Should you move in with your partner during Corona?
Coronavirus is here to stay, and this is the new normal. Does that mean you can take your relationship to a new normal too?
Quality time and physical touch are the main ways I feel the most loved. Rub my elbow to comfort me when I’m sad. Take time out of your day to spend the evening with me watching terrible television when I’m stressed. That’s big love to me. This of course applies in all the close relationships in my life, but especially in my romantic ones. I am a firm believer in the church of Public Displays of Affection. You gotta hold my hand when we’re walking in crowded areas. How else am I supposed to feel like you’re my person? Alternately, cancelling plans, also known as takign away from the quality time I need, is a leading source for stress for me when dating – only superceeded by unmet physical intimacy needs.
When the govenrment recommended that we take steps back on touching one another I knew it was going to be a problem. My boyfriend and I both converted immediately to working from home, so it wasn’t too terrible in the beginning. That is, until the govenrment implemented a 7PM curfew which essentially meant you needed to head home by 5 PM to avoid any trouble. We still spent time together during the day, but both of us picking at our laptops till late in the afternoon wasn’t exactly ideal. Sex almost immediately went out the window, what with haphazard zoom calls throuhgout the day, and usually in no time at all, I needed to rush back to my house.
After the first couple of weeks, I was feeling very neglected by my lover – turned colleague! This was when we made the decision to move in together for the balance of the pandemeic period. In the three months since we began to cohabit, I have done up a list of why it has been great, and why it may also be the worst idea – guess we’ll find out in the next post?
PROS
1. Sex on deck. I would like to qualify that this is mostly enjoyed in the beginning stages. No need to schedule sex, because whenever you both have down time and are horny, you can get right into it.
2. You share all the frustrations of they day as they happen. There’s nothing that makes you feel as seen as when your partner understand the context of your moods and frustrations because he likes you enough to humour you with a listening ear for your unfolding daily dramas.
3. Budgeting, that is, eating from the same shopping list and having one source of monthly utilities, is the greatest life hack and may be why people get married. Keep it here for more on thi developing story.
4. Feeling loved due to endless time together. It was a lot easier to carve out time for quality time, which meant my romantic heart was constantly fed.
5. Nightly cuddles in this cold weather. I don’t think needs further explanation.
CONS
1. Sex reduces over time. I believe this is because of a mixture of the presumption that it’s a certainty, which makes us take it for granted, and thus it quickly becomes an uncertain.
2. People are annoying and the more time you spend with them the more they annoy you. This also doesn’t need further explanation!
3. Greatly reduced personal space. I need my space and there’s none of that with two people constantly cooped together in an apartment
4. Monotony and boredom. This isn’t like other times where you have full lives outside of each other even though you live together. Your literal whole lives are within the same walls and it gets old quite fast.
5. Breaking up is untidy. Say you realize after some time that this was a bad idea; the uncoupling isn’t as clean cut as you’ve now merged lives and accidentally became each other’s lives!
So what do you think? To move in during Corona, or to never move in at all?