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sleepybadgerThere's a lot of things that are a little odd about living with a partner for the first time when you're 40 and you've never lived with someone before. This is kind of a prelude to give some background before I share some of my thoughts about living with someone.
A little background is in order here. I am an introvert, most of my serious relationships happened when I was younger, and I always imagined my perfect living arrangement with a boyfriend/husband would either be in a huge house where we could both have our alone space, or just living near each other (like in neighboring houses or condos).
My last serious boyfriend in my 20s was a little younger than me and had some college to go when I was finishing up. We talked a lot about me moving there (several states away, where he went to school and where his mom lived) and finding us an apartment. His mom didn't want us living together and informed him that if he moved off-campus, she wouldn't help him in any way financially anymore (I'm not sure how much she was contributing financially but it was enough that it was going to be a big problem for her to stop). I did a little job hunting in his area, but my heart wasn't in it. I have a ton of family and friends in the area where I grew up (and still live), and I hated the idea of moving away, partially because I knew it would be hard to move back to our (relatively expensive) area later, and he and his family were the only people I would know there (and he was not close with his family and didn't want to spend much time with them). It was definitely my plan, though, that I would work while he went to school and then we would move back home and get jobs there.
However, I found myself falling out of love with him as time ran out my senior year. Because the relationship was long-distance, and he was visiting me for a week, I thought I should hold on to this idea until I spent some time with him in person and figured out how I felt. In the end, I knew it was over. I told him I had fallen out of love with him, we both cried, it was a sad and painful time for us. Looking back, I do think that the thought of living with him full-time - as well as living somewhere new where I would have no family or friends around - was very frightening for me, and may have been a contributing factor in our breakup. I decided I wanted to take some time away from dating for a while. When I told him I wanted to take at least a couple years off from dating, he didn't believe me. He said he was sure I'd be with someone new in a few months.
In the end, the next time I was in an actual relationship with someone (which in this case i'm defining as a relationship that lasts more than a 3 dates), it was about a decade later. And again, we had the distance situation, tho we were much much closer, just an hour or so away. We had a very tumultuous relationship, which perhaps I'll talk about in another post sometime, but at the end of the day, I knew we were going to have a problem because neither of us wanted to move. After we split up, I was sad but hopeful - I felt like even though this was over, I'd finally had an actual relationship again and maybe I could finally get back on the horse and start dating like a regular person again.
Another decade later...
I joke, but this is actually true. I did go on dates during that time, but nothing ever went anywhere. I went on a lot of first dates that were ok. I even went on a handful of second dates that were ok. I met a guy who seemed to really like me, but didn't call for 2 years. That's another story for another day. But mostly I went on dates that were just OK. I didn't give up on dating, but I had been feeling resigned for a long time that it was unlikely that I would ever have a long-term relationship.
And for the most part... I was OK with that. There were a lot of things I really enjoyed about being single. I wasn't one of those single folks who mopes around all the time being sad and depressed that I'm not in a relationship. I loved the autonomy. I loved that I could go out of town whenever I felt like it, visit friends, have sex, stay up all night, watch whatever I wanted on tv whenever I wanted, spend money on whatever i wanted, etc. The freedom was nice. For the most part, I enjoyed my life. Yes, sometimes I was really sad and lonely. Sometimes I would look longingly at happy couples. Sometimes I would cry myself to sleep at night. But other times, when friends couldn't go somewhere or do something because of their significant other, or when they had to do stuff they didn't want to do, I was really appreciative of my singleness. The relationships of some couples I knew made me truly thankful to not be in a relationship like theirs.
I lived by myself for 14 years. I was never good with roommates. In college, the longest I lived with a roommate was one semester. And I loathed having to share a tiny dorm room with a stranger. I had a total of 3 roommates. Two moved out and we were both relieved. The third I got along OK with but her BFF from high school's roommate had dropped out and she really wanted to live with her, so that worked out OK. After that I always made sure I had no roommate. In high school I had gone on a couple of trips through school, and I also hated sharing a room with friends. I figured I'm just a hard person to live with.
When you spend a good chunk of your adult life being single and living alone, it's very hard to imagine sharing your space with someone else. I was also friends with a fellow introvert who told me that even though he loves his wife and kids, he still wishes he could live alone sometimes, and that the hardest thing about married life for him was having to live with someone.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that my housekeeping habits were borderline hoarding. And I'm really not exaggerating when I say that. I hardly ever had people over, and when I did, they were generally horrified at how bad it looked. There was a guy I had a FWB relationship with, and he was always saying that he was going to come over with garbage bags or call one of those tv shows and have them come clean up. We stopped seeing each other before I met my bf, but we still talked occasionally. When I started dating my boyfriend, I told my former FWB about it and asked him to imagine a scenario in which we were dating and he had come to my house for the first time and found it in the condition it was usually in. He, a teetotaler, said he would have turned around, walked out, gone to a bar, had a drink, and never talked to me again.
Needless to say, I was terrified to bring him around the first time. I did a ton of cleaning, and though it was certainly not clean, it was... passable. cleaner than it had been in many years. That was another concern. I hate cleaning and it brings me zero joy to get stuff cleaned up. I know some people don't enjoy the act of cleaning but love to have a clean house, or feel accomplished when they've cleaned up a room or a space or whatnot. I don't feel like that in any way. I hate the act of cleaning, and having a clean (or cleaner) space does not make me happy. I was very worried about what it would mean for me to try to maintain some level of clean.
