Sunday, 12 August 2012

• Temporarily Living with your SO: An Exercise in Courtesy

  

  I’m not sure how other college neighborhoods work, but here in the West Campus neighborhood of the University of Texas at Austin all leases end July 31st and none of them begin again until at least August 5th if not later. This leaves thousands of students up a creek every year and having to find a place to camp out for a few days-a couple of weeks, not to mention needing a place for all of your stuff.
  
  I have personally encountered this twice and this Summer I have been spending the last week of July through now with my long-term boyfriend and will be living here at least for another week and a half.  With me being the kind of person who can be around him constantly and only needing hours apart from him at a time to not go crazy, he is a hyper-introvert who needs a bit more time than I to himself.
  
  This set my focus in the couple of weeks leading up to the move-in up through about 10 days of living together was, “how can I avoid us hating each other two weeks in”?
  
  After some tension, some hurt feelings, and a LOT of communication, here are the things I have highlighted as necessary to maintain full happiness during this time:
  
  Stay tidy. When infiltrating a man cave, the first thing that can make him itch is finding bits of your stuff EVERYWHERE. Even things that you would normally leave around when being there may become magnified. Your purse is on the desk, you left a cup on the windowsill, your socks and shoes are haphazardly hanging out at the foot of the bed, and you left your deodorant by the sink instead of putting it back in the cabinet (even though he leaves his on the counter).
  
  When he’s doing you the good deed of a warm and comfortable place to stay, you want to keep your stuff scarce. This effort will likely go noticed and be greatly appreciated. And even if it goes unnoticed, maintaining normalcy is equally as pleasing.
  
  Respect his little, “I do it this way”s. Even if you have been dating a person for a long time, I find that there are habits that will go unnoticed unless you are made to see them all the time or are being asked to abide by them. In my case, I am asked to always put the toilet seat down and make sure the shower curtain is always pulled closed.
  
  While I initially found these requests to be rather silly, simply making the conscious effort to respect them has not gone unnoticed and he has genuinely thanked me for making such an effort. Do you know how hard it is for a girl to work closing the lid into muscle memory?
  
  Take a chore or two on as your own.  My boyfriend has arguably the most disgusting roommate. Just without him being here, the apartment stays cleaner, but to go one step further, I began doing the dishes. He will still do them whenever convenient, but I have generally taken it upon myself to keep the sink clear of dishes and maintain the rotation within the dishwasher. My logic behind this is that you are being set up with a place to live rent and utility-free so keeping up with some of the housework is no big deal.
  
  Try to stay busy. I am not saying that you should spend the majority of your time outside of the apartment, but do try to not be there every minute of every day. And maybe try to spend one of every ten days totally gone for as much of the day as possible so he can have some alone time and you can have time to decompress too. Even if it’s a total love nest, time apart is always needed.
  
  Unfortunately, I was less-than-great about this at first and had to find out through less than desirable means that I needed to probably clear the apartment overnight. Not that our relationship was going to pot or anything remotely close, but like I said, when you’re shacking up with an introvert, you need to let the introvert be an introvert.
  
  
  Living with my boyfriend, while tons of fun, has required more effort to be put in our relationship. And when it comes down to it, that effort is just courtesy. Overall, being more aware of ourselves and more respectful of each other, this temporary live-in has brought us much closer together and has strengthened our relationship immensely.
  
  More than anything, we have gotten a taste of what it would be like to live together for real and whereas before the thought would have made both of us head for the hills, it is now a more real goal that can be worked towards.
  
  
  Under what conditions would you allow your SO to stay with you? (conditions not situations) What things should be expected of both parties when one moves in with the other temporarily?
  
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