Moving in with someone can be a terrifying, but gratifying experience if you’re with the right person, and the right point in your life. While co-habitating has some amazing perks, it also has some potential risks that can be the fastest route to ruining your relationship. Here’s the vital questions you need to ask to figure out if moving in together is the right move to make, or the worst idea ever.
1. First things first: why are you moving in together? Is it about convenience, or having help cleaning up, or economic convenience. Make sure you’re on the same page about that, if you think that marriage is around the corner and he’s clueless.
2. How will you handle your finances? Money is a big divider in relationships, although when you’re in that dreamy, in love spot, it’s a bit awkward to talk about. If you can push past that awkwardness and discuss managing finances in a mature and responsible way, co-habitating might not be such a bad idea.
3. Have you traveled together successfully for long amounts of time? If you can’t travel without getting into a fight, moving in together might be a risky step.
4. Are you social or introverted? Are your social lives too different to live together? If one of you is constantly having friends over without asking and the other is a quiet homebody, the harmony is bound to be broken sometimes soon.
5. What are your family and friends saying about it? You’ve seen it time and time again: your friends and family are almost always right. Asking three or four loved ones who have diverse opinions can give a pretty good indication of whether your decision to move in together is the right one.
6. Are you comfortable with confrontation, with your partner? If you’re not good at putting a fight in the past, when you’re living together you can’t really just take off for a few days – you need to push past the confrontation into a solution rather than sulking.
7. Are you open to move into a new space that will be neutral, and not your home or his? If you move into his place, or vice versa, one of you might feel like it’s more your space than the other’s. The experience should start off equal, not territorial. Sharing is caring!
8. What are the expectations of different responsibilities? Divvying up chores are a big part of living together, and if you can’t reach harmonious agreements that you’v decided on before sharing a space, it can cause a lot of conflict.
9. On a related note, is he super messy? Being an unpaid maid while living with someone is not the same as being two mutually responsible individuals. Someone might clean up nicely for when their girl comes over, but you can’t hide anything when you live together, so if your home transforms into a pig sty, don’t say we didn’t warn you!
10. Are you willing to give up your apartment independence? When you’re in love, you have to decide if you’re emotionally and intellectually mature enough to sacrifice some freedom and space in the name of love and compromise.
11. Does your partner have lifestyle habits that are a pet peeve for you? A little annoyance can turn into relationship road block when you live together and feel like your lifestyles aren’t in sync. i.e: smoking, staying up late, being an early bird, etc.
12. Are you ok with letting your boyfriend see you at your worst? And vice versa? You can’t aways get out of bed half an hour before him to doll yourself up. This isn’t just a no-makeup deal – when you have food poisoning, he’s going to be witness to that too.
13. Does one of you value alone time more than the other? You can often feel a little suffocated if you share a space with someone, and healthy separation disappears. Think about breathing space and the importance of it in your relationship.
14. Finally and most importantly, do you guys have practice communicating and being honest with each other? If you won’t have a good track record of trust and honesty, living together is going to be a bumpy road.
