N. John Shore Jr.

Editor's note: "A Shore Thing" is a new advice column. Readers' questions are welcomed; see note below.

Question: I thought I had a great relationship with B., my live-in girlfriend of five years. I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with her. But last night she told me that she wants me to move out, because she feels smothered and trapped by me, and needs space. What exactly does it mean when a woman says, “I need space”? And what do I do now?

Answer: You go away. What a woman who says she needs more space and wants you to go away means is that she needs more space and wants you to go away.

I’m comfortable guessing that you made the same mistake in your relationship that most guys in relationships are extremely prone to making: You sweat her too much. You tried to make all of her business YOUR business.

You pressed her to let you know her every thought, feeling, inclination, opinion, desire, mood, motivation. You tried, in essence, to merge your two lives — your two consciousnesses, really — into one.

And it makes utter sense that you would do that. You do, after all, love her — and so want her to feel, at all times, happy and safe. So — and probably without even realizing you were doing it — you made making sure that she was happy and safe your constant, daily concern.

Right up until she told you that you were sucking all the space out of her life.

“I love you” is so precipitously close to, “Tell me everything you’re thinking and doing all the time.” But while one is the stuff of romance, the other is the stuff of getting arrested for being a stalker.

Bottom line: B., just like everyone else, desires to be loved by someone SHE can love. And she’s not likely to romantically love any man who's more about HER than he is about himself. Being in a relationship with someone who, instead of having a life, wants to make YOU their life, is less like being in an exciting and rewarding relationship than it is like adapting an oversized child.

You want B. to love AND respect you. In fact, she can’t truly love you if she doesn’t respect you. And the only way that she, or any other woman, will ever respect you is if they understand that in some real and enduring sense you don't need them. Want them? Yes. Choose them? Yes. But NEED them? No. For anyone who's worth having, needy is the ultimate in anti-aphrodisiacs.

Chin up, my friend! Take your hit, suffer for a while, and learn the hard truth informing the adage that we've all heard so often it's much too easy to dismiss: The only person in this world who can make you happy is you.

Bottom line: You don't need B. And until you know that, neither she, nor any other woman you might ever love, can ever really be yours anyway.

Email your questions to John@NJohnShoreJr.com. All questions are published anonymously and may be edited for brevity or clarity. Mr. Shore also writes, exclusively for Citizen-Times.com, “Ashes to Asheville,” an ongoing, real-time serial novel (and podcast) set in Asheville. A new installment of “Ashes” is published online every Thursday morning.

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