When dating, it seems as if you just can’t get enough of your boyfriend or girlfriend. As if spending every waking minute together between classes and club meetings isn’t enough, you want to spend every minute that you’re not awake together as well. So you decide to bring up moving in together. You two practically live with each other and you probably have a toothbrush at their place anyways, so why not move in the rest of your belongings?
When you bring it up to your friends you may get a few mixed answers. Each person in each relationship is different, so it really depends on whether or not you want to do it. Moving in with your lover is a big deal. Weigh the pros and cons. Thinking about a few of these things before taking your relationship to the next level may help you decide whether or not to move in with your guy or girl.
By moving in together, you two will really get to know each other in a different light. This goes beyond knowing what their favorite color or type of food is. You’ll find out how responsible they are and also what their habits are in the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. You’ll find out if this is the person you actually want to be with and if you come to find out that you can’t live with them, all you have to do is move out.
Too much time together can also bring up a lot of annoyances. Maybe you don’t like the fact that he leaves the toilet seat up or the fact that he leaves his dirty clothes everywhere. Maybe he doesn’t like the fact that you are OCD about the bathroom counter being completely clean or that you color coordinate your closet. Although these are little things, they can add onto bigger things and stress you out more than you would like.
But don’t let possible trouble in paradise get you down. Junior Catherine Tran from the University of Texas in Arlington loves to spend time with her boyfriend. By choosing to live together, they both get to eat dinner together every night and snuggle up with each other to watch a movie right after. They have that sense of security that they are always there for each other and that little taste of how it is to share your life with the person you love.
“The best part about living with my boyfriend is being able to wake up by his side every morning,” Tran said. “I’m not really ‘home’ until he’s with me.
However, some couples would rather wait to get married before living with each other. Not because they don’t want to live with each other, but because they’d rather take the traditional route and save it for marriage. It brings a different kind of excitement into the picture and will give you a sense of you two going through an actual change in the relationship.
“I feel like a lot of people rush into it. When that happens, they end up hating each other,” Myles Dixon, a sophomore from Texas State University said. “Living with someone is a big step. I feel like it makes the situation more tense and pressures you to take even bigger steps.”
Planning to move in with your lover is a huge step in every relationship. For some couples, cohabitation works out great but for others, they’d rather wait. If you’re trying to decide whether or not you and your significant other should take your relationship to the next level and live together, make sure there is open communication between you two the whole time.
