Anthony from Cape Town writes:<.b>
I’ve been seeing a man in a 1-2-1 relationship for over six months now. I’m totally into him, happiest when I’m with him, and our sex life seems to me to be pretty good. Lately he’s started saying he wants more personal space, that I’m becoming ‘clingy’, and that I text him and call him too much. I don’t feel I’m making too many demands. I don’t really ask him for anything. I’m worried. I want to make this relationship last and don’t know how to go about doing that.

Aunty Emma responds:
This is a tough situation, and one that will require emotional strength on your part. First off, your suggestion that you don’t ask for anything needs questioning. You may not make many explicit demands, but may still be communicating a lot of need to your partner – through, for example, those calls and texts – which is making him feel as if he has an obligation, as if his freedom within the relationship is being eroded. It may be that he feels stifled or claustrophobic. This doesn’t necessarily mean he wants to end the relationship, but it does suggest he wants the style of the relationship to change. You might do well to treat what he says literally: he wants more personal space.

It is natural within a relationship to develop needs, and emotional attachment can be considered a need. After six months, he is a part of your life, as you are a part of his, and if he were no longer there you would experience his absence painfully. It could be very healthy on your part to acknowledge that need.

On the other hand, it might be difficult for your partner to feel that he is needed, this perhaps seeming to diminish the excitement and spontaneity that was there at the start, as well as making him feel that he has lost his independence. As a relationship matures, and as each becomes more closely bound in to the other, it is all to easy to feel that the rest of your life is now in place and there is no longer anything to try for: the romance is done, and now it is time to feel ‘settled’. Your partner’s saying that you are being too clingy may be his way of saying that he doesn’t want that: he wants to keep on inventing his life, rather than submit to an overly predictable future, one in which you, so he feels, have taken his initiative from him.

What should you do? In short, you need to lighten off and help him to find what he says he's looking for. Stop calling and texting him. (It’s easier said than done.) Let him call you. Take the risk. If he doesn’t call… Well, then you will need to ask if you want to maintain a relationship so imbalanced in terms of effort: perhaps it is time to call it a day and you need to admit that. But that isn’t the inevitable outcome. It could be that he will call you and show you he’s ready to make his own effort – and is able to do that now because you’ve stopped overwhelming him.

Try as well to recapture your own sense of independence. Take yourself out on your own or with other friends. Remind yourself there’s plenty of life outside the relationship. Remind yourself as well of all the other things in which you’re interested. Then, when you next meet your partner, you’ll feel fresh again. There will be new things to say. Balance the sense of stability you have within the relationship with the novelty and chaos of the wider world.

And with him, make every effort to keep the relationship from seeming stale. Suggest new activities to try with him, things perhaps neither of you have done before. Surprise him with occasional treats. Try varying the ways you have sex, such that you make each other’s bodies feel new again.

You may want to discuss with your partner where he feels the relationship is going, or it may be that to do so would further compound his sense of claustrophobia and make his attachment to you seem yet more issue-laden.

Above all, do what he says: give him space. Don’t blame him for wanting that. If you help him to find the sense of independence he needs you might find yourself rewarded with a partner who actively shows you he wants you and clearly isn’t just tagging along, as a default position, while you make the effort. That way, the relationship can flourish and not become a millstone for each of you.