What To Expect When You Move In With Your Boyfriend

As I’m sure you can imagine, since I moved to Boston with Danny, we do live together. It’s both of our first time to live with a significant other and it’s safe to say – neither of us knew what to expect. Granted, when we lived in San Diego, we spent a lottttt of time together and staying with each other but living together was definitely a big life change. And yes, you’re constantly surrounded by images you see below.

Moving in with your boyfriend for the first time

First off, it sounds romantic and wonderful but the bottom line is you can’t be cute every second of every day. So yes, they will have to see you when your hair is a greasy mess and you’re doing hair masks, face masks, nails, and the whole nine yards. First piece of advice: make sure you’re comfortable enough with each other for this. Yes, Danny still looks at me like I’m an alien when I walk out in a face mask. Do I care? Absolutely not. 

…Boys are gross. I grew up with a brother so I kind of knew what to expect, and I’ll save the embarrassment and just leave it at that.

It’s hard. When imaging living together, I thought about good things, like always getting to cuddle and have movie nights, cook dinner together. Not the parts where you’re in each other’s faces all the time, personal space? Forget it! You learn each other’s quirks and what sets them off real fast…because you have to.

You can spend more on rent since you will be splitting it. We live in South Boston where since we are sharing rent, we are able to have a spare bedroom for visitors and have a larger place. If it was just me, I’d probably be living in a shoe box or sharing a room with someone else!

When it comes down to it, it’s all about compromise. When I moved in with Danny I realized I have minor OCD (Yes laughing at myself over this) but I need the pots and pans a certain way, pillows a certain way, just to name a few. And I find it very annoying when little things like that aren’t put back “correctly” but what I also learned is, that’s not the big stuff. I compromise on putting pillows the way I want – for him actually putting pillow cases on! Little things like that you have to be willing to compromise on otherwise no one will win.

Going off that, you will learn so much about them. I thought I knew Danny before we lived together, and now I realize I knew next to nothing. Because I learned his routines, his weird habits, how he can’t read something in his head. It’s almost funny because you start to put two and two together so you can anticipate what they’ll do next or why they do certain things. Although boys are just a whole different breed.

…and yourself. If you’re anything like me, you over think and over analyze everything. So I think, why do I do this, or why do I get upset over this. It’s weird to say, but I feel like I’ve grown and understood myself better as well.

You’ll find out quickly if it works or not. You hear it all the time, we moved in together and shit hit the fan. And I believe it, you go from having your space, your things, your time. To everything being shared. Of course, you still have your friends and alone time, but it’s not how it used to be. So it either works – or it doesn’t.

Overall, it’s something that has definitely taken our relationship to the next level, and in my opinion it’s not something I feel like we could have skipped over. But if you’re thinking about doing this: you’re never going to be fully ready and you can’t prepare yourself to the extent you think you can.

Need more questions answered? Just ask, as always!

~ Amanda