Dating Don’ts: How Not To Move In Together
Posted by: Judy McGuire
Filed in:
relationships
8:00AM, Thursday May 28th 2009
Whether you’re getting married or have decided to live in (gasp!) sin, the decision to cohabitate is one of the most nerve-wracking, potentially fight-provoking, all-around-scariest things you will do as a couple. Here are some pitfalls to avoid:
1. The Money-Saver Move-In: The recession is kicking everyone’s ass, but if the major reasoning behind your decision to shack up is to save money, don’t. Living together, while fun, is also hard work and you’re going to need a big fat love connection when things get rough.
2. Romance Meets Finance: I know what you’re thinking—enough with the boring money talk! But it’s imperative that you figure out how you’re going to divvy up the bills before you sign on the dotted line. According to the National Survey of Families and Households, couples who felt money was being handled unfairly were 70 percent more likely to break up than couples who felt things were even. So it’s really important you guys talk this out ahead of time. It’s not as romantic as bickering over where the sofa should go, but it’s far more important if you plan on staying together.
3. The Love Nest: After you make the big decision, ideally, you two should find a place of your own. Because if one of you moves in with the other, you’re going to have some territorial issues—no matter how selfless you might believe yourself to be. Rents being what they are, I realize this isn’t always practical. My boyfriend moved into my very cheap apartment and, as a result, has to deal with a hot pink kitchen, a blood red living room and more books than most libraries.
4. The Art of C-C-C-Compromise: In return for him having to cook in a fuschia kitchen, I tried not to squawk too loudly when my boyfriend carted in an enormous television set and announced we’d be getting cable. (And yes, I’m woman enough to admit that I’m now happy we have both.) You may hate his beer cozy collection, but you’ll have to give up the Hello Kitty toaster if you expect him to get rid of it. Choose your battles carefully.
5. Housework—The Great Divide: Nothing turns you into your mother quicker than moving in with a man. It sucks and it’s not fair, but I don’t know one couple where the male half cleans as much or more than their female partner. One twosome I know deals with this by the dude hiring a maid service twice a month. Another made a chore chart. Still another have an agreed-upon cleaning day each week. However you’re going to handle it, talk about it before you sign that lease because a week’s worth of dirty dishes and a bathroom carpeted with dirty drawers could quickly become a dealbreaker.
6. The Best Part of Living Together: Obviously, that would be the non-stop love-makin’. And if—after haggling over money, helping him hang his vintage Reingold sign over your tasteful, mid-century modern settee and fighting over whose turn it is to mop—you still want to get down, you’ve most likely located a keeper. But before you two crazy kids rip each other’s clothes off with lustful abandon, make a solemn vow to each other that you’ll not take each other for granted. You will keep up with basic grooming. You’ll try not to leave wet towels on the floor. And you’ll never ever throw out his Franklin Mint Star Trek Intergalactic coin collection.
Well, unless he really pisses you off.
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Perceptible
wrote on May 28 2009 @ 08:07 am: [report]
Ha ha. This was great. Also, it’s so much easier to move in together when you’re young (early 20s) than it is when you’re older, divorced, and both have kids, furniture, and ways of doing things. Which is why the love of my life and I don’t currently cohabitate. At least one or two of our collective five kids needs to move out first. It’s hard to wait but it will most certainly be worth it! Fortunately (or unfortunately) his are all teenagers.
mdtobe
wrote on May 28 2009 @ 08:40 am: [report]
My boyfriend cleans way more than I do. I clean up after myself and keep things need, but he’s the one that does the sweeping and the vacuuming etc. I just wish he would learn to squeeze out the sponge when he’s done with the dishes because then he’d be perfect!
retro chic
wrote on May 28 2009 @ 08:50 am: [report]
Thanks, Judy. One more reality check! I agree with Perceptible, having nearly identical scenarios (up until recently). For me, now there is less reason to live together, unless marriage is on the menu. Before marriage/kid, I kept my cheap apartment, even tho I moved in with BFs. We would call my still mostly furnished apartment “the weekend house” or “the summer house.” It didn’t diminish our commitment when together, but it was always waiting for me after the “partings.” We were able to nav most of the issues outlined—things just ran their course. I think the buffer arrangement helped. Thank you, Ol’ Faithful Apartment.
powplz
wrote on May 28 2009 @ 08:56 am: [report]
I cook, he cleans. I love it. I think an important thing to remember also is that you can’t make someone change. If he is messy and you want to move in together, be prepared to deal with messiness. I am a messy person, and my bf’s ocd cleanliness is starting to rub off on me (I’m WAY better than I used to be), but I’m still me, and I always will be. I believe the best way to approach it is to lean on each other’s strengths to help each other out. i.e. I cook, he cleans.
angelspinning
wrote on May 28 2009 @ 09:25 am: [report]
Completely agree, joyy. I am OCD clean, and although my boyfriend is pretty clean for most people’s standards, we both know where my craziness line is and I know how clean HE’S going to be. If we were to move in together, I’d be willing to clean more because I know that’s what I want (that’s how it worked when I lived with my last boyfriend). I think that if something’s more important to you, you’re going to have to be willing to do more than half the work for it. Maybe he doesn’t need it as clean as you - you’re going to have to clean the counters yourself most of the time (to a reasonable degree). Same for things guys care about, though I can’t think of any that take a lot of work… starting the charcoal grill?
