Why Needing Space in a Relationship Is Not Rejection, and What Real Intimacy Asks of You

There is a moment about nineteen minutes into this episode that I have not stopped thinking about.

Simone Milasas told me about a partner who came in from three hours of surfing and asked her if she was angry at him. She said no. Why would I be angry, you love surfing.

He only asked because the woman he dated before her used to yell at him every single time. That story is the reason I now think needing space in a relationship is not rejection, and it took me the whole conversation to get there.

Listen or watch

The full conversation runs forty four minutes. Pick whichever platform you actually use.

You can also listen on Apple Podcasts or watch the episode on Facebook.

Why this one got under my skin

I am a recovering people pleaser. I have spent a lot of years quietly assuming that if I take something for myself, somebody else has to pay for it.

Rest costs someone. Quiet costs someone. Wanting an hour alone costs someone.

So when Simone said that when she needs an hour to herself it is not against her partner, it is for her, I actually stopped. Not against him. For her. I am still sitting with that one.

Who is Simone Milasas

Simone Milasas is an author and a relationship facilitator based in Australia. She has spent years in rooms full of people asking her how to fix their relationships.

Her answer is almost never the one they showed up for. She co-wrote Relationship. Are You Sure You Want One? with her partner Brendon Watt, and she also wrote Joy of Business and Getting Out of Debt Joyfully.

She is not a therapist and she does not present herself as one. What she brings is decades of lived experience and a very direct way of asking questions most of us avoid.

Start with her podcast, The Choice, Change & Action Podcast. It is weekly, and it covers consciousness, business, money, relationships and bodies.

Simone Milasas

Find Simone Milasas at:

• Podcast: The Choice, Change & Action Podcast
• Website: simonemilasas.com
• Instagram: @simonemilasas
• Facebook: Simone Milasas on Facebook
• YouTube: Simone Milasas on YouTube
• TikTok: Simone Milasas on TikTok

Needing space in a relationship is not the beginning of the end

Here is the pattern a lot of us run. Your partner goes quiet. They want a night to themselves. Your brain has already written the breakup speech before they are out of the driveway.

Simone thinks that reflex is the problem, not the space.

When you give someone that space and you don’t have this needy energy, because let’s face it, most people like to be needed, but they don’t like needy. And so you just leave that space, and however long that is, and let them come to you.

Simone Milasas, at 21:04

There is research that lines up with this. The Gottman Institute has found that couples who last respond to each other’s small everyday attempts at connection far more often than couples who split, and their published figures put that gap at roughly 86 percent versus 33 percent.

Worth saying plainly: that research is about how you respond when someone reaches for you. It is not a study on giving space. I am putting them side by side because they point at the same thing, which is that the small daily moments carry more weight than the big blowups.

Relationships do not fail from bad communication

This was the line that reframed the whole episode for me. Simone does not think couples break down because they cannot talk to each other.

She thinks they break down because of what nobody said out loud in the first place.

It’s not the dishes, it’s the expectations. Nobody ends a relationship over dishes.

Simone Milasas

Her framing is that a need is a demand you have not admitted to. An expectation is a rule your partner never agreed to. A projection is a story about them you wrote by yourself.

If that lands anywhere near home, the conversation I had with Dr. Margaret Cochran about trusting your gut covers a related version of the same problem.

What a creationship is

Simone does not love the word relationship. She points out that the root of it is relation, which is about the distance between two things.

So she uses creationship instead. Two people asking what they can build together that neither of them could build alone.

This is not a fringe idea dressed up in a new word. Psychologists have studied something close to it for decades under the name of the self-expansion model, which holds that people are drawn to partners who expand what they are capable of.

The practical version is one question. Have we done what we came together to do, and is there more to build, or are we finished?

How to ask for space in a relationship without it becoming a fight

Simone teaches five elements of intimacy: trust, honor, allowance, vulnerability and gratitude. To be accurate about where it comes from, this framework originates within Access Consciousness, the organization she works with. She teaches and facilitates it rather than having created it.

The part that actually matters is the order. You give all five to yourself first, then you have something to hand anybody else.

Her suggestion for making it stick is almost embarrassingly small. Put the five words on a sticky note on your bathroom mirror and ask yourself each morning which one you are missing.

If asking for anything at all is the hard part for you, that is its own separate knot. I wrote about it in breaking the people pleasing cycle.

Key takeaways

• Space is not a warning sign. Reading it as one is usually about your history, not your partner’s behavior.
• The thing that quietly kills a relationship is the expectation nobody said out loud.
• You cannot give trust, honor, allowance, vulnerability or gratitude to a partner until you can give them to yourself.
• Money is a conversation to schedule, not one to have during a fight.
• Stop judging yourself, and start choosing what you actually want to choose.

Episode timestamps

• 00:00 Intro
• 02:04 Dating fatigue and why the apps stopped working
• 07:26 It is not communication, it is needs and expectations
• 08:25 If you want to train something, get a puppy
• 10:03 Creationship instead of relationship
• 11:20 The myth of the one
• 12:38 What the word relationship actually means
• 16:00 Separate bathrooms and separate bedrooms, by choice
• 17:34 Honoring a partner without people pleasing
• 19:11 The surfing story
• 20:22 The financial 101 date
• 21:33 Why space strengthens intimacy, and the man cave
• 26:38 How to start the hard conversation
• 28:30 The post-it note practice
• 30:50 Checking in without scaring your partner
• 33:08 For everyone who is single right now
• 37:39 The unicorn problem
• 39:01 This or That
• 41:27 The one thing Simone wants you to take away
• 42:11 My takeaways

People also ask

Is space in a relationship good?

Generally, yes. Time apart lets each person keep their own interests and identity, which is what makes them interesting to come back to. It becomes a problem only when the space is being used to avoid a conversation rather than to recharge.

What does intimacy mean in a relationship?

Most people hear the word and think about sex. Simone’s definition is wider. Intimacy is the ongoing practice of trust, honor, allowance, vulnerability and gratitude, and it shows up in how you treat someone on an ordinary Tuesday.

What is true intimacy in a relationship?

It starts with how you treat yourself. If you do not trust your own choices or allow yourself room to be wrong, you will struggle to extend either one to a partner. Simone’s argument is that intimacy is built inward first and then offered outward.

Do couples need space?

Most do, in different amounts. The mismatch is usually the issue, not the need itself. Two people who want different amounts of alone time can work, as long as neither reads the other’s preference as a verdict on the relationship.

Before you go

The thing I keep coming back to is not the framework. It is the surfing story.

A man asked a reasonable question because someone before her had trained him to expect a punishment. She did not punish him. That is the whole lesson.

Go find Simone. Start with The Choice, Change & Action Podcast, and all of her other links are up above.

If you are new to me, start here. It is the shortest route into everything else on this site.

And if you want something to hold onto, my digital products are in my store. Code VIBE25 is already applied. They are digital, so you get them on your phone, your tablet or your laptop the second you buy.

If this episode hit, leave a review. It genuinely helps people find the show. And come follow me at @TheVibeWithKy wherever you spend your time.

One last thing. I am not a doctor and I am not a licensed mental health professional. I am a guy who talks honestly about this stuff. Nothing here replaces working with someone who is qualified.

Much love. Good vibes. – Ky