My boyfriend wants two days of space?

His asking you for 2 days of space doesn’t seem like an unreasonable request. Two days isn’t 2 weeks or 2 months, and it’s also a finite amount of time. He’s not telling you that he needs a break from the relationship with no end to that break in sight.

You didn’t respect his request, and it’s understandable if he gets upset at you for that. When you saw him at the comedy club, and he got up to leave and said ‘I’m going home. I’ll talk to you later,” and you wrote that [i]naturally[/i] you followed him out — it became clear that your sense of what is natural is only what is natural to you. If you had asked me, I would have told you not to follow him out because he had asked for space, and then didn’t invite you to come with him. What you did was the opposite of what he asked. Instead of giving him space, you invaded it.

Making a relationship work means respecting each other, and if you don’t respect his requests, but instead treat him like he’s asked you to eat dog food on the moon when he asks for 2 days of space, he’s going to eventually feel like he has no say when you don’t agree with him. This is going to create a lot of discord, eventually.

So, in answer to your questions, you’re not [i]crazy[/i] for taking his request for space personally, but it’s not very mature of you not to consider his request reasonable. If you feel like the request is causing you to freak out, then freak out on your own time, but not in front of him. If you’re anxious about why he wants 2 days of space, rather than make demands of him, you could nicely ask him why and if he’s okay, and if there’s anything you can do for him to make things easier.

When the 2 days of space are over, you can ask him, nicely, how he’s doing, and if the 2 days helped him. You can also ask him what was bothering him, and then LISTEN to what he says. Then tell him how it made you feel — not the anger you have, but the fear you have that you were going to miss him, or that there was something wrong with your relationship. If you can take the combat out of the conversation, you’ll make it a lot easier for him to be honest with you, and a lot easier for you to be honest with him.

And remember, just because YOU think that the two of you are supposed to be completely honest with each other, you’re both human beings, and he may have needed the 2 days to work something out so that he could be honest with you. And you weren’t very honest with him when you freaked out by demanding his time and space, rather than admitting that the real reason for your freak out was fear of not being treated the way you want to be treated.

In long term relationships, it’s often a really great tool for each person to have some time apart from the relationship to reflect, regenerate, and appreciate what the relationship is for them. Rather than see the 2 days off as a bad thing, see it as a tool that could possibly strengthen your relationship when practiced every couple of months or so, because if it is a really great relationship you two have, and the one thing he needs sometimes is 2 days off, I’d say that’s a really reasonable request. 🙂

I hope that helps. Let me know how things go.