Living together is an incredibly exciting milestone — a feeling of security and stability, and a sense of relief at no longer having to have half your stuff at someone else’s apartment at any given time. However, it’s also a delicate inflection point — it’s a time when a whole host of new relationship skills and strategies will be called upon, many of which we’ve never been taught to prioritize. What do you need in your relationship before you’re ready to move in together? Here’s what I recommend asking yourself.
Are you comfortable talking about money in your relationship?
Living together means sharing lots of things: a bathroom sink, responsibility for doing the dishes, and decision making about style and décor. More importantly, though, it means sharing bills and household financials. Couples who are focused mostly on the day-to-day of sharing physical space may find themselves surprised by how challenging financial conversations end up being.
What’s so hard about sharing finances? After all, aren’t there apps and stuff for that now? There are, and there are plenty of ways to make the logistics of splitting bills or rent more seamless. However, none of them can do the work of having a direct conversation about finances — that’s up to you, and many of us find talking directly about money challenging. Moving in together means deciding who will pay which bills, and how you’ll coordinate — are you ready for a joint bank account? If one of you makes more money than the other, will they pay a higher proportion of bills or rent? It also means having constant, ongoing conversations about values and priorities. Do you both feel it’s worth the money to buy all-organic vegetables, or does this constitute an unjustified expense? What if your pet needs a $10,000 medical procedure to survive — can you navigate the conversation about whether to spend the money?
None of these are impossible situations to navigate — but you’ll be well served to have at least some of them before moving in together, and ensure that you have the communication skills and emotional resilience to manage them.
Do you consistently manage conflict and repair well?
Conflict is an inevitable part of every relationship, even the healthiest and happiest. Many people find that conflict becomes more challenging when they move in together — not even necessarily because they’re fighting more, although the stress of sharing domestic chores and schedules may influence that — but because they haven’t ever developed skills around actively resolving conflict and seeking repair afterwards.
When couples live separately, they may feel as if they’re resolving conflict, or at least ending it, when what they’re actually doing is just spending time apart until they feel ready to let the issue go. When you have a fight and then each go home to your own apartment for a few days, it’s easier to cool off and take perspective — or to still be upset about the issue but decide it’s not worth bringing up again. When you live together, that option is no longer available — you’re in the same house indefinitely no matter how upset with each other you are. Skills to actually work through the issue are crucial.
And even when an issue has been “worked through” as much as is possible, and a solution has been agreed upon, hurt feelings and sensitivity often remain — it’s also important to work on your skills for active repair after conflict, letting you both return to baseline with stable nervous systems after conflict.
Are you familiar with each others’ families and how to support each other?
It’s always important to bring awareness and intentionality to the question of your long-term partner’s family. Our families inform our attachment styles, and our ongoing relationships with them as adults can have major impacts on our relationships. Building a relationship with your partner’s family if they’re on good terms or supporting your partner through the difficulties if they aren’t is a building block of a long-term relationship. Mediating the relationship between your own family and your partner is also a priority.
However, those things aren’t necessarily easy — and living together can heighten these challenges. Whereas you may be expected to have occasional dinners or visits with family, maybe spend a holiday sometimes, when you live separately, living with a partner changes this dynamic somewhat. You may be responsible for hosting parents when they come to visit, or even hosting large holidays for extended family. If your parents are aging, the idea of having elderly parents move in with you at some point may be on the table. It’s great to know as much as you can about the family dynamics at play and have established strategies and communication around dealing with them before moving in together.
Do you have a sense of your needs for sharing space?
Living with a partner is a lot like living with a roommate — with all the intensity of romantic attachment and sexual dynamics layered on top. This means that the mundane logistics of sharing space — trading chores, deciding what TV show to watch, taking turns cooking — can quickly become much more loaded and challenging than they would be with a platonic roommate.
This isn’t a reason to not move in together, but it is helpful to go in knowing as much as you can about your needs, preferences and boundaries. For instance, if you’re someone who needs some alone or quiet time during the day, that’s helpful to state at the outset to help avoid fights about why you don’t want to talk about your day at work as soon as you get home. If you/your partner are working from home, frank discussions about your schedule and accommodations might be helpful — is working together in the same office fun and cute, or will it be stressful for you?
The most common grounds for conflict for couples living together are in/frequency of sexual intimacy, unequal sharing of domestic chores, and conflict over sleep schedules. Do you and your partner have a working sense of what “clean” means to the other person? What does it look like for you for household chores to be managed equitably? Is it worth considering sleeping in separate bedrooms to give you both more space and flexibility when it comes to sleep?
Are you ready to be intentional about connection?
One of the most common statements from couples who move in together was that they expected connection to be effortless — after all, you see each other every day! — and that they’re surprised to find how much effort they ultimately need to put in. Although it may seem counterintuitive that you don’t feel as organically, effortlessly connected in the same house as you did when you lived separately, think about it this way: you used to have to actively plan seeing each other, and felt a jolt of excitement and novelty every time — now there’s no differentiation between your relationship and your daily routine.
Does this mean that you’re trapped in a boring relationship with the “spark” gone as soon as you decide to move in together? No, not at all. It just means that the elements that used to be external elements of your relationship — intention, novelty, the progression of learning more about each other — are now things you’ll need to do on purpose, inside your relationship. This means making intentional plans to invest in your relationship — whether it’s “date nights” or just a tender ritual of kissing goodbye each morning. It means deliberately cultivating novelty by having parts of your lives you do without each other, and get to report back to each other and find out more about later. And it means deliberately maintaining your curiosity about the other person, instead of lapsing into indifference, assuming you know everything about them or that they’ve stayed exactly the same in every way since you met.
Recommended Books:
Wealthily Ever After: How to Talk About Money in a Relationship
Fight Right: How Successful Couples Turn Conflict Into Connection
Relationship Skills Workbook
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