Needing space

Updated 18/06/2025

Marcia had just got back from her fourth date. She called me with a dilemma. “I want to take it slow and keep it interesting, but he keeps asking me to spend the day with him and then stay over. It feels like that’s too much like a relationship this early on. But I don’t want him to think I’m not interested. What should I do?”

Damien confessed to me that after sex he often wants to be alone and starts feeling stressed if there is a prolonged time together after. “It doesn’t mean I definitely don’t want to see my date again – I often can’t tell until I’ve had some space. I also don’t like the departure time to be open-ended. I spend my time wondering if I’m outstaying my welcome or that our time together is going to fizzle out rather than leaving wanting more.”

Naseem told me: “I need space on my own early on in a relationship. I need to reflect on each date and work out if anything is making me feel uneasy, whether I’ve found out about the important things like their values, whether I can be myself with them. I don’t want to arrange another date too quickly. Is that wrong?”

Jon feels claustrophobic if his date messages him too much. “I want to save up all the interesting stuff for when we meet. I don’t like the ‘How was your day?’ kind of messages. It takes away all the mystery and excitement of getting to know someone. I don’t want to jump from that stage straight into a relationship. I don’t need to hear from my date every day. But he seems to want to message me all the time. Should I try to adjust to his needs?”

We all have different messaging styles

Sometimes not getting a message for a few days means someone is no longer interested, but for others this is perfectly normal. It’s OK to explain to your date that you are one of those ‘only messaging to arrange the next date’ kind of person. Being able to adjust to each other’s needs is a good test of how likely your relationship is to work. If your date needs a lot of reassurance and feels insecure without constant contact or affirmation, you’ll need to decide if you can handle this. It’s probably not going to change once you’re established in a relationship.

Don’t become dependent on messages from your date

If you’re the one needing lots of contact, perhaps you need to make sure you have friends and family to talk to so you don’t get dependent on one person. And don’t spend all your time waiting to hear from your date. Keep arranging social activities, sport, evening classes, trips and whatever else you can so you have interesting things to talk about next time and so you keep things in perspective.

Talk about your needs

Establishing a norm early on when dating someone can help to avoid misunderstandings. Some good questions on a first or second date are:

How often do you like to message in the early stages of dating?

How often do you contact your friends and family?

How often do you check your messages and social media?

Do you prefer messaging, phone calls or video chat?

What’s the purpose of messaging for you?

Then you can discuss why you like to message a lot or not very much. Is it because you have a job in which you are quite isolated and therefore need human contact during the day? Is it because you are naturally gregarious and like to chat a lot? Or are you a person who enjoys solitude and is quite self-sufficient?  Is this a good thing for you? Do you find typing hard work? You can learn a lot about someone’s personality,values and how they relate to others from a discussion about messaging.

We have contradictory needs but that’s ok

There are numerous paradoxes in our relationship needs, and it can be healthy to name them. On the one hand, we want the freedom to be spontaneous on a Friday night, to spend a day alone walking along the cliffs, not to have to tidy up or eat at regular times, to imagine moving to another country. On the other, we want someone to snuggle up with, someone who understands us, someone to go on holiday with, someone who’ll be there for us after a bad day. These two sets of needs seem to pull in different directions. We want both freedom and commitment, excitement and security, the erotic and the mundane. It’s OK to voice that conflict. (If you want to explore these further, Esther Perel discusses them in her book, Mating in Captivity.)

Are you relationship-ready?

Sometimes needing space means we’re not ready for a relationship. (See here for a blog post to help you decide.) Or you may be emotionally unavailable for other reasons. (Find out more here.) A third possibility is, in the language of attachment theory, that you are a bit avoidant and if your date is expressing anxious attachment behaviours, it could be making you more avoidant. (To learn more about attachment styles and how to become more securely attached, you could read Diane Poole Heller’s book, The power of attachment: How to create deep and lasting intimate relationships.) But it can just be who you are, and you’ll need to make sure you have some independence at all stages of a relationship – it’s healthy. Don’t pretend to be the person you think your date needs. Be yourself.

