The apparent splitting between orbitals that are spin-orbit partners can be substantially influenced by the effects of finite binding. In particular, such effects can account for the observed decrease in separation of the neutron 1p 3/2 and 1p 1/2 orbitals between the 41 Ca and 35 Si isotopes. This behavior has been the subject of recent experimental and theoretical works and cited as evidence for a proton "bubble" in 34 Si causing an explicit weakening of the spin-orbit interaction. The results reported here suggest that the change in the separation between the 1p 3/2 and 1p 1/2 partners occurs dominantly because of the behavior of the energies of these 1p neutron states near zero binding.To describe the ordering of levels in nuclei and the pattern of magic numbers a spin-orbit interaction had to be added to the nuclear Hamiltonian which is the basis of the very successful nuclear shell-model [1]. The magnitude of the spin-orbit interaction is determined empirically and is not fully understood quantitatively. The spin-orbit coupling must be a surface term, and is usually included in the one-body mean field as a potential proportional to the derivative of the nuclear density.Recent works have postulated the presence of a proton "bubble" in 34 Si [2,3], suggesting that the central depletion in the proton density results in an 'interior' contribution to the spin-orbit interaction, opposite in sign to that of the outer surface, causing a factor of approximately two reduction in the spin-orbit splitting of the neutron 1p orbitals. In this work we show that the low binding energy of the neutron states considered, quantitatively accounts for the reduction. The effects of finite binding must be taken into account before other explanations are considered.Data [4] from neutron-adding (d,p) reactions on 40 Ca, 38 Ar, 36 S, and most recently 34 Si using a radioactive ion beam [2], provide information on the location of the 1p 3/2 and 1p 1/2 single-particle strength outside of the N = 20 closed neutron shell. This information is reasonably complete. Using the dominant fragments of the neutron 1p 3/2 and 1p 1/2 strength as a measure of the single-particle energies it was shown [2] that the spin-orbit splitting between the neutron 1p 3/2 and 1p 1/2 states decreases by almost 1 MeV from 41 Ca to 35 Si, with most of that decrease happening between 37 S and 35 Si. To first order the use of the dominant fragments is a fair approximation, although the actual centroids, which can be determined from the available experimental data [5] (and see Supplemental Information [6]), lie at slightly different energies. In Fig. 1 between S and Si for the centroids. The 1p 1/2 state is close to the separation threshold at 35 Si. It was recently emphasized [7,8] that bound states with low angular momentum, especially s states, linger below threshold, showing a reluctance to become unbound. Such effects had already been noted by Bohr and Mottelson [9]. The bulk features of the dramatic variations in the separation of the proton and neutron 1s an...