Hooray, you and your guy are shacking up! Cue the movie montage of a happy couple strolling through Pinterest-worthy apartments, making knowing eye contact while signing a lease, and celebrating move-in day with a Thai take-out picnic on the floor of the new pad. Sadly, the road to cohabitation usually isn’t so picture perfect.
Case in point: My most recent novel, If We Lived Here, is all about a couple’s apartment hunt that starts optimistically but soon devolves into a nightmare of bedbugs, psycho landlords, and Hurricane Sandy flooding. Yep, the book is based partly on personal experience. But anyone who’s searched for a home with a partner can likely relate to the many hazards of the ordeal:
1. Being asked very personal questions by complete strangers. How committed are you? How often do you fight? What will you do about the lease if you break up? Hello, gross violations of your privacy. Of course, you’ll respond politely and good-naturedly so as not to piss off your potential future landlords.
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2. …And being grilled about when you’ll get engaged by everyone you do know. There’s something about moving into one new life stage that prompts people to push you right along to the next one. And when your friends, family members, and coworkers ask you with that obnoxious glint in their eye when you’ll nab the ring on your finger, they actually expect you to answer.
3. Receiving e-mails about studies that claim people who cohabitate before marriage aren’t as happy as people who did. No matter that you didn’t request the sender’s opinion on the subject—or that they themselves are divorced, or single, or don’t seem very happy in their own marriages.
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4. Finding out each other’s financial secrets. No more hiding your spotty credit history or the loans left over from that time you tried grad school. No more kidding yourself that he’s earning six figures…or that his frugal ways probably mean he’s saving bucket-loads. All money matters will come out in the open, making you feel more vulnerable than when you first saw each other naked.
5. Feeling more like business partners than romantic ones. Forget sexts—all your text messages will be about square footage, shower pressure, and the distance to the nearest supermarket. And forget romance—your new turn-ons will be a waived real-estate agent’s fee and access to an on-site washer-dryer.
6. Experiencing clouded judgment, thanks to your desperation to just share an address already. The bathtub’s in the kitchen? So what, as long as your purse doesn’t have to double as a toiletry bag every time you decide to spend the night at your guy’s place. The apartment measures 100 square feet and has no natural light? No prob, as long as you won’t be stuck buying underwear at the pharmacy again when you forgot you didn’t have any clean pairs at his place.
7. Volunteering to help him other pack…with the ulterior motive of ditching the stuff of his you definitely don’t want in your shared space. Your vision of a shared home doesn’t include his ratty old futon. And now that you’re thinking about it, maybe he stashed away the comprehensive collection of Harry Potter memorabilia you can’t seem to find anywhere.
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8. Morphing into a commitment-phobe—or becoming attached at the hip.
The sudden realness of being about to live under the same roof can affect your couple style in surprising ways. You could begin craving nightly happy hours with girlfriends or adopt first-person-plural couple speak (“We loved that movie! We’re thrilled with our new place!â€)
9. Seeing each other at your worst.
Nothing breeds crankiness like the exhaustion and the sweatiness of moving, the lack of Wi-Fi in the new place, and the not knowing where any of your stuff is among the sea of boxes. But the thing about stress and tough times is that they can ultimately bring you closer. Before long you’ll shower, unpack, call the cable guy, and then it’s home sweet home!
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Lindsey J. Palmer is the author of the novels If We Lived Here and Pretty in Ink. She worked as an editor in the magazine industry for seven years, most recently as features editor at Self, and previously at Redbook and Glamour. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, she earned a Master of Arts in English Education from Teachers College at Columbia University and currently teaches A.P. Literature and Creative Writing in Manhattan. She lives in Brooklyn with her fiancé. Visit her website at lindseyjpalmer.com.