Why You Crave Closeness and Need Space at the Exact Same Time (And What to Do About It)

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You spent all week dreading Saturday.

The dinner thing. Six people. A restaurant you didn’t pick. You’ve been quietly negotiating with yourself about it since Monday: how long you’d have to stay, whether you could drive separately, what you’d wear that wouldn’t be scratchy by hour two.

Then Friday night, your friend texts. Something’s come up. We’ll rebook.

And you feel it. That gorgeous rush of relief. The whole weekend just opened up like a window.

Ninety minutes later you’re on the couch, staring at the ceiling, profoundly bored and a little heartbroken that nothing is happening this weekend.

Same brain. Same day. Ninety minutes apart.

And your partner’s standing in the kitchen going, hang on…. you didn’t want to go. You said you didn’t want to go. I watched you be relieved.

So you say the thing you always say. “I know. I’m sorry. I guess I don’t know what I want.”

But here’s the truth: you do know what you want. You want two opposite things, at the exact same time. And that’s not indecision. That’s two nervous systems – both of them yours, both asking for what they need – trying to drive the same bus.

About this episode

If you’ve ever asked for the quiet weekend and then resented the quiet weekend, said yes to the dinner and then spent all week hoping it’d get cancelled, or begged for a plan and then felt trapped by the plan…. this one’s for you.

It’s not that you don’t know what you want. It’s that you want two opposite things at once. And there’s a real reason for that.

In Episode 20, I break down what’s actually going on underneath: the AuDHD reality of running two operating systems in one body, one that wants sameness and one that wants novelty. And why it hits neurodivergent women especially hard. I walk you through the five specific tug-of-wars that play out all day, every day, and how each one gets misread in a relationship. Then I give you three moves that have genuinely changed how this works in my own life.

What you’ll learn

• Why you can crave closeness and need space in the very same hour – and why that’s not a contradiction once you understand it
• What AuDHD actually means, in plain language, and why the “you can’t be both” myth kept so many women undiagnosed
• The five daily tug-of-wars (routine vs. novelty, hyperfocus vs. can’t-start, wanting people vs. needing everyone gone, craving input vs. being wrecked by it, and the cruel one nobody names)
• Why your needs start looking “unreliable” to a partner – and the heartbreaking thing you do in response
• How female conditioning makes contradictory needs feel not just inconvenient, but unforgivable
• Three moves you can start this week

You’re not indecisive. You’re not flaky. You’re not too complicated to love. You have two nervous systems with genuinely different requirements.

Resources mentioned

• Free workbook, How to Feel Understood in Love: jennadalton.com/lovemap
• Free quiz, Is It Actually Me?: jennadalton.com/quiz
• Instagram, @neurodivergentlovelab: instagram.com/neurodivergentlovelab

Ready to go deeper?

If your partner has been guessing at what you need for years – because you’ve been guessing too – here’s where to start:

• Grab the free workbook, How to Feel Understood in Love: it’s a two-way love map. One side for you, one for them. Map what’s going on underneath, then swap. For this episode, do the section on what you need when you’re depleted versus when you’re understimulated – because those are two different women with two different lists: jennadalton.com/lovemap
• Take the free quiz, Is It Actually Me?: five minutes to figure out where to focus first: jennadalton.com/quiz
• Book a free 15-minute consultation if you’re in Alberta and curious about working together: Work with me

Loved this episode?

Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming, leave a rating wherever you listen, and send this one to the person who’s watched you say yes and then dread it – the one who’s been trying to understand you. Sometimes the words are the whole bridge.

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Episode transcript

You spent all week dreading Saturday.

The dinner thing. Six people. A restaurant you didn’t pick. You’ve been quietly negotiating with yourself about it since Monday, working out how long you’d have to stay, whether you could drive separately, what you’d wear that wouldn’t be scratchy by hour two.

And then Friday night your friend texts. Something’s come up, we’ll rebook.

And you feel it. That gorgeous rush of relief. The whole weekend just opened up like a window.

Ninety minutes later you’re lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, profoundly, existentially bored, and mildly heartbroken that nothing is happening this weekend.

Same brain. Same day. Ninety minutes apart.

And your partner is standing in the kitchen going, hang on, you didn’t want to go. You said you didn’t want to go. You were relieved. I watched you be relieved.

And you can’t explain it. So you say the thing you always say. “I know. I’m sorry. I guess I don’t know what I want.”

But you actually do know what you want. You want two opposite things, simultaneously.

