Learning to Take Up Space

A client arrived at something recently. He was describing two completely different relationships in his life and found the same sign of progress in each: "I think I'm just giving myself more share of the space."

I want to walk you through how he got there, because the path matters as much as the phrase.

Two Relationships, One Pattern

Marcus (not his real name, details changed) came to session that day carrying two situations that felt, to him, unrelated. One was his adult daughter, Nadia, whose life had been in a long stretch of chaos: accidents, calls that came in at midnight, police involvement. The other was his wife, Renee, whose issue was less physically dangerous, but was a threat to their connection: she wouldn't budge her exercise schedule, even when he needed her help to support their daughter.

"It's just that exercise regimen," he told me, "and her inability to be flexible with it." He was careful to say they weren't fighting, but it was in the air: the low hum of him giving and her, in his mind, not quite giving back.

Merging came into my mind. This is a word I use to describe what's often called codependence: what happens when we lose the line between our own experience and someone else's, when their crisis becomes our crisis, their comfort our job, their exercise regimen more urgent than our own need to be heard. Marcus had spent years merged with his daughter. He'd run toward her every emergency, "get out of my way, I'm gonna go tackle this," and only later noticed nobody was standing beside him. It had cost him. He had stretches of depression, physical health problems, and a version of himself he didn't recognize.

So when he brought up the exercise issue with Renee, something in me took notice. It sounded so much smaller than the situation with his daughter, but I was starting to suspect it wasn't a different problem at all.

The Common Denominator

"If we look at how you're changing the relationship with Nadia," I said, "and how you're changing the relationship with Renee, the common denominator is you getting to take up more space."

I didn't expect that sentence to land the way it did. He got quiet for a second, and then: "Yeah, that's it. It's a transformation of our relationship."

"Yes," I told him, "and it's a transformation of your relationship with yourself. Instead of letting what anybody else needs call the shots, you're including yourself now in the priorities."

He wasn't sure it was allowed. He brought up his brother and sister-in-law, deep in a self-help program that had them chasing their own happiness so hard they'd stopped noticing each other. They'd acquired a three-month-old puppy on a whim and started declining family activities in favor of their separate interests. He was worried that taking up space was a slippery slope to becoming people who only think of themselves.

It's a fair worry, and one I hear often enough that I want to name it directly: taking up space is not the same as taking over the space. What made the difference for Marcus wasn't that he stopped loving his daughter. It's that he stopped merging with her. When Nadia called him at midnight from a foreign country because her boyfriend had broken the lock, he told her, gently, that there was nothing he could do, that it was between her and him. She hung up on him. He went back to sleep. "It feels good," he told me, with something close to delight in his voice.

Neither Merging nor Cutting Off

A few days later, when she sent him a photo of the damage, he texted her plainly: This isn't okay. It's going to cost real money. You're a guest in my home and I'm not charging you for it, but if this happens again you'll need to move out. She wrote back the next morning: I'm sorry. I'll pay for it. Deduct it from my account.

"So, Marcus," I said, "what we call that, psychologically and also with your energy, is that you're not merging with her."

"I'm not merging with her," he repeated, testing the words.

"But neither are you cutting off," I said. He was still helping her get her medication that same week. He was still being her father. He was just no longer required to feel every one of her emergencies as his own.

Abandonment v. Warm Witnessing

This is the piece I most want to convey, because it's the most confusing: stepping out of a merged relationship is not the same as withdrawing from it. You can still show up, still care, and still help. You are there when it's reasonable to be there. What changes is whether someone else's crisis automatically overrides your own need for sleep, for boundaries, for a square meal.

This is also where the fear of abandonment tends to show up, and it's worth naming directly, because it's usually the very thing that keeps people merged in the first place. If someone has only ever known a version of you that dissolves into their crisis the moment it happens, a version of you that stays separate can look, to them, like disappearing. And the fear runs both ways: the person changing the pattern can be just as afraid of losing the relationship, especially if merging was the only way they knew how to stay connected. I said something close to this to Marcus directly: when a person has merging as the relationship model, and someone stops merging with them, they can feel abandoned. "But when you're centered and present," I said, "when you can say, 'Don't worry, I'm still here,' the other person will understand that over time. You go from a fixer into a warm witness." He sat with that for a second. "Yeah," he said. "I think she's beginning to see that, actually."

Monitoring Your Energy

The tool I gave Marcus for telling the difference between merging and a healthy relationship is: monitor your energy. Everybody has a right to an equitable relationship. That's the underlying principle. And the way you check whether that principle is actually being honored, day to day, is not by keeping a ledger of who did what. It's simpler and more reliable than that. You watch what happens to your energy. If it's lapsing, if you're feeling drained or a little despondent after time with someone, that's information. It may mean the relationship isn't quite 50/50.

Marcus tried this with Renee. Instead of stewing about the exercise regimen or waiting for a bigger blowup, he practiced saying, "Honey, that's not okay with me today. I don't want to cancel my plans. Would you be willing to be flexible?" He told me it was starting to occur to him naturally, without rehearsal, because the conviction underneath it was already there. He'd given himself the space first, and the words came after.

Three Traditions, One Practice

There's a reason this connects to something bigger than any one relationship. Late in our session, Marcus mentioned that his brother's self-help program keeps circling the idea that all you really have is your health and your happiness, so you should focus on that. I told him I thought the program was reaching for something real, even without quite the right language for it: when you focus on yourself in a grounded way, it's calming, and beneficial for all. What I think they're missing, and what I hope Marcus is finding, is that self-focus isn't a replacement for considering other people. It's what makes considering them sustainable.

Marcus studies Buddhism, and we found an overlap among the Buddhist practice of centering, the "Health and Happiness" self-help program, and reducing codependence. By including himself and monitoring his own energy, Marcus was developing his center: a place inside him that can hold his own wishes, his own anger, his own tiredness, without either being ruled by them or having to shove them away to make room for someone else's. When he let himself have that, without pushing it down, something in his voice changed. I could hear it.

I asked him what the overlap felt like. He didn't reach for a concept. "It just feels grounded," he said. "I feel more at peace." Three different languages, three different traditions, and underneath all of them, the same goal (or practice) of centering. He didn't have guilt, or the merged person's old refrain of, "You're not doing enough. They'll suffer because of your inadequacy." There was something quieter. "I am allowed to take care of myself, and I can still take care of my daughter."

A Question to Sit With

If you want to try this yourself this week, here's a question to consider: think of one relationship where your energy tends to lapse. Notice where your energy goes. Then ask yourself not whether you should love that person less, but whether there's a small, specific way you could take up a little more space there, without cutting them off. What would it sound like if you said it out loud?