My place, his place, our place.

I swore in my early 20s that I would never, ever, ever, (add 10 evers) would cohabitate with a man without being married.  I had a short awful experience that made me cringe at the memory so it was to my surprise (as well as friends and family) when we announced we were moving in together.

He moved in to my apartment (though smaller in footage) only because his lease expired first; but I felt I had the upper hand, it was MY apartment first and that made me think I would ease in to the sharing of space. 

Now when I was young and shared a roof with my love interest it was exciting!  I “played house” for a while and the thought of “living like adults” distracted me from obvious incompatibilities until they came and landed on my head like a ton of bricks. 

As a more mature adult the change from living alone to sharing a home was frightening. We had unofficially been living together, spending practically every evening with the other.  Now the “safety net” was going away.   We would no longer be guests at each other’s apartments!  We would not get another occasional “day off”.  We were going to be TOGETHER!

Yep, you guessed it.  I went in to panic mode.  I was in love and afraid I was also “in stupid”!  Could we really do it, live together?  I could not remember exactly what went wrong before!  Would I be able to tell right away if it was a mistake?  Would I lose my freedom, my independence, or did it just feel like too much of a commitment for me? I had to get a grip on myself!  Things had been so right why was I freaking out?

I reminded myself to just enjoy it and live the moment.  I tend to over analyze the tar out of things so I had to just go with it.  I had to stop doubting myself and stop trying to look too far in to the future.  If I spent my time worrying about things not working out I might just miss out on the memories of “it all working out”. 

All of his stuff got put in storage except clothes, some electronics and different media.  It drove him crazy wanting to reach for something and remembering it was boxed up a few miles away.  I had to give up one of my “hers” & “hers” closets and consolidate in to one. He commented on the amount of shoes I own enough times that I (being the smart ass that I am) pointed out that he at least did not have to pay for them.  He complained about not fitting in the smaller closet and most of the time (not always) I had to refrain from telling him he should perhaps stop digging in the storage and bringing home more things to cram in it.

 I think the biggest challenge for both was me calling it OUR place instead of MY, and him feeling like he wasn’t a guest. Thank goodness we were there only a short time before we moved in to a house that we could call OUR PLACE!