And there’s a reason for that, and once you understand how to work with it — instead of against it — an enormous amount of your life stops looking like chaos and starts looking like a system.

This is the Neurodivergent Love Lab. I’m Jenna Dalton, a psychologist who’s AuDHD. I help ADHD, autistic, and AuDHD women feel truly understood and deeply loved. And this is Episode 20: Why You Crave Closeness and Need Space All At the Same Time.

This one feels personal because I have this brain. And I would have loved to have known the things I’m about to share with you about 20 years ago. Back when I felt flaky and overstimulated and lonely and like I was constantly unsure of what I really wanted.

Today we’re going to name the specific tug-of-wars underneath it all, look at how each one plays out with a partner, and then I’ll give you three things you can do that have genuinely changed how this works in my own relationship.

Two operating systems, both trying to run at the same time

Let’s define this simply, without the clinical jargon.

AuDHD just means being autistic and ADHD at the same time. For a long time the official position was that you couldn’t be both, which was nonsense — why was that ever a thing? It’s like saying you can’t like green and red all at the same time. Thankfully things have changed. And the more research that comes out, the more we realize they co-occur a lot. Like a lot a lot.

Now here’s the plain-language version of what that’s like.

Autism, generally, likes sameness. Predictability. Knowing what’s coming. Deep focus. Doing things properly. Recovery time. Routine. It wants the same restaurant, the same order, the same Tuesday morning with a coffee in that specific mug. Yes. I have a particular mug for coffee. And another for green tea. This is me. I’ve accepted my fate.

ADHD, generally, likes novelty. Stimulation. New. Interesting. Right now. It wants a different restaurant, a spontaneous road trip, and it’s already lost interest in the plan you made on Tuesday afternoon by Wednesday morning.

Put both in one body and you get a person who is genuinely, sincerely, at war with herself. Constantly.

And here’s why this hits women particularly hard.

First, when only one label is on your chart, the other traits get explained away. If somebody’s diagnosed you with ADHD, then your need for routine gets called anxiety or rigidity. If somebody’s diagnosed you with autism, your restlessness gets called poor coping.

Second, you’ve got masking laid over the top, so nobody’s seeing the raw version anyway. And you’ve got a hormonal cycle underneath keeping you on your toes every 28ish days — which we’ll get into properly in a couple of weeks. But needless to say it absolutely impacts you.

Which is exactly why so many AuDHD women get flattened down into “she’s just complicated.” Or “she’s anxious.” Or my personal favourite, “she’s a bit messy.”

You’re not messy. You’re running two systems. Both of them are yours, both of them are real, and neither of them is going anywhere — no matter how many affirmations you recite every morning.

The five tug-of-wars

So let’s dive into the wonderful world of tug-of-wars going on all day every day.

Tug-of-war one. Routine versus novelty.

You need the plan. You genuinely, truly need to know what’s happening. Unstructured time makes you anxious and surprise changes cost you a whole afternoon of masking that you’re fine — like you’re not slowly dying inside.

And then the plan exists, and the plan feels like a cage, and the boredom comes for you.

In a relationship this is the one that makes your partner feel like they cannot possibly win. You asked for the routine. They delivered the routine. Now the routine is the problem. So they stop trying to guess, and that reads to you as them not caring, and off you go feeling like they just don’t get you. Again.

Tug-of-war two. Hyperfocus versus not being able to start.

You can lose six hours to something that interests you. Completely gone. Meals forgotten, phone unanswered, you quite literally forget to pee. You’re entirely absorbed.

And you cannot begin the fifteen-minute task that’s been on your list since March. Of last year.

In a relationship this creates one of the most damaging misreads there is. Your partner says “you never help around here,” and points at the fact that you just spent an entire Saturday reorganizing and colour-coding a pantry that nobody asked you to touch, while the thing they’ve asked you to do three times still isn’t done.

From the outside that looks exactly like a choice. Like you helped with what you wanted to help with. From the inside it isn’t a choice at all. Your brain will run on interest and it will not run on obligation, and that makes doing the things you know you’re supposed to do sooooo much more challenging. Adulting sucks sometimes, right?

Tug-of-war three. Wanting people and not being able to stand people for one more second.

This might be the loneliest one.

You want connection. Really want it. You’re not the stereotype of the person who prefers to be alone. You want the friendship, the dinner, the closeness, the plans.

And then it costs you enormously, and you need days to recover, and you cancel, and then you’re lonely, and then you make plans, and around we go.

