When I was 21, I dated this girl a few years older than me and we had an amazing start to our relationship. Things moved rather quickly and we decided to move in together after only a few months. Unfortunately, this is when things rapidly started to deteriorate. Once you start introducing bills, cleaning, grocery shopping, and "Can you take out the trash?" to a young relationship, things are bound to get ugly.
Sex immediately disappeared, physical attraction became almost non-existent, and I was really confused. The central theme I am starting to get from a lot of my past relationships is that I was just plain clueless and far too optimistic. There are some serious considerations to take into account before deciding to live together. I failed to deal with any of them.
Sometimes the best part of a relationship is that you spend time doing your own thing and get to look forward to the next time you see your SO. It's really hard to transition from cleaning up the dog's shit, vacuuming the floor, and doing laundry, to trying to find this person you see every waking moment even remotely attractive.
What made it worse was that we worked together, too. So there was very little time that we had to ourselves. Sometimes the best part of my day would be leaving the apartment just to put gas in the car. Those 15 minutes to myself were so precious (you have no idea). Even now as I look back on that relationship, those car rides stick out as memorable moments that make me smile. Partly because it actually made me happy, and partly because that sounds so incredibly depressing and dark.
So, this post is about two things I'd like to know:
What are your thoughts on living with your SO? What are some things that you have found helpful to keep a relationship from becoming dull?
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Comments (59)
lol, yeah, living and working together is probably the worst idea ever. It is important to have time set aside every day for just yourself - whether it is showering alone, going to work, walking the dog, or going out with YOUR friends. It is equally important that your partner wants the alone time, too,
As for me, my favorite time is when I get up in the night to feed the baby. I hate waking up and losing sleep, but I enjoy having the time with just the baby and I!
idk, i have a friend who believes that if you like someone, you should be spending every living moment either physically with, or speaking with, that person.
so ultimately, it depends on whether you have a life of your own, or if you have no emotional stability.
Unless you are truly in love, it won't work. My stepdad and my mom did it, and were together for about 8 years before she died. He took care of her because she was very ill from birth (spina bifida) and they ended up working together as well. We had very little money, and I was only just under 2 years old when they met, and struggled to keep the lights on, but they were always happy with each other and never fought. Even as a child, I understood that they were very intimate and very in love. Then I lived with my stepdad and he remarried (a tad too soon). They moved in together and started fighting all the time. They lasted about the same amount of time, but went on about 5 years in a loveless, toxic relationship, ridden with addiction and alcoholism. They divorced, naturally. So the point I am trying to make it, no matter what gets introduced when you move in together, if you are truly in love, it will work. If you are not, I say don't move in together whatever you do. The last thing you want is a fallout with someone on whom you have a contract with and possibly rely on for living arrangements.
Hah, that's probably what happens in marriages too. But doing that early on in a relationship when you don't really know each other, and are still in the honeymoon stage - is definitely not a good idea!
I lived with my SO for 4 years before we got married. Not going to lie, learning to live together with him was difficult. Especially learning each other's idiosyncrasies. I think this time period is a time to learn how to effectively communicate with each other, to learn to compromise and how to pick your battles. Sometimes, an issue may arise that requires several solutions to make right. Don't give up after one failed attempt. However, working together does make things a little more complicated, I follow the "don't shit where you eat" policy. I think a good way to prevent dullness in the relationship is to spend some time separately. One can participate in physical activities, like working out at the gym, a hobby, volunteering your time at soup kitchen/big brother or sister program etc, or even just spending time with their friends. Just because a person is in a committed relationship, by no means you must spend every free moment together. When you're out and about, you can learn new things to bring home to share with your SO. While it's great to spend some time apart, it's also good to take an interest in each others' interests sometimes. Every relationship has its challenges. If you find that the differences between you and your SO cannot be reconciled, maybe she isn't the right person to spend the rest of your life with.
I believe in getting married before having sex and living together, so I wouldn't do it. If you do all these things before marriage, there isn't much to look forward to after you get married. No wonder people these days say, "Marriage is just a piece of paper..."
I lived with and ex for about a year. It was the most heartbreakingly dark period of my life. I had saved up and bought my own home at 21. I was over the moon. So when I moved in I saw no problem with my boyfriend of 4.5 years joining the party. Hey, two incomes and what not. BIG mistake. He wanted me to be a glorified mommy. I would come home after work, just missing him as he went to wait tables to find empty beer bottles littering the floor, burned food on the stove, my new puppy happily licking plates that were left (no joke) on the floor! He never paid rent, utilities or grocery bills. His friends were over playing video games and destroying the furniture that I had spent a year piecing together from thrift stores and lovingly refurbishing. We never even had sex because at some point he got really freaked out by germs (are you joking you're a PIG) and he slept on the couch most days. So I just stopped everything. Stopped doing the dishes, stopped buying food he liked, stopped doing his laundry. Then the questions started, "Why don't I have any clean work clothes?" Don't know, I had no problem finding an outfit. "What's for dinner?" Brussel sprouts. "But I hate those." Shrug.
I felt I couldn't dump him because he had no where else to live. His parents had moved out of state. But one month after I quit taking care of him he was gone! He left on my birthday which was a douchey move but that's what douches do.
My current SO and I have been seeing each other for almost a year now. Our first date was 2 days after the other guy left. LOL. He has his own place and we have both talked about how neither of us wants to live with anyone for a couple years. He still cherishes his guy time and being able to just hang with his roommates. I just want to see what it's actually like to live alone. So far I LOVE it. We'll see what the next year brings.
