The Wonderful Peril Of Living With A S.O.

By Caitrin Sneed on February 25, 2015

If you live with a significant other during undergrad, chances are it’s your first time, their first time, or a first for both of you to live with a significant other.

While living with your person can be amazing, awesome and fun (if you are both ready for this step, it’s a mature healthy relationship, you have some economic stability, blah blah blah) it can also change your relationship in ways you never expected.

And when you first move in together your apartment will look like Noah’s Ark: two of everything.

Photo via Caitrin Sneed

I guarantee that upon moving in you will fight at least once about the most absurd thing you can think of. This is not a bad thing and this does not mean you made a mistake moving in together.

This means you are now seeing this person a ridiculous amount and you have nowhere to ‘go home’ to if you are getting annoyed, because ‘home’ is where they live too. It’s the next step of a grown-up relationship, and like anything, with a new game comes a new set of rules.

Here are some of the rules I have learned for living with a significant other … mostly by making all of these mistakes at some point.

1. Balance your passive/active hanging out time.

Living together means you will see a lot of each other. This is great (and if that doesn’t sound great, maybe don’t move in together) but also a pitfall. While you may not think you need to set aside specific time to hang out with the person you live with since you see them so much, you do.

Passive hanging out time is when you are working individually on something but in the same room, eating dinner at the same time but not dinner you made or ordered in together or doing anything that roommates who aren’t even that friendly would do.

These things are not bad; in fact I think it’s romantic to share some of the more mundane moments of life with my person, but this should not take over your relationship. Passive hanging out time does not count.

You need to actively choose to spend time together like you did before living together. Active hanging out time can be going out to dinner, seeing movies, parties, concerts, or any of those normal date-activities. Active hanging out time can also be sitting at home watching Netflix.

Active hanging out time does not have to be Valentine’s Day worthy romance, but it does involve explicitly telling your person, “I want to hang out with you tonight.”

It seems basic but without this, you and your partner can quickly feel like every time you hang out with each other it is just by default because you live together and not because you really want to see their face.

2. Show your best self every now and then.

It is really easy to come home from work or school and vent about shit for 40 minutes straight, at least it is for me. While one of the cool things about living with a S.O. is having someone you love (who also loves you and will put up with you when you are like this) right there to listen to you, this can be a pitfall.

Just because they are the first person you see when you get home doesn’t mean they should have to deal with 100 percent of your unprocessed complaints on life. If you are constantly dumping everything on them this can get not only old, but also burdensome.

Make sure that there is a balance of you complaining to them and you complaining to your BFF or mom so that every now and then your S.O. can really get the best version of you.

I’m not talking about some fake, no problems exist in the world version of you, but the version of you that they might see on a date night.

It’s the version of you that is mentally and emotionally available to be in a 10 minute twilight zone where nothing else exists except you two … before then getting into the awesome conversations you always have which probably will include you confiding in them about your life issues.

Key word though: confide, not “end of the day I won’t even care about this in 5 minutes but I’m still going to distress you with it, complaining.”

3. Be honest about your need for alone time.

It is totally okay to not always want to hang out. It’s actually very healthy to have your own lives. Hopefully, everyone knows this, but it is good to acknowledge it.

When you live with a significant other you should develop an understanding with each other that if you say, “I kind of want to do my own thing tonight” it doesn’t mean you’re mad, you’re not being passive aggressive, and you don’t need to talk about a problem with the relationship.

If you know that the two of you are hanging out all day tomorrow and tonight you want to go grab coffee and read by yourself, that should not be a big deal. Alone time is good for everyone.

Besides, missing someone every now and then is way sexier than being attached at the hip.

4. Say thank you.

Something like taking out the trash is not really that praiseworthy, but saying thank you for the little things not only lets your partner know you are noticing all the small things they do but also that,

you are happy to be teammates in this whole “being a functional adult with an apartment” thing.

Small moments of appreciation for boring things eventually add up to be a lot bigger and more meaningful than some romantic gesture on your birthday.

Don’t be thankful that they are a part of your life in Facebook pictures at big events. Be thankful that they are a part of your functional day-to-day life and that if they were not there, your life would be drastically different.

5. Have a sense of humor.

Sometimes living with a S.O. is hard, but it is also fun if you keep a sense of humor about the whole crazy concept of relationships and cohabitation.

On the off chance that my own S.O. is ‘reading’ this, (meaning scrolling through and reading the quotes in bold, instead of actually reading the whole article) let’s play a game and see if we can get them to do the dishes that they’ve been putting off all week.

DO YOUR DISHES! SERIOUSLY. YOUR PARTNER WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER (AND TOTALLY DO THAT THING YOU KEEP BRINGING UP). NOTHING IS SEXIER THAN SOMEONE DOING DISHES. 

Happy Cohabitation,
CKSneed.
 

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