The Odd Strategy Long-Term Couples Often Use To Make Their Marriages Work
How being apart can bring you two closer together.
Anzeletti, Billion Photos, Yacobchuk | Canva Alone time is one of the healthiest things for a relationship. Spending time apart gives each person time to decompress, to be themselves, and to be secure with their identity outside of the relationship. You want your boyfriend to have some alone time and you should welcome the chance to relax alone yourself. Here are the reasons why it’s so important.
Here is why alone time is an excellent strategy married couples use to stay together:
1. Absence makes the heart grow fonder
It’s a saying for a reason. Make some time to miss each other and you’ll be that much more grateful for the time you spend together.
2. Absence gives each person time to do private things by themselves
Do you want to watch him trim his nose hairs over the kitchen sink? The answer is always no. You need to keep a few mysteries alive or your relationship might fall victim to a fizzled-out drive.
3. Absence can reignite attraction
When you pick up hobbies that you can do solo, you’ll be able to bring home new skills that will wow your partner. Everyone is attracted to a talented individual, so diversify your wheelhouse. Conquering a new recipe, becoming a trivia buff, or learning to sew will boost your self-esteem as well, which will make you more confident (read: attractive) when you interact with your boyfriend. If nothing else, you’ll at least have something to talk about when you guys reunite and catch up. Watching someone talk about a new passion is always attractive.
4. Time apart can restore the magic
Spend time apart so that you can relive some of the mysterious excitement from the early days of your relationship. When he picks you up for a date after not seeing you for a few days, you’ll knock his socks off like you used to. He’ll once again be dazzled by how you get your hair so shiny and completely dumbfounded at the good luck he must have to land a bombshell like you. No matter if you’ve been together for 10 months or 10 years, it feels good knowing that you can still take his breath away. Take some time off so that when you’re back together again, you can instantly turn him on.
5. It helps avoid the silly fights
Being with someone every second is a great way to get irritated quickly. Under ordinary circumstances, you don’t mind the way he forgets to fill up the ice cube trays, but now that he’s done it the last 14 days in a row, it’s wearing on your last nerve. Your annoyance could turn into a passive-aggressive argument and soon snowball into a huge fight that could have been easily avoided. Don’t let unnecessary bickering send you guys off-tilt. Take some time apart to settle your mind before you start getting peevish with each other.
6. Taking time away helps you remember that you’re a person
It might sound dramatic, but when you spend every waking minute with your boyfriend, it can be hard to tell where he stops and you begin. Your identity shouldn’t be completely wrapped up in your relationship. Take some time off from each other so that you can remember who you are without him. If you don’t maintain your independence, you’ll run the risk of falling into co-dependence, which is a relationship killer.
7. We all need time to decompress
Sometimes we forget that we need attention from ourselves. Alone time is a necessity (for some people more than others). There are certain therapeutic behaviors that we all need in order to unwind. For example, you might need to eat a bunch of frosting and have a good cry. No, not the kind of cry that you can have in front of your boyfriend. An all-out, face-scrunching, gasping, snotty, Fox-and-the-Hound cry, where you hold nothing back and feel amazing afterward. As a by-product, this activity makes you look disgusting, so make sure to schedule some time by yourself to take care of this kind of emotional housekeeping.
It’s great that you guys can spend a lot of time together. It will strengthen your bond and help your relationship progress. Just don’t forget that to keep yourselves and your relationship healthy, you need to take little breaks here and there.
Anna Karimo is an International Relationship expert as well as a dating coach, motivational speaker, and prolific author.