Moving In together

I think I have found it harder since his daughter moved in with us. Having to consider someone else when preparing meals, not being able to walk around naked etc. I really like her a lot and get on very well with her, but I will be happy when she has moved out again.

I will always struggle at his inability to move his cereal bowl from the kitchen table to the sink. A mere few feet. I tend to struggle with the housework side of things and the TV clashes we always have!

I think in nearly every houseshare, whether in a relationship or not, there is usually one person who is naturally tidier than the other, so they will always think that the place is a mess, whereas the messier person will always feel nagged.

I was really lucky in my last few years at uni that my flatmates and I all had similar mess-tolerance levels - nobody was totally anal but neither were there any complete slobs. We did have a cleaner though, which helped. ? H's flatshare before I moved in with him was a complete state, and I always used to blame most of it on his flatmates, but on getting our own place I realised he was just as much part of the problem!

We never really struggled with living together, but there are niggles along the way. We've reached some compromises about some things which I find too gross to tolerate, which he's stopped doing, and some cleaning jobs that he really hates, so I always do them in the anticipation that he will find something to do in return.

We found it easy enough moving in together, but I think what really helped was that we had such defined roles. He was working, and for the first few months I had no job so I took care of the household, sorted out all the moving-in stuff like putting bills in our name, buying household items etc. I cooked and cleaned and organised. I then went back to uni but in all honestly it wasn't too taxing and so I was able to continue doing the lion's share of the household tasks because I was the one at home.

I think it was harder when we both got jobs, because then there wasn't just one person with the responsibility of running the home, so either things didn't get done or one of us would unwittingly re-do something (e.g. clean a room) and then the first person would get annoyed "I already CLEANED the bathroom, what, it isn't clean enough?!" etc.

So true. OH and I have lived together for 3 years. Our relationship was amazing until he moved into my flat and reality hit for both of us! We'd only been together 6 months and with hindsight I think we should have waited longer, it killed the romance too quickly! not that we weren't or aren't happy but it prematurely ended the honeymoon period. He also never really felt at home in my flat - we bought our own house a year ago and it has made us more of a team. He is still messier than me though and I do not believe he has ever cleaned the toilet or changed our bedding alone! I will give him his due, his hoovering isn't bad!

It wasn't hard at all. I made the rules. He obeyed.

We moved in together after 5 months together, of which the last 3 I spent in Australia.

So our relationship was till quite new but H took a while to get used to communicating things with me. Not big things just things like, when he'd be home or what he was doing. Made things a bit hard at first but we settled into a routine after a few months.

I'm going through the first year and it's harder. I sort of expected it to be, and things that wouldn't bother me seeing him a few times a week obviously grate a lot more now it's 24/7. At the moment I'm not dealing with it very well abd just go stay with my mum most week ends! It's actually not just MF, I do things that annoy him too, we are nearly even on that and round the house he's tidy abd helpful. It's actually location that's the biggest issue. The town I now live is a total dump, and I feel miles away from my friends. Tonight for example I'm going out, and I have to drive, like ever time, because taxis would be a fortune and public transport is rubbish. Before I'd just hop on and off the 24hour bus if I was drinking. I'm also three times the amount in petrol each month to get to work, MF has a work van so doesn't pay for it and uses his own car once a week to go to football 10 mins away, when I ask him to drive us somewhere he refuses because of the price of petrol!! It's stupid arguments like that that are making me miserable, not the actual living together so much. Gah sorry.... x

This is also true. For my last year at university, I was rota'd away from Cambridge on placement for almost the whole year. I'd go to my placement hospital on Monday morning, stay there in the hospital accommodation (we got it provided free on our placements) Mon-Thurs night, back to Cambridge on Friday evening and then more often than not I'd either be getting the train to London to see him, or he'd be coming to mine. I'd spend the weekend there, then usually Sunday night in my own flat before going back off to placement Monday morning.

I worked out that until the final exam period, I hadn't spent more than 4 nights in the same place for the whole year. I was permanently living out of a suitcase, trying to co-ordinate food supplies so I had the right things in the right place, trying to get washing and drying done over the weekend (not helped by my flat's poor student policy of almost never turning the heating on). I never felt like I was settled. So it was so nice to get our own place and stay there every night, with all my stuff in one place, that it probably helped overcome any initial hiccups.