Quarterlife Diaries: ‘Living together? I wouldn't know how to do it’

In Quarterlife Diaries neem ik je wekelijks mee in alle dingen waar ik, als bijna 30-jarige, tegenaan loop. Om mijn hart te luchten vooral, maar ook om iedereen die samen met mij in het Quarterlife-bootje zit een hart onder de riem te steken. Je bent namelijk absoluut niet alleen. Deze week: Living together or not yet?

How do you know if you are ready to live together? It's a question that just crossed my mind as I left my boyfriend's apartment armed with four (!) bags. Unfortunately, we don't share a city, so we commute every weekend between each other's homes where we have wonderful days together time and again. On Sundays, we often leave for our own apartment again, and although I've always been very good at being alone, I already miss him as soon as I step out the door.

That feeling often disappears again, you know. We both get swept away by the busyness of the week, and before you know it, the weekend is knocking at the door again. I also love doing my own thing during the week, and he does too. In fact, the idea of living together gives me a lot of nervous butterflies at the moment, just like all new things do. I've never lived with someone before. Almost seven years ago, I created a safe nest for myself here that not everyone was allowed to enter. My home is my safe haven, and even though I love cocooning there together for a weekend, I also find a kind of peace when I'm alone again that I find hard to achieve when someone is constantly around me.

Yet you have to face it at some point, that cohabitation. But can someone please tell me how you know if you're ready for that? Are there rules for it? Like: if you still miss each other after 48 hours apart, it's time to pack your bags and fill his apartment with all your thoughtless trinkets. Somewhere it seems cozy to me, building a little house together. With a garden (because together we now have about one and a half balconies), a workspace where we can express our creativity, a nice kitchen (where he cooks and I watch), a closet room for me, and a place where we can invite all our friends and family to create beautiful memories. A home for him and me, I can see it happening.

But how does that work with my own place? My carefully built independence? My stuff, my peace, and I haven't even mentioned my secret single behavior, or: all the things I do when I'm alone. Like dancing endlessly in my living room to the complete discography of Taylor Swift, lighting all my scented candles at once, and watching the same romcom over and over while I wipe away a tear at exactly the same moment each time. Do you still do that when you live with a guy, or do those habits slowly fade away?

Maybe I've now answered my own question and you're ready to live together when you have fewer panicky questions and decide that you really don't want to miss each other anymore. Time will tell, but for now, we are still calmly commuting back and forth with a bag or four, so that later in our beautiful house with a garden we can say: ‘Do you remember?’