Keep things interesting

I asked Marcia how she felt about saying she was attracted to her date. We worked on her holding opposing desires in balance. She decided to tell him: “I’m attracted to you but I want to keep it exciting for as long as possible.” I validated her concern that things were moving too fast: in my experience as a dating coach, most people would agree that moving into the relationship stage happens naturally about three months in. We also discussed optimal lengths of dates and the pros and cons of long and short dates. Marcia decided that dates of 1-3 hours were best for her for the first few weeks, and that she didn’t have to move straight into full sexual intimacy. They could just visit each other’s homes during the day and take it slow, rather than staying the night. She decided that she definitely wouldn’t leave her toothbrush there – sometimes these small things can be powerful symbols!

Have boundaries

Damian decided it would help with his worries to agree in advance what time they will part. One way to do this is to arrange another appointment that you have to get to, so you stick to the agreed timings without needing to give a reason for leaving. Boundaries are good ways to make things more meaningful. Needing space after sex is probably something Damian will probably have to compromise on if it develops into a relationship, but he could make it a light-hearted thing at the beginning. Perhaps he could try going out for a walk and then coming back, or take a long shower. For people who find constant socialising exhausting (as many neurodivergent people do, as well as introverts), building in times of silence when you’re together can help and communicating “I’m the kind of person who needs a bit of quiet time every hour or so, it’s nothing personal.”

Reflect on your dates

Reflecting on his values, Naseem decided that they were comfortable with their need for time to reflect and did not want to fight it. Naseem decided to make notes after their dates and plan what they need to find out about their date next time. It’s easy to feel so happy that things are going well that you forget to find out whether they have a criminal record, say, or to ignore the way they don’t laugh at your jokes. A date can go really well but you may still decide after time that there is no point in pursuing things further.

Less is more

Jon’s approach to dating could be healthy. Just because your date has always done things a certain way in the past, it doesn’t mean it’s best for an emerging relationship. Some people become emotionally intimate very quickly, but things often fizzle out because they peaked too early and didn’t have time to get distance from the relationship and reflect. Holding back a little can be good for lots of reasons – as long as you communicate about what and why with your date, so it isn’t misinterpreted. You could think of it as a healthy version of “playing hard to get”. You don’t want to lose the sense of mystery too soon – enjoy it while it lasts!

Start as you mean to go on

Being comfortable telling your date you need an evening alone might be a good habit to get into from the beginning. Schedule solitude into your diary and don’t feel under pressure to justify that. Establish relationship patterns that are sustainable.

I like this poem by John Hegley, which reassures me that we need solitude to re-fuel for our relationships:

Being is believing

I believe in you.

I believe in you

being close to me.

I believe in you being close to me

intimately.

I believe in you being close to me

intimately, regularly.

I believe in you being close to me

intimately, regularly

just not today

because sometimes

I need to be with myself alone

all the better to be with you

more intimately.

© John Hegley 2019. Reproduced by permission from Peace, Love and Potatoes.

Further Reading

Heller, D. P. (2019). The power of attachment: How to create deep and lasting intimate relationships. Sounds True.

Heller’s attachment assessment

Karandashev, V. (2024). The varieties of love as interpersonal attraction. Springer.

Perel, E. (2006). Mating in Captivity. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Swami, V. (2021). Attraction explained: The science of how we form relationships. Routledge.

References

Altman, I., & Taylor, D. A. (1973). Social penetration: The development of interpersonal relationships. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Amar, O., Joel, S., & Kim, J. (2023). The role of attachment style and threat on information-seeking behaviour in new romantic relationships. Western Undergraduate Psychology Journal, 11(1), 61-73.

Chopik, W. J., Weidmann, R., & Oh, J. (2024). Attachment security and how to get it. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 18(1), e12808.

Eastwick, P. W., Finkel, E. J., & Joel, S. (2023). Mate evaluation theory. Psychological Review, 130(1), 211.

Eastwick, P. W., Joel, S., Carswell, K. L., Molden, D. C., Finkel, E. J., & Blozis, S. A. (2023). Predicting romantic interest during early relationship development: A preregistered investigation using machine learning. European Journal of Personality, 37(3), 276-312.

Fox, J. (2015). Models of relationship development. The International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication, 1-9.

Knapp, M. L. (1978). Social intercourse: From greeting to goodbye. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Sharabi, L. L. (2024). The enduring effect of internet dating: Meeting online and the road to marriage. Communication Research, 51(3), 259-284.

Sternberg, R. J. (1986). A triangular theory of love. Psychological review, 93(2), 119.