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In this article:
- Moving in with someone is a big financial and emotional commitment. Get a rough idea of how soon is too soon to live with someone in terms of time frame.
- Taking this step affects your entire life, not just your relationship, as you’ll have to pool finances, split household chores, and figure out how to navigate other responsibilities as a team.
- These five signs of compatibility and relationship strength can help you figure out if you are ready to put that added pressure on your relationship.
- Receive a bit of insight into relationship psychology and what it has to say about what makes soon too soon when it comes to moving in with your significant other.
If you’re thinking of how soon is too soon to move in, you might also be wondering if that itself is a sign that you might be moving too fast.
First of all, breathe and stop stressing yourself out. It’s normal to want to be with someone you really care about and enjoy being with for most of your waking hours. That includes you folks out there with avoidant attachment styles. No matter how introverted or “cold” you see yourself as, at the end of the day, we’re all people who want to connect with others, especially those we feel understand us best.
That said, there’s more to moving in with someone than just deciding that you love them enough to live with them so let’s go over those to help you figure out whether you should start packing your bags.
So, You’re Ready to Take the Next Big Step
Okay, so you’ve found The One. Whether this is your first long-term relationship or not, the truth is that people will behave differently in a relationship so experience only takes you far as you can apply it to what you know.
As unsexy as this sounds, you’ll have to consider how you’ll split bills and rent, who does which chores (and how often), what sort of house rules you’ll set, etc. If you don’t, these details can be the source of a relationship-ending fight rooted in built-up frustration because neither of you was clear with your expectations, needs, and boundaries from the start.
So many of the things we grow to resent about each other come from problems that were never brought up and addressed so you want to have the big conversations first before you move in with someone.
In terms of time frame, there’s really no fixed amount of months or years together that you need to meet before you move in with someone. It’s not about how long you’ve been together, but how good your connection is. If you’re able to communicate with each other in a mature, healthy, non-combative way to discuss how you can maintain and improve your relationship, that’s a good sign that you’re ready to finally live together.
That said, you should probably give yourself around six months or more to get to know someone before you decide to live with them. People have strange behavioral quirks that you may not notice when you’re too busy gazing into their beautiful eyes while you’re on a date.
Plus, you never know if seeing that one thing they do every day will drive you nuts because it’s your most hated pet peeve. As weird as that sounds, if you start associating your partner with annoyance, you might find yourself getting annoyed by their presence alone.
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It also takes people time to fully get comfortable and open up enough so that they start acting around you the way they would naturally act at home or with close family and friends. Wait until you get to see these little idiosyncrasies and rare sides of your significant other before you decide to move in.
5 Signs to Help You Tell Whether It’s Too Soon to Move In
It may be hard to tell how soon is too soon to move in, but it’s definitely easier to tell when you shouldn’t move in with your significant other just yet. Most of these reasons directly have something to do with what your lifestyle is going to be like while living with your significant other.
1. You Haven’t Talked About Money Yet
We get it. Some of us don’t like talking about money. Period. But even if you think talking about money, salaries, and bills is crass and impolite, the truth is that you’ll eventually end up having that conversation. You can either have it calmly and ahead of time or in the heat of the moment while you argue about your bills.
Money arguments are only second to infidelity as a leading cause of divorce. Most people who decide to live with their significant other do it in preparation for living together in the long term so you might want to get comfortable with telling your loved one how much you make and asking them about theirs.
Before moving in, you should also be upfront about debt and spending habits. Then, decide together how much you can each contribute to the household. For couples where both make roughly the same salary, this might be as simple as a 50/50 split. But for couples where one earns much more than the other, it can be a trickier conversation.
If you don’t know where to start, maybe you can subtly nudge them into talking about their finances by getting them to take a Money Personality quiz with you.
2. You’re Not That Comfortable With Them
This is another key thing to consider before you move in with someone. Are you actually comfortable with them or do you just feel elated about being around them?
These aren’t mutually exclusive, but in this case, we’re talking about whether you don’t mind being seen by your significant other in a messy top, looking absolutely horrible at 1:00 A.M. after waking up sick in the middle of the night. Eventually, it will happen and you’ll have to deal with seeing a side of each other outside of that date-level put-together look.