In a relationship this is the yes-then-dread cycle. You say yes with total sincerity on Monday, and by Saturday you’re trying to work out how to get out of it without being the villain. Both of those women were honest. The one who said yes meant it. The one who can feel the “no, no, no, no, no” in her body when the moment comes is also there.

Tug-of-war four. Craving input and being wrecked by input.

This one confuses everybody — including you.

You want the loud music in the car. You want the intense flavour, the hot bath, the deep pressure, the thrill. And you cannot cope with the sound of them eating an apple in the next room.

Same person. Same hour. Not inconsistent at all, once you understand it. Sensory seeking and sensory avoiding live comfortably in the same body, and they’re specific. It’s not “I like a lot of stimulation” or “I like calm.” It’s this particular input yes, that particular input absolutely not.

And tug-of-war five, which isn’t in most textbooks and which I think is the cruellest one.

The ADHD part of you creates a mess the autistic part of you cannot live with.

You start six projects. There’s a pile on the dining room table that’s essentially become a permanent art installation. There are four half-drunk mugs of tea. And there’s a part of your brain that needs order to feel calm, standing in the middle of it, sincerely distressed by a mess that you personally made. Silently judging you for being so messy.

In a relationship this becomes a fight about tidiness that isn’t really about tidiness at all. You actually want the dining room table to look like a table again and not be suffocated by a pile of jewelry-making supplies and pictures you really meant to get around to scrapbooking. You just struggle to be the person your own brain wants you to be.

What all of this does to your relationship

Let’s start with the bigger picture. Your needs start looking unreliable.

Because you asked for the quiet weekend and then you were bored. You asked for the plan and then you resented the plan. You said yes to the dinner and then you cancelled. From your partner’s side, over years, a pattern forms: her needs change, so there’s no point trying to meet them.

And that’s devastating, because they’re not wrong about what they observed. They’re just wrong about what it means.

And here’s what you do in response, and it’s the part that breaks my heart. You stop asking.

You stop asking because you can’t guarantee you’ll want the same thing tomorrow, and asking for something you might change your mind about feels like lying. So you keep it all inside, you make no requests at all, and you quietly try to want less and just go with the flow and agree to whatever they want.

And then there’s the female socialization layer — which makes it about four times heavier.

You were already trained that having needs is inconvenient. Be easy. Be low maintenance. Don’t make a fuss. So having needs that contradict each other doesn’t just feel inconvenient. It feels indefensible. Unforgivable, even. Like you’ve been the one thing a good woman must never be — high maintenance and unpredictable at the same time.

So here’s the reframe, and really listen here because this is so very important for you to understand:

You’re not indecisive. You’re not flaky. You’re not too complicated to love.

You have two nervous systems with genuinely different requirements, and they both belong to you, and they will both keep asking for what they need for the rest of your life. The goal was never to make one of them just be quiet and go away. It’s to build a life with room for both, and a relationship with a partner who understands there are two sides of you that both deserve to take up space.

The tool: three moves

Here’s where we get practical and build the strategies to support you in this ever-changing roller coaster ride.

Move one. Stop resolving. Start saying “both.”

The first thing to change is not what you do. It’s what you say.

Right now you probably give a single answer — because you think you’re supposed to have one. So you pick a side, and then twenty minutes later the other side turns up and you look like you changed your mind.

You didn’t change your mind. You reported half of what was coming up for you.

So from now on, say both parts out loud. Right from the start.

“I want to go and I’m already worried about how tired I’ll be. Both of those are true right now.”

“I need us to have a plan, and I know that by Thursday I’ll probably be sick of the plan and want to try something different. That’s not me being difficult, that’s just how I roll.”

“Part of me wants to have people over this weekend and part of me wants to see nobody. Can I tell you which one’s winning on Friday?”

When you name both, two things happen. Your partner stops experiencing you as inconsistent and starts experiencing you as multifaceted — but it makes sense. And you stop feeling like a fraud, because you’re finally telling the truth, which is that there are two of you in there and they don’t agree. And that’s okay.

Ambivalence, said out loud, is honesty. Ambivalence, hidden and then revealed later, looks like a flaky person who can’t follow through. Same feeling, completely different outcome, and the only difference is whether you said it at the start.

Move two. Build the container, put the novelty inside it.

This is the structural fix, and it’s the one that’s changed the most in my own life.

The mistake almost everyone makes is picking a side. Either you go rigid, and schedule everything, and the ADHD part slowly dies of boredom. Or you go loose, and wing it, and the autistic part is in a state of low-grade panic all the time waiting for someone to jump out and surprise them at any moment.

