Living Together - Initial Thoughts
I moved in with my boyfriend just over two weeks ago and since it’s been a while since I lived with someone, even a romantic partner, I wanted to record my initial thoughts. You can read this article if you want to know more about my headspace before the move, but essentially, I was nervous that living alone for so long had ruined my ability to compromise and advocate for myself.
Let’s start with the good stuff. Moving in with my boyfriend has been excellent for my mental health so far. My boyfriend is a relentlessly positive person and spending even a short amount of time with him on a daily basis has helped me avoid wallowing in my own negativity as much. It also really is nice having someone around to talk to for a bit since I work from home by myself all day.
Something I had been tangentially nervous about was how he would maintain our space. I wasn’t overly worried about this because his apartments prior had always been tidy, but I just see so much content about how men do not take initiative around the house that I had some residual concerns. However, my fears in this space were completely unfounded. So far he’s been amazing. He builds furniture, cleans, and generally does errands when they need doing. The other day, I came back from the gym and was reminding myself in the elevator to take out the trash when I got back to the apartment, and he had already taken it out. I have been doing everything myself for so long that I forgot how nice it can be to share those responsibilities with someone else.
The last thing that has been great really has nothing to do with my boyfriend, and everything to do with the fact that we opted for a 2 bedroom apartment (without him I could not afford this). One room is a bedroom and one is an office. Having physical separation from my workstation has helped my mental state extraordinarily. I had been trying for months to separate myself from work at the end of the day but in my old apartment, there was hardly any spot I could escape to without having to see it. Now, I can literally shut it away and I know now that type of separation is nearly priceless to me.
There aren’t really any negatives to living together so far, but there are things that I am struggling with internally.
The first is that I’m scared of giving up any of my personal style. I feel like I worked so hard on this piece of my identity in my last apartment and I’m terrified of losing it now that I’m taking another person’s opinions into account. Every time I commit to a design decision for our new place, I worry that I’m compromising my opinions in order to please him. I’m extremely conscious about it to the extent that I’ve gotten disproportionately attached to pieces of furniture that are not actually important to keep but take on extra value to me because they are one of the few pieces that I’m certain was my idea. I want to continue to develop on my own as a person and I need to figure out how to strike the right balance between making decisions for myself and for the relationship.
In a similar vein, I have trouble asking for alone time. This was already an issue for me because I used to only see my boyfriend a few times a week. Consequently, this meant every time I saw him, I wanted to focus on being present and having quality time. This behavior has carried over and since we live together now, it’s even harder for me to distinguish when we should be having quality time and when I should be doing my own thing. I’m slowly getting better about asking for my own time when I have personal errands to do, but I still feel guilty asking for time alone when I simply want to do nothing. Even though it seems simple, it feels hard to ask for that when I could be spending more time with him.
It’s only been a couple of weeks and these really are just meant to be initial thoughts. I know things take time to settle. And to make matters extra exciting, we leave on a two-week trip in just 3 days so I’m not betting on feeling settled until almost the fall. While this will leave me feeling more stressed than normal for a few months, it is also comforting to have this time where we can experiment with different routines and ideas. It’s a period of high growth for us, so I want to treasure this time and use it to our advantage instead of only viewing it as a phase to get through.
He is a cutie. PC: Tiffany Wong