Living with Your Partner
Pros:
You can sleep together every night.
Ahh, romance. If your relationship is good, eventually you and your partner will get to the point where you’re reluctant to leave after spending a romantic evening together. You’ll find yourselves spending more and more nights together, and the prospect of going home alone seems dismal when you could just stay. This is when you’ll first start to consider the possibility of moving in together.
Sleeping in the same bed is a bonding experience. Sleeping in the same bed together every night will bring you closer to your partner than ever before. You and your partner will laugh about your tendency to talk in your sleep and his cute little snores. Blanket hogging is all fun and games, and your retainer becomes material for inside-couple jokes.
Be forewarned, though. While sleeping together every night is one of the best reasons to cohabitate with your partner, everything isn’t always rosy. That cute little snore will turn into a buzz saw when your partner gets a head cold, and sometimes one of you might just need to sleep alone for a night or two. All in all, though, sleeping with your partner every night should be one of the most rewarding experiences you have together. If you have doubts about this, reconsider moving in together.
You’ll both save money on rent.
With the cost of living constantly on the rise, it makes sense to have a roommate to split the bills. Why not move in with your partner to cut down on your expenses? Not only will you save on bills, but grocery shopping becomes less expensive as well. One of the best ways to save money living with your partner as opposed to a random roommate is that you’ll be able to prepare meals for two, cutting down on your individual cost of eating. Big household purchases also become less expensive when you and your partner throw in together for a DVD player you’ll share.
It’s a trial run for a life-long commitment.
Many of today’s young couples have been disillusioned about the concept of marriage lasting forever. Most of the people in my generation have seen our own parents or those of close friends go through agonizing divorces. Thankfully, we still believe in love! Cohabitation is a way to test-drive a partner for the ultimate commitment, and a way to find out if living together forever is truly a realistic expectation for your relationship. Besides, living with your partner is the single best way to know as much as you can about that person outside of crawling into that person’s brain and poking around.
Cons:
Living together will potentially diminish the romance in your relationship.
The time you spend with your partner before you live together can feel like one big date, even if you’re just watching your clothes spin around in the dryer at the local laundry mat. Once you live together for a while, though, the routine chores of maintaining a household can suck the romance out of a relationship that used to be all about holding hands and snuggling on the couch.
Make sure you and your partner still go out to dinner once in a while, just to spice things up. Even though you could rent the latest blockbuster and watch it at home together, keep going out to the movies. Spending time outside of the place you cohabitate will help keep the romance alive.
You will argue about domestic issues.
Remember the good old days, when you and your partner fought over real relationship issues? After you move in together, you will probably go through a phase where you argue about things like who took out the garbage last, and who’s turn it is to do the dishes. In fact, these domestic squabbles can often substitute for productive arguments that end up strengthening your relationship.
If you or your partner has real angst about something that isn’t right in your relationship, you may need to discuss it outside your apartment to keep the domestic issues from interfering with what’s really at stake. In the meantime, do whatever it takes to keep arguments about chores to a minimum. Make a chore schedule or assign tasks to keep your household clean without all the responsibility falling on the shoulders of one partner, who will inevitably become resentful if the burden of chores doesn’t seem fair.
Breaking up is hard to do.
For better or worse, living with your partner means that you’ll come to rely on her for much more than you would have otherwise. Should you and your partner break up, who’ll stay and assume the full responsibility of the household bills? Before you move in together, you and your partner need to make a contingency plan for a breakup. One of you should be able to afford to keep the apartment you choose together if the other needs to move out. Another way to deal with the possibility of a break up is to choose a place with only a minimal financial penalty in the event you have to break the lease.
If breaking up means losing half of your household income, imagine having only half the furniture and other household items you’ve gotten used to living with. In the event of a break up, you’ll need to not only reclaim possessions that were yours before your cohabitation, but you’ll also have to find an amicable way to divide things you purchased together.
Any pets you brought into the relationship should revert to the original owner, and any pets acquired together will have to find a home with one of you. Should you have raised a puppy together, expect your break up to be traumatizing to the animal. Decide what you will do with your pets before you break up to avoid a custody battle down the road.
Some cohabitating couples that become unhappy with the relationship are scared to leave because breaking up isn’t just the end of the relationship, but the end of a whole way of life. Before you and your partner move in together, make sure you are absolutely sure your relationship is going to last. As easy as it looks on the surface, cohabitation is just as serious as marriage when it comes to the gritty details of the break up, but without the law to protect you and your property.