powplz
wrote on May 28 2009 @ 09:29 am: [report]
@hababluga - hahaha, my bf is also all over the charcol starter. I’m sure I could do it myself, but I’ve never, ever bothered because he always gets so excited about it.
resullins
wrote on May 28 2009 @ 11:15 am: [report]
#6: I like that one. I should have realized after living with my last boyfriend… where we fought over petty sh*t 5 times as often as we had sex. NOT a good sign. I’m fixing to move in with my current, and I’ll remember to take all this into account.
puck
wrote on May 30 2009 @ 02:17 pm: [report]
The cleaning just takes a little training and compromise…
My beau and I have a few rules that keep us sane. I think the most important is to have ME areas that the other partner stays out of. So, our bedroom and our studio is divided in half and whatever crazy #&@$% he does to his side is his business. Same with our cars.
For other areas (deemed “guests will SEE THIS” areas) we typically try to pick up our own #&@$% and sweep/mop/vaccuum a couple rooms together. Dishes are done on rotation (I did the last couple, tag you’re it). We do our own laundry (cause he irons and I don’t…haha). Sometimes I do pick up a little after him, but it’s always small things. I have gently requested he learn to not kick off his GIANT shoes in the middle of the living room and he’s complied after a few months of joking reminders (“I just broke 4 of my little toes tripping over your boots! Now you get to carry me to dinner…for about a week :D”). We never squabble over cleaning…but it probably helps that our “acceptable clean” levels are about same.
DancerNinja
wrote on August 15 2009 @ 10:05 am: [report]
I lived with a boyfriend for two years, and I won’t ever do it again until he’s a fiance. I’ve learned SO MUCH about how much having my space and my independence mean to me. We also went about totally the wrong way, I let him move in with me during a down part of his life, thinking it would be temporary, then it spiraled out of control to, well, frankly mooching from him and resentment on my part.
I tell my friends to put off moving in together. If you marry the guy, you have the rest of your lives (ideally) to live together, so enjoy the independence now while you have it.
dawn2718
wrote on August 16 2009 @ 01:31 am: [report]
My husband is the cleaner. I’m actually pretty content to live in a dirty house (the one I grew up in was a disaster, as neither of my parents cleaned) but he’s almost obsessed with keeping clean, always vacuuming, wiping, fixing, etc. I have to go out of my way to do laundry and dishes and take out trash just to feel that I’m pulling my weight, and even then I know (and appreciate) that he’s doing way more than I am to keep the house in order. We lived together for six years before getting married, and he’s always been this way. In fact, I *never* got along with a roommate before moving in with my husband (then boyfriend) - I actually moved in with him because I couldn’t stand the people I was living with and needed a quick sanctuary; since I was spending most of my time there anyway I decided to become an official roommate. Oh, and we never bickered about bills - he just payed all the little ones (gas, electricity, etc.) because it was easier for him to keep track, and we split rent every-other month, and I often bought food. I was raised by unmarried parents (who didn’t believe in marriage) but they were happy to walk me down the aisle because they knew I had a keeper!
Kat
wrote on August 27 2009 @ 10:32 pm: [report]
I’m so lucky. My fiancé washes the dishes, cooks most nights, does the laundry, vacuums and even cleans my(!) cats’ litterbox.
I’m just sort of a slob, I look at the floor as a low shelf. He just does all the other stuff since his mom was a total WHACKO neat freak so his tolerance for clutter is MUCH lower than mine.
My mom’s adage was “As long as you keep the common areas RELATIVELY clutter free, keep your room however you like”, and that’s always been my way of doing things. Although she’s more of a slob than me. Her house looks like her clothes closet exploded.
His mom’s adage was, “What the #&@$% are you doing using the bathroom, I just cleaned it! Those towels are not at a right angle! There’s a single kleenex in your CLOSED garbage can in your room with a CLOSED door, CLEAN IT UP NOOOOWWWWWW!”
I am glad we’re both in the moderate range. If we were BOTH like our mothers I think we’d KILL eachother! LOL
driftingfocus
wrote on September 1 2009 @ 03:14 pm: [report]
In my BF and I’s apartment, we generally avoid a lot of cleaning issues by having rules about not leaving clothes/towels on the floor, dishes in the sink, etc. What chores do remain generally get divvied up thusly: I cook and run errands, he cleans the apartment and is in charge of the litter box. He is a much cleaner person than I am, so I know that my level of cleaning would never be enough for him, and I’m much more picky about food, so I have opted to be the chef so that we don’t end up living off microwave dinners.
rsonnack
wrote on September 4 2009 @ 01:04 pm: [report]
I can personally vouch for #1, #3, and #5. We moved in together b/c we’re in college in Chicago, aka we’re dirt poor. I realize now that this excuse caused us to take a huge step that we weren’t ready for yet. I moved into his place that he’d already been living in for a year b/c it was cheap and a 2 bedroom (1 bedroom for us, 1 bedroom for his music studio). He did NOT want to give up on where “his stuff” should go! I told him many times that he was going to need to change a few things and get used to the fact that it wasn’t his apartment anymore, it was OUR apartment, but he just did not want to let go. And as for the messiness…well, it’s all been described in other comments. He’s a slob, i’m relatively neat. All this resulted in me moving back out after a year. We’re still together though! Things are going great now that we don’t feel the urge to rip each other’s hair out. Haha.