Can some time apart from your SO be good?

Ok so me and Andrew have been together since I was 18 (I'm 20 now). I have a two year old daughter and her biological father hasn't seen her since she was 5 days old and Andrew has been there since she was 3 months old so obviously he took her in and he is trying to adopt her. Well about 2 months ago he dumped me. Me and my daughter went and stayed with my friend. I was awful to him. I would put him down and say awful things to him. I was dealing with some things. I was in the wrong. He was in the wrong too sometimes. We both had issues. Well we got back together after we had been split up for almost 3 weeks. We have truly bettered ourselves for each other and couldn't be happier. I use to think if people really loved each other they would never "take a break". But now obviously my perspective has changed a little. My question being.. is a break sometimes necessary??