What Living Together Really Is Like

My Home is my safe place. its where I feel most comfortable. I can recover from a long day and enjoy a slow evening, host guests and just be. I'm more than grateful to be able to live in my beautiful prewar flat with tall ceilings, beautiful hardwood floors and all be beautiful wooden windows. when I walked in to view it, I fell in love instantly and knew it was my home. that was 4 years ago and I can't quite believe how long I have been here and how happy I still am with my place. my boyfriend actually helped me move in and it was just a few months later when he unpacked his boxes too and all of the sudden, without big planning or hunting for places together, we lived in the same flat. it was a one if the best days and looking back, I can't believe how easy going we were about it. I love living with my boyfriend, don't get me wrong but living together is not a big glittery cloud of love and happiness. it's bickering, negotiating and ultimately making it work. it's a great adventure and most days, its a big sleepover with your best friend but other days you might just want to be by yourself. I can only speak for myself and how it is living with a man so it might be different for you, but lets talk about what living together really is like:

no prime time

there's a concept about dating and the time you spend together when you don't have a joined living space and its what I like calling "prime time". usually, when you are in a relationship but have separate places to live, you decide when you want to see each other. how many times that is up to you. when you are in the sweet, sweet honeymoon phase it's basically every free second and when you had the busiest week of your life, it might be just an afternoon or the Saturday night date and sleep over that kept you going all week. it's your prime time. you actively choose to spend time together and it's cherished. when you feel too tired, stressed or are in the worst mood or simply want to be by yourself, you can be and that totally fine and in a good relationship is respected by your partner. when you live together, there is no prime time unless you actively set prime time but you will see your partner after the worst day of work, after a bicker with your sibling, when you have the worlds worst migraine and when you don't want anyone around you because you live together. yes, being with the person you love can help you lift the bad moods and can be just the support you need but it can also stress the hell out of you. its a case of serious learning when your partner needs your words of wisdom and when its just better to be quiet and let them be and especially, in the beginning, it can lead to some arguments and is something everyone has to work out for themselves and oh boy, has it taken us some snapping and adjusting to find out what's right.

all the mess

so I can only speak for me being in a loving relationship and living with a male so if its different when living with the same gender or any other way, feel free to let me know your experience but god, i did not know that my partner and also my friends boyfriends have no idea about simple household chores. doing a simple load of washing can become a crisis by thinking its okay to add a bright red t-shirt to a load of white blouses or washing a pure wool jumper regularly. it has all happened in my house. I didn't know that when my boyfriend installed is other girlfriend, his ps4, I would have practically adopted a toddler. I don't know how many times I had to remind him to wash is lunch Tupperware so it won't mold or that its no crime to put his cereal bowl into the sink before leaving for work. I had emergency calls from him asking if its normal that the whole washing machine is filled with foam and bubbles because he literally put half a bottle of Ariel in it. its kind of cute but sometimes the infinite socks on the floors and the good work pants that just get dropped as soon as he comes home and probably would stay there with perfect wholes to put the feet back into until the next morning or eternity just tip me over the edge. why do I know how to take care of my flat and my male partner doesn't or does he just not care? we have come a long way since he moved in but there are still little errors happening and leave my boyfriend absolutely confused and me gobsmacked. for us, set chores he just does work best and introducing new ones slowly are the way to go and that straight up sounds like I'm raising a puppy and not living with a grown man. there are still things that don't work with my boyfriend. food shopping is one of them because it always looks like we are hosting a kids birthday party after.

learn to respect

to me, respect is one of the main factors of a good relationship and not only a loving one. respecting others opinions, their needs and respecting what someone feels comfortable and not comfortable with is a need for me to not only thrive in a relationship but also to just be able to stay with someone. needless to say that I couldn't live together with someone when I feet any lack of respect. living together means respecting your partner in a whole new way and it can be a task to tackle. it starts with the way someone gets ready for bed or work. maybe in a way you wouldn't do it yourself and for me, took a while to understand and work out how we both can have a peaceful and energizing morning as well as a relaxing evening. it also means respecting someone's needs of lone time and I need loads of that. I knew my boyfriend and I could live together when I was able to have lone time when he was in the room with me, in fact, he's sitting on the other end of the sofa right now and we haven't talked in about an hour but it's not an uncomfortable silence. we just like having lone time and just doing what we please without being interrupted by each other. we both aren't all too social when coming back to work and our conversations usually start about an hour, maybe two after we both got in from work. we had to learn to respect each other in that way. maybe you need conversation right when you come back home or don't need as much lone time but that's what you have to find out for yourself and learn to respect even more.

it's a constant compromise

there used to be a show on German tv which was basically all about young couples for friends moving into their first flat together and it showed the whole moving and renovation process. I always loved my interiors and even back then, seeing young men installing displays for their toy car collections or football trophies they won as a 6-year-old. said displays would always be in the hallway or living room and it gave me absolute horrors. don't get me wrong, if my partner would win the Olympics, I would build a whole room to display this success but we take our interiors very seriously over here. luckily, my boyfriend pretty much lets me do whatever I want but there are still a few things I would have different but it just won't work. its all about compromising about everything. if it was for me, I didn't need a huge tv and no big sound system, ps4 with tons of games and what not but my boyfriend loves it and he should have it his home. maybe we can negotiate again because a place with a man cave sounds very good to me but for now, it's all good. the constant compromise comes with it and although it can be tough, its worth it.