Three years ago on the weekend, I wrote a couple of conclusions in my journal after spending the night at M. She was a cute hair stylist who lived (and maybe still does) in a small town upstate. We met on a dating site (I forget which) and hit it off after chatting back and forth for a few days and exchanging pictures.

When I look over this entry now, two main things go through my brain. I cringe about the negative feelings I felt at the time and tried to push through, and I also realize how much I already understood about my own preferences.

M. was a good person. She was sweet, especially to me, patient, and very passionate. She just moved to a nice place in a quiet town with her best friend. Importantly, M. was interested in non-monogamy, and it was good to have an independent adult (age is not always the best way to judge adulthood) who understood I had my other partners back home.

So why am I writing about her in the past tense?

Space. I knew space was important to me, but explaining it to others, especially those who got invested, was always a struggle. I like to take walks alone, to be left alone with my thoughts. I enjoy sharing my personal space with friends and partners (often enough, they are both), but when the intimacy is over, I need to recharge. While others could understand what I said when I said that, it doesn’t mean they understood this need emotionally as much as I do. In fact, if to judge from M. and a couple of more I dated before her that year, their emotional need was exactly the opposite: they wanted to be together more.

I’ve been struggling with the stereotype of a man who wants to have sex and then leave. I often felt guilty (with M. included) that I forced myself to stay with the person longer. Give up the walk and lay there to talk to them, do something else together, whatever, just not leave them in the cold.

But the issue was that it wasn’t the sex specifically. My need for space comes up when I’m drained, regardless. I could spend two hours with a person, intimately or not, and then I need to be alone. It’s so obvious and sharp it’s unmistakable and often translates to mental fatigue that can become physical tiredness. I got to a point several times in the past where I just crashed and fell asleep. It can happen after a long conversation, a hangout with a couple of people, a party, or sex. Thinking it’s the “bang and gone” syndrome and feeling guilty about it made me try to apply the wrong solutions, such as holding off on sex and trying to be intimate for longer, which would drain me even more and make things worse for me.

We talked about this, M. and I. I explained before I took my walks and also after, but I had my needs, and she had hers - and hers weren’t fulfilled because she tried to fulfill mine, and I knew she was trying, and that in turn made me feel even worse because I wanted her to feel good and enjoy herself. In the end, it was too much compromise and too little fun.

I’d like to say I’m doing a better job today. The people in my life, my partners, are usually “alone” folks themselves and understand this need. I’ve been with them long enough that they see (if they ever needed the proof to begin with) that I come back after my walks, and if I’m done for this time, I come back the next time. Feelings get strong, and the pull to each other sometimes offsets this “alone time” clock, but the time always comes even when delayed. When it does, I try take the break right away (this is not always that simple, especially if you’re in the middle of being intimate to one capacity or another, as you can imagine).

I feel like I want to write this out after reflecting on my journal from then as a way to remember this myself, but also for anyone else out there, the “alone” people who think there’s maybe something wrong with them like I did. something “wrong” is a state of mind. It’s what you do about it that matters. So, hopefully, this helps them and me.