If you find yourself on guard with them all the time, either in terms of your appearance or way of socializing, that’s going to drain a lot of your energy and put a ton of stress on you over time.
You want to move in with someone who you can truly be yourself around, even if that means they have to know you make Doritos slushies for breakfast and look a little less perfect without your primer and foundation combo.
3. You’ve Never Had to Put Up With Each Other’s Living Conditions Before
This is a big one. If you’ve never truly seen each other’s rooms, apartments, or houses before, do not move in yet because you have no idea how this person lives. This goes back to the idea of little quirks that add up to big things you irrationally dislike about someone over time.
You may not know whether the person you’re moving in with is the type of person who leaves coffee cups all over the house. Maybe they don’t fold or hang their clean clothes, but leave them piled on chairs.
You can swap those for any other domestic habit that annoys the heck out of you. The point is that unless you’ve seen how someone really lives when they’re not trying to impress you or your friends, you might end up surprised that your seemingly organized lover is not as organized as they seem.
Conversely, maybe they’re super obsessed with cleanliness to the point of being overboard by your standards. If they make their bed every single morning and you’re not in that habit, you can expect to have some couple’s spats about that when you move in together.
The point is: Pay attention to each other’s current living spaces and make household chores and living expectations part of that open and honest discussion you have before you move in together.
4. One or Both of You Aren’t Ready to Be Responsible for a Home
The big things result in big fights, but the little fights along the way put a lot of strain on a relationship. If you have siblings, ask yourself how often you’ve fought with them over whose turn it is to do the chores. Then ask yourself if you want to have those petty little fights with your significant other all the time.
Romance is only sweet when all the practical parts of living together are properly sorted out. You might find that being affectionate gets a little hard when your significant other has “forgotten” to take out the trash for the nth week of your living together.
5. Neither of You Is Sure What You Want Out of This
Why exactly are you moving in? Most people move in together because they’ve decided it’s time to establish a lifestyle together to see if they would do well in an even longer, more permanent relationship. Usually, this means people who move in together are preparing for the possibility of marriage.
But even if you have a different goal in mind for moving in, make sure to communicate this with each other and know exactly what both of you expect living together will accomplish for your relationship.
If you are both doing this in preparation for spending your lives together, now is the time to have those big talks about your long-term goals: Do you want children? How many? When? Have you always thought you’d eventually move closer to home? Is your partner on board with that?
Talk about any future plans that would impact both of you. Because if you aren’t on the same page about your long-term goals, it’s important to figure that out now and decide if those are dealbreakers.
If you want kids, but your partner doesn’t, neither of you should expect the other will change their mind eventually. Instead, you have to decide if being with that person is worth giving up the possibility of having kids. If it’s not, it’s better to figure that out now.
Are You Moving in Together Too Soon or Are You Just That Comfortable With Each Other?
One thing that some people forget when considering how soon is too soon to move in is considering what stage of the relationship they are in.
It’s no surprise that moving in during your honeymoon phase can be a bad idea since neither you nor your significant other are at the point where you can properly assess whether your relationship is built on a solid foundation and is ready to move towards a more long-term arrangement.
Once that feeling of euphoria that comes with the honeymoon phase passes, you might find yourself stuck in a lease with someone who you now suddenly can’t stand being around. It sounds really pessimistic, but these things do happen to people which means there’s a chance that you and your significant other can end up being one of those people.
“It’s possible they’ve always been this way, but you just didn’t notice because of all the rush and excitement,” says Dr. Chivonna Childs, a psychologist specializing in adult behavioral health, “Now you get to ask yourself, ‘Is this somebody I can spend time with? Is this somebody I still enjoy? Is this a person I can still laugh with?’”
On a more serious note, waiting for the honeymoon phase to pass can help you identify whether the possessive/clingy behaviors of your significant other are just their way of showing they care or whether it’s a sign of something more serious.
No one likes to think about whether the person they love would be capable of hurting them and, for a while, that stays true even after actual harm happens. But by waiting for the honeymoon phase to end, you’ll have a clearer view of your relationship with someone and whether it would be a good idea to braid your life together with theirs.
So, how soon is too soon to move in? That’s ultimately up to you, but these tips should help you with figuring that out.