3 Important Things to Talk About Before You Move In Together

The Unexpected Challenges of Moving In With Your Partner

When you first move in together, whether you are newly married or not, you will have some new challenges as a couple as you navigate differences in time, money, and stuff. If you are thinking about moving in together, do your best to cover these bases beforehand, so that your first months together go as smoothly as possible!

1. TIME

Many couples who aren’t living together see each other a couple of times during the week, and big chunks of time on the weekend. You each have your own space, and even if you are used to having a roommate, you are also used to having your own room where you can retreat and have some peace and quiet.

The change to being constantly together in one apartment may seem stifling for one or both of you. Many people aren’t even aware of what is happening, they just feel anxious and unhappy. A lot of people feel guilty when they suddenly resent their partner just for being there. Frustration, anxiety, and guilt do not make for a happy relationship!

Before you move in together:

• Clarify the amount of time you each want to spend together—either in each other’s company, doing separate activities, or giving each other your full attention. How many nights each week are you going to have dinner together? How many nights each week do you want to spend apart—maybe having dinner with friends, meeting the gang to watch the game at a sports bar, or possibly just having a night at home to work or do a project by yourself.

• Identify a “coming-home-after-work” ritual. Think about the ways you like to unwind after work, and how much time you need apart before coming together for the evening. I generally suggest that couples agree to meet immediately with a kiss and a hug, and then take some time to unwind separately—each in their own way. It’s not hard to honor different personality styles if you know what the expectations are. If you don’t discuss them beforehand, though, it’s easy to move into frustration and anger.

•  Note: If at all possible, take your alone time in separate rooms. This is an easy way to avoid judgment when you are scrolling through Instagram stories instead of talking to your partner about their big day at work.

2. MONEY

You may not only have different incomes, but different values around how you spend your money. Couples often agree to split household expenses, and many even come to an agreement on a percentage split that reflects their respective incomes. What they often don’t anticipate is how much resentment can quickly arise from different values around how money is spent.

For example, say you are splitting the household expenses, but one of you wants to buy only organic food from the local market, and the other prefers to buy off-brand bargains from the grocery chain store, you will have to figure out what to buy and how to split it. If one of you hates to cook and feels it’s worth the extra expense to order meals delivered most evenings, and the other one would rather eat popcorn and beer for dinner when they are too tired to cook, rather than pay the extra expense for a delivery service.

Before you move in together:

• Decide which expenses you will split, and what proportion each of you will contribute. Many couples find it easiest to have a separate joint account for these expenses, to which each partner contributes their share. Most common expenses in this category are rent, food, household goods, utilities, internet service, and pet expenses. Other categories to discuss are entertainment expenses, traveling, household insurance, gifts for families and mutual friends.

•  Be sure to take some time to discuss values that underlie the expenses you will share, such as food buying, entertainment, travel, and gifts.

•  Beware: if you are contributing unequally to the shared fund, the partner who contributes less will be open to judgment for the things they buy from their personal account—that’s just human nature! If your partner is contributing a smaller amount than you are, and then they buy something with their personal account that you consider to be frivolous, be careful of your response! Talk to them about this at a time when you are not feeling angry and tell them your feelings (hurt? resentful?) and your thoughts (they could possibly contribute more to the joint fund than they already are). Know that in any partnership, each partner needs to be able to spend a certain amount of money without the scrutiny of the other partner, or they will begin to feel trapped and controlled.

3. STUFF

If you like your apartment to look like a Pottery Barn catalog, and your partner prefers “early college dorm room” style, then who pays for that $2000 sofa you want for the living room? Do you need to have nice curtains, rugs, and kitchen supplies? These small decisions can be the source of plenty of arguments and resentment when couples move in together.

I have seen many cases where one partner is SO READY to nest, and wants to spend a lot of time and money decorating the new place. The other partner is taken completely by surprise, because this is not at all what their partner’s previous apartment looked like! They had no idea they were going to be expected to split such high decorating expenses. The partner who did all the planning and decorating then resents that their partner is enjoying their beautiful new apartment but is not willing to contribute to the expense of it, or to spend an entire Sunday putting together that furniture you ordered!

Maybe you like to have things neat and orderly, but your partner has So. Much. Stuff. There are bicycles and hockey sticks and baseball cards and photography equipment and ugly beer mugs from trips long ago. Where is it all supposed to go?

Maybe you are more laid-back about straightening up, and would rather spend your time talking or watching a show together—but your partner likes things super-tidy and they are not happy that you are so “lazy” or “messy”. People rarely have the same idea of what “cleaned up” looks like, and labels are quickly made and thrown around. “OCD” meets “Hoarder” pretty quickly when styles clash.

Before you move in together:

• Decide how much money you want to spend on new furnishings and household goods. What are your values when it comes to the things that you have in your home? Which things are a priority for your budget? Do you want to spring for a set of All-Clad pots and pans, a sous-vide cooker, an Instapot, and a new MixMaster and then just buy your sofa from Craiglist, or do you want to order your furniture from Restoration Hardware and use your old kitchen goods until you build up the budget again? Or maybe you can afford both? Or neither. Make sure you are on the same page when it comes down to what stuff you are going to buy to set up your new digs.

•  Decide where your stuff is going to go. Will just your clothes alone fill the entire closet? Talk about who is going to get what space for clothes. What about books, electronics, supplies for hobbies, sporting goods? Will you need a storage space, even if temporarily until you get settled?

•  What about the stuff one of you hates?? Does he have a favorite chair that you just can’t stand? Do you have some art that he doesn’t want to ever have to look at? This is a good time to be brutally honest, before one of you ends up looking every single day at something they despise!

 There are no rules for how to decide what to do here, whatever works for the two of you is fine. You may be perfectly willing to look at that ugly chair if he agrees to hang your picture in the living room. Or you may decide that you don’t want anything in your home that both of you don’t love. Or maybe you can each take your items to your respective offices. Maybe he keeps that old chair but he is willing to have it reupholstered, and you hang your art in the second bedroom. Maybe he gets the entire second bedroom for all the stuff you hate, but you get to decorate the living room as you please. I’ve seen couples come up with many different kinds of solutions; the important thing is that you are willing to discuss it.

Conclusion:

Moving in together is going to be more complicated than you realize. Even if you are effectively already living together—much of his stuff is at your place already, or you almost always sleep over at his place—once the situation is permanent, the things that may not have seemed that important will suddenly feel much bigger. When you know you have to put up with “whatever it is” forever, it may bother you a lot more than you had anticipated!

The key to everything is communication, but this is so much easier said than done.

It is extremely hard to talk about things when you know (or have a strong suspicion) that you will disagree. Some people never talk about these things, which can work for quite a while before it blows up. Sometimes I see these couples in my office, but often they just split up— still unwilling to talk about the difficult subjects.

There are always going to be things on which you don’t agree. Things about which you will never agree. This is one of the hardest things to tolerate, but learning to tolerate differences is absolutely necessary for a healthy relationship. And by “tolerate” I don’t mean suffer in silence. I mean discuss, seek to understand, and respectfully agree to disagree.

Could you use some extra help talking about difficult issues with your partner?

Almost everyone can! I have extensive training in the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, which features a trademarked system for talking about difficult topics with your partner. I can teach you this system either in a session with your partner, or in individual therapy. Yep, you can learn to communicate with your partner even if you can’t get them to come to therapy with you! Just call me at 323-999-1537, or email me at amy@thrivetherapyla.com and schedule your free in-office or phone consultation today! We will chat about your specific needs and how I can help. I want you to have the great relationship you want and deserve!