I’m living with my current bf right now. I joined a housing co-op because I hate living alone (although I rented my own room for sanity purposes). After a year of living alone in a crowd, I met my bf and I more or less moved into his room after the first week of dating. Shocking and radical, I know. I was shocked because a)it felt weirdly natural and b) I wasn’t stressing about it.

I come from a religious family who strongly disproves of ‘living in sin’– so the fact that when I searched myself and decided that I was totally cool with this crazy crazy move, I went with it. And five months later, we’re still going strong. Despite sharing what is essentially a single large room, I’ve never felt too crowded, at all stifled, or overwhelmed with the need to flee.

We clean together, we give each other private time (reading together side by side or otherwise). I don’t do his laundry and he doesn’t do mine. We eat in the common dining room and sometimes we go out.

I still pay (and retain my room) at the current time. I hold onto it not only in case we break-up, but I like knowing I have some place to retreat to that’s all mine. This may change in the next six months. That’s okay.

I’m young. Maybe I’m a *little* crazy. But I think I’m being at least a little smart about it.

We are at a funny stage in our relationship now. We are about to be empty nesters and I have some career goals I am working on that will necessitate me leaving the city we’re in if not the state. It’s hard to say where we’ll go from here, I’m not entirely sure we will continue living together. I will say that I will never live with someone again in my life.

I’ve never lived alone – would have liked to, but it’s never been financially possible. The first time I cohabited, I started dating someone in the student house I was sharing (10 strangers! One kitchen! Hijinks!). We moved out into a three-person house, where we stayed for the last two years of my degree. I learned a lot about sharing and commitment – and having an escape plan, when he told me he’d fallen in love with someone else 2 weeks after we signed on for the next 12 months.

This time round, I was moving from one country to another to be with my partner. We’d spent over a year together-but-leasing-seperate rooms and another year+ doing international long distance so I was confident about the relationship but we still had a lot to talk about – I didn’t have a job in the UK lined up and as a result we had to put down six months rent up front, most of which had to come from him etc etc. We wrote a ‘Living Together Agreement’ using this ( http://www.advicenow.org.uk/living-together/moving-in/living-together-agreements-html,280,FP.html ) as a base, and I think it opened the door to talking about things like – where will we be in 10 years, financial goals, importance of marriage, etc.

It’s three years later, we’re in our third flat (bloody landlords) and still happy. We’ll probably get married before we have kids, buy a house or move abroad, maybe in five years. We have a joint account (always running on fumes at the end of the month) and seperate savings (escape plan!).

I think division of chores is important and there are a lot of assumptions we had to talk through. We started out trying to split everything, but discovered we work better with ‘zones’ – I do occasional (bills, birthdays, visitors…) and laundry, he does daily (cooking, taking the rubbish out, shopping..) and we both do a mad scramble when visitors are on the way!

I feel that now we’re working towards a common goal whereas with roommates it often felt like we were all pulling in different directions.

Really enjoy the blog – hope this long ramble’s OK!

I’m sure I could have used better, more legal language to explain that, but that’s the gist.

@LMN I, too, have found that the disposition of a romantic partner is very important to my emotional well-being. I suppose I’m easily affected by the other person’s emotions. Being with someone who is stable and generally happy is key for me.

But I really don’t mind living with either housemates or SOs, for the most part. I tend to be a solitary person, so I find I do better having someone else around – it helps me get out of my head. While none of the relationships with SOs I’ve lived with (5 so far) have worked out, the living experiences were mostly good. With two notable exceptions – once when I was stuck in a lease with an ex who become petty and borderline violent, and once when I felt trapped after moving to a place I despised to be with someone who, I quickly realized, wasn’t right for me. But I’ve had some crazy roommates (one who had a very sheddy dog and didn’t clean for >1 year!), and with the exception of the current roommate, who’s great, I’ve generally preferred living with SOs.