Dancin in the Light: Space Dance

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.”
― Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

“I need my space.”  Surely one of the most dreaded statements you can hear from a relationship partner. What the heck does that mean? “I need my space?!!!” Your space???  I could not take your “space”  even if I tried! Anyway, aren’t you already occupying your space!!!  Wherever you go, there goes your space, right? Well, what you must really mean to say is you’d like me to move a little or a lot farther away from your “space” which is currently being occupied by your very own self! Ok. Got it! But why do you want me a little or a lot farther away from your space anyway? Do I have some sort of contagious disease or body odor or something? The last time I checked, I wasn’t aware of any. But obviously there’s something wrong and to put it bluntly – I feel rejected; you don’t like me anymore ;-(

 

But why don’t you like me anymore? And how can I fix that? Suddenly, I’ve become completely obsessed with getting you to reassure me that I’m really OK and lovable. Now more than ever I'm determined to stick closer to you (along with a new deodorant and hair-do), then you’ll see just how lovable I really am- so sweet and fragrant! In fact, let me leave work early just so I can rush right over to prove these things to you. Then I can surely convince you I am really worthy to sit in your treasured holy of holies, your personal “space.”

 Not so much? Why are you moving to another room? Another house? Another country? Oh dear.. .it’s not working! In my frantic desperation to prove to you how truly sweet and non-intrusive I can be, I’ll just sit at your feet. ..right here next to you. ..I promise not to bother you!

So on and on it goes.. one party asks for space; the other, rather than honoring the request, freaks out, panics and does just the exact opposite. The most obvious result: the first party is compelled to move still farther away.

So goes the relationship-space dance…In my practice, I was seeing so much of this pattern that I had this epiphany: this whole thing is all about balancing energy. I noticed that all too often, the partner who requests her or his space, truly does feel “smothered” and truly does need “space” to stretch and breathe. It's actually an energy dynamic. And the typical reaction of being asked to give space is to panic and do just the opposite, i.e. move closer towards the other person, thereby cramping her or him even more. I began to notice that once the energy dynamic is understood, this issue is almost immediately resolved. Here’s how that happens:

Partner A asks for his space. Partner B becomes frantic and, rather than giving space, he does just the opposite and moves closer. Partner A once again moves farther away to get her much sought after “space”. And what does Partner B do? He again moves closer- now in alarm, causing Partner A to get more and more agitated. To make matters worse, Partner B is becoming more and more needy- hardly the confident self-sufficient individual to whom Partner A had originally been attracted.

 But what if we change this:  to reverse the pattern, Partner A asks for  space; Partner B, trusting and respecting Partner A, allows Partner A her space. Moreover, Partner B decides that as long as Partner A is exploring her space,  he too will explore his space. Perhaps he rediscovers long lost hobbies, friends, interests etc. Now Partner B revisits what has brought happiness in the past. Two things almost inevitably follow: first, in a fairly short time, Partner B begins to radiate, attracting not only the attention of Partner A, but that of all sorts of interested others who are naturally drawn to Partner B’s radiance and magnetism. Second, Partner A, in experiencing her space without the customary panic-driven smothering by Partner B, within a relatively short period, begins to feel uneasy. Suddenly, there is too much space around her. Unexpectedly, she soon feels slightly out of balance as she’s finding herself unaccustomed to floating in space that far away from her energetic anchor, Partner B.

In most of the cases I have seen, Partner A chooses to move closer back towards Partner B, as the fulfillment of her desire for space has revealed her true desire for balance; paradoxically, she feels uneasy having too much space without her energy anchor. Meanwhile, her energy anchor has become more and more radiant and she finds herself drawn to him as if to a magnetic pole. 

I have no doubt that a basic understanding and awareness of this energy dance would alleviate so much of the tension experienced by so many in relationships as they seek an energetic balance

Judith Rubinger, LMHC
www.AmazingYou.net