Q: My partner and I have been together since I was 18. I have never really had time on my own to feel totally independent, and I feel that is important, and I still love them. I can't decide if I should take time apart or stay together. What should I do?

I think your head may be somewhere about here: that much the same as any person that has never had that time in their life to be completely free and answer to no one, you are terrified that if you get out there, it won't be all it's cracked up to be. That you'll be lonely, and yearn for that person that you let go, and that you might never again find a connection as strong, and it will be too late to get them back.

The thing about that is that it's not as bad as it seems it might be. Yes, you have the days that you cry yourself to sleep listening to Sarah McLachlan, and you think nothing is going to complete you but finding an intimate partner. It is from those moments you find an incredible strength that only comes from being dependent solely on yourself. There is nothing more empowering or freeing. As I have heard from many people who were married very young and had similar feelings in their youth, that gnawing feeling that you want to live with wild abandon and prove you can make it on your own, never goes away if you don't feed it.

Even people who have taken that independent period and felt ready to move past it, likely still feel its shadow in the back of their mind at times. If you are in a nurturing, respectful relationship where you both truly wish to see each other grow, in whatever way you can, perhaps this need can be satiated. I personally did make the choice to leave my first young love and take that time on my own, so I can't speak to that path. 

The answer though, can't really be any definite answer at all. No one can tell you what to do or what is right. You are the one who must pull yourself from limbo and go forth boldly into a decision. That is when you really connect with that inner strength.

Once you have made a decision, that feeling of uncertainty likely won't go away for quite some time, even after you have made a choice, no matter what you do. It clings on, and learning how to grow stronger than it and not letting it make you live in guilt or doubt, is how you become stronger for the next big decision. The trick is, that whatever you choose once you abandon fear, will be the right choice, because you made it for yourself, no one else.