Living and working with her... it's no wonder this fail happened. lol. I think living with my SO would be nice. We have to literally move our schedules to see each ogther more than twice a week and we miss each other like crazy within 24 hours... lol. But if I worked with him, lived with him, had the same schedule as him basically... ugh.
I lived with my fiance after a year and a half of dating (I was 16, he was 18). We just click well together. I was raised in a very traditional home and it was just natural for me to clean and cook, so that's never been an argument for us. I personally feel like living together is the do or die for relationships. And we've been through the working together while living together thing too... we actually really enjoyed it.
I live with my fiance and have for the past... year and a half, about. We were wonderful in the first year and in the past couple of months we've been fighting like crazy. He feels like I don't put him first (what?!), I feel like he picks fights with me and doesn't care about me anymore (to which he would probably say, what?!).
Communication is key. We've had issues working it out, picking our battles and working through problems. He has anger issues and I have depression issues. When we're happy... we are perfect. I miss that more than anything. What do you do when you love someone and commit to them and want to make things better, but it just keeps falling apart?
Living with your SO will always kill the relationship if it just wasn't meant to be. Sadly, it's one of the best ways to tell if you and your SO are truly compatible and/or if your relationship is meant to last. As for keeping things from being dull - never take that other person for granted. Once you stop appreciating them (and vice versa), things can go downhill very quickly.
@prettyinbones1291@xanga - would you say then that moving in together would be a good test to put a relationship to?
Are you sure it wasn't living together after only 3 months?
@cute_sushi@xanga - It's because marriage is just a piece of paper.
I think before you move in with your significant other you should find out about their habits ahead of time, to see if it's something you're willing to put up with. After you move in you should set a cleaning and cooking schedule; you can cook and clean certain days of the week and your significant other can cook and clean the other days. You should also write down who will clean what on those days and what you want to eat each day of the week. On the weekends you can spend 10-15 minutes writing out a cooking and cleaning schedule for the next week switching up the days you cook and your significant other cooks.
That sucks. Working together and living together would be a bit much. I'm waiting til marriage to move in together.
The only downside I've experienced from living together is that if you decide you want to leave the relationship, it's not as easy. Suddenly your whole life is enmeshed with another person's, and staying can just seem more convenient.
well, now you've learned. but yeah, at 21 & even now eons later, i would never move in with someone i just started dating. 1st of all, at 21, many men don't even clean up after themselves when they live with their parents, let alone when they live alone. if someone think they're very responsible & independent, then i think it's about chemistry and you didn't give yourselves enough time to figure out if you had any. a truly great relationship can survive the toughest of the tough: injuries, terminal illnesses, even terrible vacations. i don't think living together should be hard, but sometimes you got a mortgage, pets, cleaning the house, etc. and it can be hard. but i dunno, i think i'm a great roommate to begin with and i cuold've lived with allmost my ex-bfs if we had lasted long enough to try. the person i wouldn't want to live with is the person i didn't even really love that much or didn't really have chemistry with. when you have that kind of relationship, everything is wrong. you don't like the same food, you don't like to do the same things, you can't divide the responsibilities properly cuz you don't "fit" together. imo, the right person for you is the person you can't stand to be away from. you guys need to live together because it's the only way for you to see each other more often.
Reading the responses originally made my eyes bug-eyed, but it also opened them. My boyfriend of 5 months wants to move in together in the summer and I've been on the fence about it. At least I got another 6 months to think about it but now I know what I should be looking for.
@jzrocker@xanga - Not exactly. It shouldn't be a question of whether you think it will work. It's a move to make when you're certain you won't regret it.
I hate to break it to you, but a relationship is hard work, even when it's a "young" relationship. Even if you aren't living together. Now, I'm a firm believer that living together and sex should be saved for after you're married, like cute_sushi. This is of course my personal belief. A belief that comes from the Bible and my own personal convictions.
But, back to relationships being hard work. No relationship is going to be easy. Especially after the decision to live with each other. You are learning much more about each other than you could have ever learned before, even if you have been together for what seems like forever. And that sometimes means that you have to make changes to your daily routine and so will your significant other. And this all goes back to making compromises, which is key when trying to maintain a relationship, as well as communication. If you don't like something that your SO does, that can be changed, talk to him/her about it. And at the same time, listen when your SO is trying to talk to you about something that you do that isn't working for him/her.
i've never lived with a SO before, he just stayed for extended periods of time. i do have to admit, there were some days i wished he'd go home bc i needed my own privacy or just some space. my parents are really religious so living with a SO without marriage is not good. i guess growing up with that mentality, i don't know if i would move in with SO. If it was really serious and we're about to get married, i may consider moving in with him.
@Saridactyl@xanga - Yes, rushing into it was a HUGE factor. But there were other details that maybe I'll get into in some other posts. Age difference, moving to a different state away from all family/friends, finances, idiosyncrasies (@babybug329@xanga), and the fact that we would later find out her youngest brother was my childhood friend from summer camp (one of those freakish twilight zone moments). It was really nice to reunite with him, but also really awkward that I was dating his sister. Sounds like a plot for a horrible sitcom, but that was what happened.
Well yeah...you worked together, lived together....I can imagine how seeing each other like that EVERY day of nearly every hour would get super old. Living together with my husband, though, helped our relationship and I found both of us to be better prepared for the challenge.