Do Couples Need Time Apart?

One of the biggest questions couples face is whether time apart is good for the relationship. Let’s face it, when you are in a relationship, more often than not they’re your best friend and you want to spend most of your time with them. Admittedly, as a couple, we are terrible with it and it’s rare outside of working hours, that we are apart. If that is not the case then it might be best to start reviewing your relationship. We don’t mean to be harsh but if you’re not wanting to spend a lot of time with them then something might be amiss.

With this in mind, it’s not healthy to be with each other all the time either. At the time of writing this, Amy is on a train to Harrogate and later in the evening Liam will be going up to Inverness for a few days. We, like many other couples, hate having time apart and the thought of it is horrible. We do need to have our own space sometimes. It’s sad, we know! At the start of our relationship we were long-distance so we were accustomed to spending as much time together as humanely possible when we could. Now that we live together though, we think that it is important to have some time apart.

It’s important to have time apart

Whether you go out for a night with your friends, go on a solo trip or visit some friends or family, it is really important to have this time apart. Not only does it help to minimise bickers but it also gives you time to miss each other as well. If you do everything together all the time then you will start to run out of things to talk about and will find that you’ll bicker more frequently too.

We’re not saying spend loads of time apart because why on earth would you want to do that? What we are saying is that once every couple of months, have some time away from each other. If you don’t have any set plans use this time to work on yourselves instead. In order to be able to love someone else, you need to be able to love yourself. We know that this is a huge cliché but it really is true.

Our Experience

At one point, we spent nearly a year apart and we found that it made our relationship a lot stronger. We’re not saying to go to this extreme though! This was something that was out of our control due to Liam’s job at the time. Liam was working away so Amy went travelling. When we found our way back to each other it was like everything was back together again. Both of us felt like an extra arm had been put back into its place!

Give yourself time to work on improving yourself as a person. Work on hobbies and activities that you love and have a bit of self-care time. We also would recommend each of you taking a solo trip once a year to help with this too! It’s important to have time apart and solo trips help with this. You will have more quality time on your own and makes your relationship stronger! So, do couples need time apart? We think that they do in order to help themselves grow and love each other better. We hope that this advice and knowing that other couples do this too will help. It will enable you to grow as individuals and then grow together to love each other the best you can.

Love, Amy & Liam x

PS. If you do this already to help improve your relationship then let us know how often you have time apart. We love to know what works for other couples too!