Being in a long term relationship is so different to when you’re first getting together, especially when you move in together. I’ve been living with my boyfriend technically for three years. The first year we lived in separate rooms with five other people, the second year we shared a room but still lived with five other people, and now we have a flat together. When we first ‘moved in together’, I was only 20 and my friends were all “oh, won’t that be weird? Isn’t that too serious?” but it just made sense as we were friends beforehand, and in the same friendship group! But I know living with a boy can be quite scary, so I thought I’d go into what it’s really like. For me, at least.
You spend more time together, but less quality time together
Scott and I are both laptop addicts. He plays games, I blog, so most evenings we’ll be doing our own separate things whilst being in the same room. It’s easy to take the time you have together for granted as there is so much of it, so we try and make an effort to go out together or do something non laptop based. We both have Sundays off, so if we’re not too skint or feeling lazy we’ll go and explore Leeds, and we’ll binge watch TV shows (currently American Horror Story) together on evenings when we can’t be bothered to do anything outsidey.
Being romantic gets pushed aside for being comfortable
I’ve been with Scott for nearly four years now, and we have both definitely slacked on the romantic front. We’re both pretty lazy, so even when we do make wining and dining plans, half the time we’ll cancel last minute in favour of spending the night in watching films and eating food. Even things like getting surprise cutesy gifts get less frequent, and anything that requires effort to be romantic tends to get delayed until ‘tomorrow’ an awful lot. If I think we’ve been slacking too much, I’ll say something and we’ll make an extra effort to be a bit more cutesy, but I am actually not really a romantic person so swapping surprise flowers for being able to sit around with a face mask on and an oil treatment in my hair,in my comfiest and rattiest PJs I an okay trade off!
Although you do lose the big romantic gestures, you do get smaller and more meaningful ones. I was ill recently and Scott watched Disney films with me, went out and bought me ice cream and cooked me dinner. It might not be a candle lit dinner but it’s just as thoughtful, and I appreciate it a lot more.
You notice your differences
I am the world’s messiest person, Scott is a neat freak. Things like this only became really apparent, and a bit of an issue, when we moved in together. When you spend all your time together, little things add up and it’s easy to bicker over something stupid. I find the best way of dealing with this is by being honest, rather than not saying anything and one day exploding, and trying to make an effort to not piss your other half off. In my case, this means not leaving my makeup all over the floor and forgetting about it!
Your time sleeping together, really is just sleeping
When you first start seeing someone, sex is pretty much constant but when you’re living together it definitely slows down a bit. I think partly because when you’ve got constant access to something, you get lazy with it! And partly because when you’re working long days or are stressed or tired, it’s easy to call it a day the minute your head hits the pillow. It sounds a bit unromantic, but deciding how often you’d like to have sex a week, or even planning a day (whether you decide to keep it a surprise or not!) helps to keep the ‘spark’ alive and stop life from getting in the way.
It can be a bit frightening to move in with someone at first, but you’ll learn how to balance quality time together with time apart so that you become really close, but don’t get fed up of each other. I personally don’t think you’ll ever be as close as when you’ve lived together and seen each other at your worst. Scott sees me at my craziest, most hyperactive days when I’m running around the flat singing made up songs, and he’ll join in to make me laugh. If I’m having a bad day, he’ll pick me up a KitKat when he’s at the shop because he knows they’re my favourite. He doesn’t look at me like I’m insane when I’m a hormonal mess, or judge me when I complain I’m fat whilst simultaneously eating ice cream. He even lets me drag him into face masks and detoxes because he knows it’ll make me happy. To be honest, he is probably a much better boyfriend than I am girlfriend! But we’ve both got a lot closer since moving in.
