is having quite a pleasant time.

That was not really part of the picture.

In your version, you were enjoying the peace while he remained somewhere nearby, nobly honoring your wishes and finding the whole thing rather difficult.

You had simply assumed he would remain just outside it looking concerned.

Instead, he appears to be managing rather well.

From a little farther away, the situation is becoming wonderfully absurd. You asked for breathing room and discovered that what you had pictured was not exactly distance.

It was distance with yearning.

You wanted him out of the room.

Madam Would Like One Small Disturbance

At some point, the silent retreat begins to feel almost too successful.

Maybe Sir really is doing exactly what you asked. Maybe he misses you terribly and is exercising magnificent self-control. Or maybe he has gone somewhere lovely, ordered pizza and failed to understand that this period of reflection was supposed to contain considerably more longing from him and perhaps a little suffering too?

Excuse me?

Well, you did want space, of course. You simply had not pictured him settling into it quite so comfortably.

Then, eventually, his name lights up your phone, and the effect is embarrassingly immediate. Ah. So he did miss you. He has been thinking about you after all, rather than strolling cheerfully through his days with no particular awareness that anything important was happening.

For one delicious moment, this is extremely satisfying.

Because really, that was the part you wanted to know. You did not necessarily want the silence to end. You just wanted proof that Sir was finding it rather harder than you were.

And then you open the message.

A few lines in, there are things he would like to discuss, several of them at some length, and somewhere in the middle of all this renewed attention you remember exactly why you asked for breathing room in the first place.

Which is the rather funny part.

You really did want the space.

You had simply imagined enjoying the space while Sir spent the whole time missing you rather beautifully.