Taking Space: How Much Is Too Much

Disagreements happen.

Sometimes they require one or othe other person to take some space.  Processing emotions can take some time.

But where is the line between taking time to process and just giving up?

For me, I need a few hours.  I get that this is a pretty short span.  If someone tries to blow past that and force a conversation before I’m ready or while I’m still angry, often the result is pretty negative.

I prefer to deal with things before I go to bed.  I seriously dislike sleeping with negative emotions, and not resolving tension falls into that category.  It makes my stomach hurt and often I won’t sleep well at all, a sudden burst of acid reflex dominating my night.

Sometimes I have friendships or romantic relationships with people whose “space” need is a different period of time.  I’ve had friendships fail because someone tried to force a conversation when I was angry and my taking space was seen as rejection of the discussion.  I can’t help that, despite their misunderstanding of how to best deal with me.  Often once an explosion has occured as a result of one person not respecting the needs of another person’s processing time, it can be even more difficult to resolve things.

Other times I’ve had people who wanted longer than I am comfortable with and my pressure on them to bring things to a resolution created negativity because they weren’t ready.  Pushing for conversations rarely ends well, regardless of which side one is on.

But how long is too long?

For me it’s about four days.  Once we’ve reached that mark and someone who asked for space hasn’t reached out to resolve things, my assumption is that it doesn’t matter to them.  I don’t matter.  If I did, it would have been important to them to resolve things in a timely manner rather than to let negative thoughts and feelings bounce around inside the brain and amplify.  Timely resolution is particularly important when dealing with overthinkers like me.

If things are left to fester too long, my negative feelings tend to increase incrementally based on the amount of time which had passed.

After a day I will still only need to discuss the issue at hand.  A week may also bring about a conversation about why we didn’t discuss things sooner.  Any longer and any feelings I had of wanting to accept my part in things curdle sweetly into resentment that the other person has no regard for my mental state or my emotions.

Left things to sit for a month with no attempts at contact?  Don’t bother anymore.  I’ll be at:

Asking partners where that mark is for them is an important part of being able to successfully resolve conflict with them.  So if I’m any decent gauge, a week is probably the most someone wants to leave an issue unresolved.

With me, a less than a day is better.

Christmas bunny has been exploring kink since she was legal to do so.  Her serious writing started in college, where she accidently got some of her papers published in educational journals.  She has recently expanded her writing to include her kink journey.  She began writing in the physical realm, but shed some of her inhibitions and began sharing those entries with others.  She now keeps an active blog of her personal growth and her relationship with her Master / Daddy Dominant and writes helpful educational posts on a variety of subjects.