A little background is in order here. I am an introvert, most of my serious relationships happened when I was younger, and I always imagined my perfect living arrangement with a boyfriend/husband would either be in a huge house where we could both have our alone space, or just living near each other (like in neighboring houses or condos).
My last serious boyfriend in my 20s was a little younger than me and had some college to go when I was finishing up. We talked a lot about me moving there (several states away, where he went to school and where his mom lived) and finding us an apartment. His mom didn't want us living together and informed him that if he moved off-campus, she wouldn't help him in any way financially anymore (I'm not sure how much she was contributing financially but it was enough that it was going to be a big problem for her to stop). I did a little job hunting in his area, but my heart wasn't in it. I have a ton of family and friends in the area where I grew up (and still live), and I hated the idea of moving away, partially because I knew it would be hard to move back to our (relatively expensive) area later, and he and his family were the only people I would know there (and he was not close with his family and didn't want to spend much time with them). It was definitely my plan, though, that I would work while he went to school and then we would move back home and get jobs there.
However, I found myself falling out of love with him as time ran out my senior year. Because the relationship was long-distance, and he was visiting me for a week, I thought I should hold on to this idea until I spent some time with him in person and figured out how I felt. In the end, I knew it was over. I told him I had fallen out of love with him, we both cried, it was a sad and painful time for us. Looking back, I do think that the thought of living with him full-time - as well as living somewhere new where I would have no family or friends around - was very frightening for me, and may have been a contributing factor in our breakup. I decided I wanted to take some time away from dating for a while. When I told him I wanted to take at least a couple years off from dating, he didn't believe me. He said he was sure I'd be with someone new in a few months.
In the end, the next time I was in an actual relationship with someone (which in this case i'm defining as a relationship that lasts more than a 3 dates), it was about a decade later. And again, we had the distance situation, tho we were much much closer, just an hour or so away. We had a very tumultuous relationship, which perhaps I'll talk about in another post sometime, but at the end of the day, I knew we were going to have a problem because neither of us wanted to move. After we split up, I was sad but hopeful - I felt like even though this was over, I'd finally had an actual relationship again and maybe I could finally get back on the horse and start dating like a regular person again.
Another decade later...
I joke, but this is actually true. I did go on dates during that time, but nothing ever went anywhere. I went on a lot of first dates that were ok. I even went on a handful of second dates that were ok. I met a guy who seemed to really like me, but didn't call for 2 years. That's another story for another day. But mostly I went on dates that were just OK. I didn't give up on dating, but I had been feeling resigned for a long time that it was unlikely that I would ever have a long-term relationship.
And for the most part... I was OK with that. There were a lot of things I really enjoyed about being single. I wasn't one of those single folks who mopes around all the time being sad and depressed that I'm not in a relationship. I loved the autonomy. I loved that I could go out of town whenever I felt like it, visit friends, have sex, stay up all night, watch whatever I wanted on tv whenever I wanted, spend money on whatever i wanted, etc. The freedom was nice. For the most part, I enjoyed my life. Yes, sometimes I was really sad and lonely. Sometimes I would look longingly at happy couples. Sometimes I would cry myself to sleep at night. But other times, when friends couldn't go somewhere or do something because of their significant other, or when they had to do stuff they didn't want to do, I was really appreciative of my singleness. The relationships of some couples I knew made me truly thankful to not be in a relationship like theirs.
I lived by myself for 14 years. I was never good with roommates. In college, the longest I lived with a roommate was one semester. And I loathed having to share a tiny dorm room with a stranger. I had a total of 3 roommates. Two moved out and we were both relieved. The third I got along OK with but her BFF from high school's roommate had dropped out and she really wanted to live with her, so that worked out OK. After that I always made sure I had no roommate. In high school I had gone on a couple of trips through school, and I also hated sharing a room with friends. I figured I'm just a hard person to live with.
When you spend a good chunk of your adult life being single and living alone, it's very hard to imagine sharing your space with someone else. I was also friends with a fellow introvert who told me that even though he loves his wife and kids, he still wishes he could live alone sometimes, and that the hardest thing about married life for him was having to live with someone.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that my housekeeping habits were borderline hoarding. And I'm really not exaggerating when I say that. I hardly ever had people over, and when I did, they were generally horrified at how bad it looked. There was a guy I had a FWB relationship with, and he was always saying that he was going to come over with garbage bags or call one of those tv shows and have them come clean up. We stopped seeing each other before I met my bf, but we still talked occasionally. When I started dating my boyfriend, I told my former FWB about it and asked him to imagine a scenario in which we were dating and he had come to my house for the first time and found it in the condition it was usually in. He, a teetotaler, said he would have turned around, walked out, gone to a bar, had a drink, and never talked to me again.
Needless to say, I was terrified to bring him around the first time. I did a ton of cleaning, and though it was certainly not clean, it was... passable. cleaner than it had been in many years. That was another concern. I hate cleaning and it brings me zero joy to get stuff cleaned up. I know some people don't enjoy the act of cleaning but love to have a clean house, or feel accomplished when they've cleaned up a room or a space or whatnot. I don't feel like that in any way. I hate the act of cleaning, and having a clean (or cleaner) space does not make me happy. I was very worried about what it would mean for me to try to maintain some level of clean.
