She Asked For Space — Here’s What It Really Means

Is your wife asking for space? Do you feel like the harder you try, the more she pulls away? This isn’t just about physical distance; it’s a critical signal you can’t afford to misinterpret if you want to save your marriage.

So let’s start with she’s asked for space, what do you do?

? So when you diagnose this and this is what most men do they diagnose they diagnose I need space as it’s a distance issue. If you miss if if you miss the landscape that’s going on here completely, then you’re going to go very, very wrong. So what she actually needs is she doesn’t need space, she needs emotional relief from the situation. So emotional relief is the felt need that she has. space is simply the mechanism that she thinks that is that that she needs to actually get her that emotional relief. So when she asked for space she’s actually asking for emotional relief and that’s where we have to start. If we don’t understand that we’re going to give her space, space is not what she not what she actually wants, it’s emotional relief. So I understand she didn’t jump to needing space overnight. This was a this was a process, right? And in marriage, there are two elements that are required here. You need to understand at any given point there are two things going on. Who am I and where am I at? So there are different stages your relationship goes through. So obviously if you’re dating there’s that’s a different stage and a different behavior requirement than if you’re engaged and if you’re engaged that’s a different behavior requirement than if you’re married and if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavioral requirement then if you’re married that’s a different behavior requirement then if you’re married that’s then effectively you’re lost and you’re just operating blind here. So for her to get to the point to where she needed space or is asking for space. She’s been through a number of stages. and understand this is a game of snakes and ladders. at any point she can go forward or backwards in this process. So the goal here is for you to really identify where you are in the process. so if if if she’s needing space right now you can rectify the problem and if she’s not at that point you can understand where you’re at to avoid getting to that point which is the ideal stage, right? So stage number one is going to be its boundary setting. So the space ultimately is going to be a boundary violation issue. So just to give you an extreme example so you can sort of see the landscape that we’re operating in as an example if a woman a woman might say to a man you can stay in the bed but don’t touch me. And inevitably he is there, so she kicks him out of the bed and says you can stay in the house, but don’t go in the bedroom. The boundary now becomes the bedroom. So invariably he ignores that, goes into the bedroom and she goes, you can stay in the marriage, but now you can’t stay in the house. Every time she moves the boundary further out creating more physical space because the boundary has been ignored, been violated. Until finally it gets to the point to where she goes, you’re not going to accept any boundaries at all, so the only boundary is total distance. So stage one is the initial boundary setting. So what this looks like from her perspective is she’ll she’ll start to drop hints like when you do this it makes me feel this way. I need you to and this isn’t working for me. She’s letting you know that something is wrong in the relationship and that it requires your attention. Now most men’s response to this face is minimizing the situation or just flat out ly countering her position, moving to a place of defensiveness or very commonly just total obliousness to what’s going on. This is this is where a lot of men are, they just don’t see this at all, they completely miss this stage. Now, the impact that this has on her nervous system when she’s ignored in stage one boundary setting is it creates a mild threat activation for her. So there is still hope present at this point. There’s probably a lot of hope present so she has a high tolerance for the behavior. So again, this goes under the man’s radar and he really doesn’t understand that he’s just stepped into quick sand basically and this is not going to get better unless he does something. So the diagnostic question to ask yourself in this phase is did she raise concerns repeatedly that you treated it as a. She told you to touch her and that was a negotiation. She told you to stay out of the bedroom or not to look at her when she was getting changed. She treated that as negotiable. This is this is stage one boundary setting violation that is going to cause her to escalate into stage two which becomes boundary enforcement. Now, what this looks like for her is you you’ll recognize this through language such as such as I’ve told you this before. If this doesn’t change and I can’t keep doing this. This is this is this is threat language now. I can’t keep doing this means unless you stop something’s going to happen. If this doesn’t change, we’re now moving into much more serious language and typically a man will respond to this face by explaining himself, maybe promising change, he’s starting to realize that the situation is is escalating a little bit. He’s still not taking it seriously at this point. So he’ll promise change Some men will start to emotionally collapse at this point when she starts to withdraw. He can get angry. She’s not giving me intimacy, she’s changed this, she’s done that. And he can go into blame shifting at this point. saying well it’s her fault. She’s done this, she’s the one that’s changed, etc. So the impact that this is having on her nervous system at this stage is the perceived threat is now becoming chronic to her. She’s really starting to see this as a serious threat and really starting to way up her options as to how she’s going to handle this threat. So effectively what is going on in this stage inman’s terms is emotional

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