So you want to move in with your partner. Cohabitation has a lot of perks. Living together feels like a natural progression to most relationships. Splitting the expenses is always appealing, especially in this economy. And living with someone can offset the loneliness and isolation that characterizes the modern world.
You’ll have to reckon with risks, too. You might be intertwining finances and inviting legal considerations. There’s the risk of learning all your incompatibilities after sharing a home. What if you accelerate into “the roommate phase” and end up in a relationship full of boredom and resentment.
Cohabitation is sensible, but let’s talk about the things we need to consider before making the jump.
How To Figure Out the Timing of Moving in Together
While it’s always good to think about where and how your relationship will progress, timing is everything. Moving is one of the most stressful things anyone can go through. A mistimed relocation could leave you stranded between two worlds with no security. We don’t want that.
Your current living situation will feed into your next one. Prematurely breaking your lease can incur serious costs. It’ll need to happen when leases end. Some leases require the entire place to go to one leaseholder—I’ve seen a lot of shared university houses break up and leave one student holding the bag for a 4-bed 3-bath.
Your shared income will also make or break the move. Is your relationship earning enough to support your combined lifestyle? Cohabitation usually reduces costs, but there might be a spike during the move or while adjusting to a new home. How stable are those incomes, and can everyone here handle the stress of moving plus work? Moving costs can also be significant. I have a longstanding desire to move to a city, but I put down roots, and there’s no way I can exit without a moving company. Maybe your relationship is anchored by job prospects or proximity to family.
Even with stable incomes, your relationship needs preparation. You’ll be each other’s first line of support when the unforeseen happens. Unemployment, sudden disability, and mental health crises are timing issues because they usually happen at the worst time possible. This will be a jump-scare for some people, but what if a mental health crisis happens during the move?
Thinking about the risks and answering these questions is scary, but that’s why we do it before we’re committed. Weirdly, the best time to think about cohabitation is when you’re already in stable living environments. You can plan without the stress. That’s why I recommend you reflect on your motivations and abilities first.
Are you feeling the pressure to hit the cohabitation milestone? Do you want to share expenses and pool your resources? What if loneliness or bad housemates are pushing you into a funk? None of these are shameful reasons, but there might be alternatives that don’t involve a U-Haul.
If the time-related risks don’t deter your relationship, you might be ready for trial activities. Like try-before-you-buy for growing relationships.
How To Trial Living Together
Living together truly isn’t for everyone. As previously mentioned, moving in together is often framed as the “next big step” in a relationship. But so is marriage, and having kids. We know that the end goal of relationships doesn’t have to involve marriage or children, and that’s true for cohabitation. Couples have had long, happy relationships without living together. Some have even started living separately after a disastrous cohabitation and found that their relationship thrives when they don’t merge everything.
They say “you don’t know someone until you live together,” but I say try it out first.
Try extended sleepovers with a strong hit of mundanity. I don’t mean romantic getaways or cozy weekends recovering from the week’s stress. That’s valuable quality time, but we’re trying to test a stormier sea.
Do extended sleepovers during your shared work weeks. Don’t add special events and activities. Instead, try to cooperate on day-to-day tasks like meal prep, bedtimes, and housecleaning.
Then pay close attention to how your relationship handles the mundane.
- How well can you split chores while managing your jobs?
- Who cooks and cleans, and is it fair?
- Where do your household skills fall, and what gaps do they leave?
You’ll want an even labour split that fits your respective strengths. If one person is taking on the majority of chores, expenses, and emotional labour… they’ll burn out. I wasn’t the cook in my previous relationship, so I did all the dishes and made sure she walked into a clean kitchen when the time came.
There are also emotional and relational factors to consider.
- Did anyone feel snappy or strung out by the end of that sleepover?
- Did we all have enough space to decompress and chase hobbies or loved ones?
- Did your relationship get the quality time it still needs?
- If there was conflict, how did you handle it?
Housekeeping and scheduling are subsistence. They’re here for basic survival. Your relationship still needs room to grow. Without time to cultivate that love, the relationship could succumb to boredom or resentment. Many people are happy with a roommate-style relationship, but queer people often do it differently. That said, I still think shared time is important in all relationships.
Your trial periods could last a few days or go on for a month, but they’ll reveal a lot about the relationship. Even if it involves penning anyone into a small space, it can resemble the first days of getting into a new home: not enough space, too much stuff, and plenty of stress.
Whatever it looks like, I suggest debriefing with your partner(s). The goal is to learn. We’re not trying to achieve harmony in a strained space. Make your debrief conversations a safe place where anyone can talk about hiccups and concerns. Talk about the good parts of sharing a space over coffee. Hug each other and cry over the challenges. But if these talks turn ugly, that might be a pretty big red flag.
When Not To Move In
Speaking of red flags, let’s talk about those too.
Can’t agree on the basics
If your relationship can’t find commonality in managing meals, chores, and schedules, that’s a really bad sign. Any test period should happen when people aren’t overly stressed. Things shouldn’t break down at this stage.
Dealbreakers
If your partner has a life-size cutout of Bill Maher and they insist on its relocation to your next home, you’re being given an opportunity. A shocking opportunity, but one you can use nonetheless. People have dating dealbreakers and cohabitation dealbreakers. They might be different, but they will be important. Me? I’ll never live in a home that has ashtrays. Vaping is also off the table.
Signs of abuse
I don’t think relationships that wave ‘yellow flags’ of abuse will magically improve with cohabitation. They usually get worse, because abusers can favour living together. It gives them a lot of direct influence and monitoring on their victims. If you sense abuse or intentional confrontation, that’s my favorite sign to not move in together. Not until serious behavioral changes happen. There are three things that don’t fix abusive relationships: cohabitation, kids, and polyamory. Don’t even think about it.
A Counterpoint To U-Hauling
Whether or not you decide on trial periods of cohabitation, the rules stay the same. Everyone in your relationship should be happy with the division of labour and mature enough to handle conflict. Maybe you need repeated sleepover trials to reach a conclusion. Those might accidentally become cohabitation—that’s how my previous girlfriend and I moved in. She just stayed over so often we decided to make it official. Very cat-like of her.
Sometimes, you’ll do things ‘right’ and still hit a bad situation. That’s not an indignity aimed at you or your partners. That’s life itself. And it’ll still happen after you move in, so trust your support system and trust your judgement.
I spent a lot of time discussing the risks and bad sides of cohabitation, but I think that’s okay. The queer impetus to U-Haul is real, and I wanted to present the opposite view. Most people already know the upsides of living together—especially more access to the people we love. I just want everyone to reach that point in their own time. Living in harmony with someone you love is a grounded and precious experience. I hope you find your version.