The answer isn’t in the middle. The answer is layers. Fixed container, flexible contents.

Date night is the easiest example. Same night every week, so the autistic part knows it’s coming and can prepare. Completely different activity every time, so the ADHD part gets its novelty. The predictability lives in the when. The novelty lives in the what.

And it works for basically everything. Meals: same shopping day, same rough rhythm, rotating menu. Holidays: same accommodation, same routine on arrival, different things done each day. Chores: same day, same time, but you’re allowed to swap which ones you do or the order you do them in. Even closeness can be part of this — a predictable rhythm and a predictable way of starting, with plenty of room for what actually happens after those initial moments.

Once you and your partner understand this principle, they stop feeling like they can’t win. Because now they know the rule. Lock the frame, keep the inside flexible. It gives them something to actually do, which is what most partners are desperate for. They just want to know how to move from “I just don’t know what you want” to “I get it and I’ve got this.”

Move three. Decide by capacity, not by preference. And build in permission to update.

Here’s the mistake we all make. When Saturday arrives, you check what past-you wanted. Past-you said yes to the dinner. So you go, because you promised, because a good woman honours her commitments, and because backing out means being the flaky one again.

Wrong question.

The right question isn’t “what did I want on Monday?” It’s “what have I got capacity for on Saturday?”

Preference is what you want. Capacity is what you can actually spend. And for us, capacity moves. Constantly. Depending on your week, your sleep, your sensory load, where you are in your cycle, how many hours you’ve masked, whether the taco place you love was closed at lunch and you couldn’t get your usual carnitas with habanero salsa.

So run a capacity check before the thing, not a preference check. What have I got today, on a scale of one to ten? And then decide based on that number. Zero means you’ve got nothing in the tank. Ten means you’re full of juice and good to go.

And here’s the part that makes it possible, which you have to set up in advance, when everything is calm. Agree with your partner that you’re allowed to update — and what number and below means it’s a no-go for you.

Here are the actual words you can use: “I’m going to say yes to things because I genuinely want to do them. And sometimes on the day they’re supposed to happen my capacity won’t match what I wanted when I initially agreed to it. If I tell you the day before instead of the hour before, can we agree that’s me being honest rather than me flaking? I’ll give you as much notice as I can. And I’ll never leave you to explain it on your own.”

Look at what that does. It’s fair to both of you. They get notice, so they’re not stranded. You get permission to be an accurate reporter of your own state instead of a woman white-knuckling through a dinner she can’t energetically afford, being miserable, and then being resented for being miserable.

And the thing that makes this work is the advance notice. Your partner may not be upset that you can’t come. They’re often upset about finding out at the last second. Give the notice, and a good chunk of the conflict evaporates.

The workbook

Now, everything I’ve just given you has one requirement, which is that your partner has to understand there are two systems in you — and both of them are trying to drive the bus. Because if they don’t get it, you’re just a woman who keeps changing her mind.

So that’s what the free workbook is for. It’s called How to Feel Understood in Love, and it’s a two-way love map. Two sides. One for you, one for them. You each map what’s going on underneath for each of you as individuals, and then you swap.

And I’d say for this episode, do the section on what you need when you’re depleted versus what you need when you’re understimulated. Because those are two completely different women with two completely different lists, and your partner has almost certainly been guessing about that for years.

Grab it free at JennaDalton.com/lovemap. That’s JennaDalton.com/lovemap.

The close

Here’s what I want you to walk away with.

You’re not too complicated. You’re not indecisive. You’re not lying when you want two things.

You’ve got a brain that wants safety and adventure, deep focus and constant novelty, people and solitude, loud music and total silence. And you’ve spent your whole life apologizing for the fact that it won’t settle on one.

It’s not going to settle. That’s not the assignment. The assignment is to stop treating the tug-of-war as a problem to be solved and start treating it as information about how to build systems that work with your actual brain — not the brain you think you should have.

Say both things out loud. Build the container and put the novelty inside it. Decide by what you’ve got, not by what you wanted on Monday. And let yourself update, out loud, with notice, without shame.

Both of them are you. The one who wants the plan and the one who wants to blow up the plan. And you’re allowed to have a relationship with room for both.

Go do the workbook together at JennaDalton.com/lovemap.

Thanks for spending this bit of your day with me. Remember, you deserve to feel truly understood and deeply loved. I’ll talk to you soon.

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The Neurodivergent Love Lab is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for therapy or mental health care. If you’re in crisis, please reach out to a local crisis line or emergency service.