I am contemplating moving in with my girlfriend of 7½ months. I already know she’s clean and very responsible with money. I’m curious if you all think this is too soon, not soon enough, just right, or other. So here’s a poll for you. Advice is welcome, too, thanks!
I think she should be a little older, you perv.
You really haven’t given us enough info to decide. Normally I would say that’s pretty soon, but hey, I moved in with my BF (well actually, he moved in with me) after less than 3 months, and we’re happily married now. YMMV, and that’s my only shacking-up experience.
OTOH I’ve seen people move in after dating for years, and have the relationship crash and burn shortly thereafter. (In one case, a friend married his girlfriend after 3 years of shacking up and another 2 of dating before that, and she left him for someone else less than 4 months after the wedding.)
“When the rent is due” was not listed as an option.
This poll left out one option that I managed to live through: live together first (platonically), and then become boyfriend and girlfriend. I suspect that’s happened to others, too: the proximity of an unattached housemate of the right gender can lead on to other things …
Aside from the emotional issues that should be considered before moving in, you should also consider the legal/financial issues should you break up, such as support and assets/debts.
I was engaged to my husband by 8 months, so I’m not one to say moving in at this point is moving to fast - we moved in together when we’d been together about a year or so, but it would have been sooner if we weren’t long distance most of that first year.
Clean and responsible with money is good - and it’s a good sign you’re thinking about these things before moving in with her.
Why do you want to move in with her? That’s the important thing really - if she’s pressuring you or you just feel like you “should” even though you don’t really want to, it’s probably not a good idea. On the other hand, if you really want to & you see yourself with her for a long time (or forever), it might be the thing to do now.
I was going to say no sooner than 13 months, but that’s not an option in the poll.
You need an “other” option. Any or all of the above could be the right answer, depending on the couple in question.
That’d be my answer as well.
My one living together experience was after a very short time knowing one another, and it worked out well. But that was one particular couple, not a trend.
I have lived with two girlfriends (the last became my wife) and can’t vote in the poll because I think that putting a time line on it is wrong. With the first one we moved in together after about 4 months, and it was a huge mistake and essentially ended the relationship. Neither of us was really ready for that level of commitment or willing to spend that much time with the other. We were young though (early 20s) and didn’t know what we were doing. For a long time I told anyone who was willing to listen that moving in too soon kills a relationship.
I more or less moved in with my wife after dating her for 2 weeks. I say more or less because it worked like this. I had a room mate, she didn’t so around week 2 I started staying over a lot because it was more convenient than her staying over with me. By week 4 I was going home on Sundays to get new cloths and do laundry. By week 6 I had two drawers of my own at her place and my toothbrush lived there. By week 8 I realized that I hadn’t even been in my own apartment for over 2 weeks and that I was three days late paying my share of the rent.
Sometime around that week 8 mark is when we started talking about maybe me just moving in. I gave my 30 days notice a month later and was fully moved in to her place a month after that. As an outsider I would say that we moved WAY TOO FUCKING FAST! But from the inside it all felt very natural in its progression. We got a new place that was just ours a little over a year later, got married a year and a half after that, and have been married for a year and a half now. So clearly, things worked out.
So, I would say the right time to move in together is when it doesn’t make sense for you not to live together anymore.
I’m interested in the discussion around this poll as I’m considering moving in with my boyfriend of two and a half months, who I’ve known as a friend for about two years.
This is an easy one.
You’re only ready to shack up together once you have eaten Chipotle and blown up the puny little toilet in your girlfriend’s cramped studio apartment with that special explosive Chipotle fury that you don’t even bother blasting the water faucets for because of the sheer futility of masking a 14-megaton intestinal detonation…and she hasn’t left you yet.
Not until she’s too sick to care for herself.
Am I to infer from the poll choices that people who date for 2+ years automatically get married?
Basically, the situation is this: I like my house but don’t care for my roommate. The roommate is not too thrilled with me either, and has made hints that she plans to move out when our lease is due for renewal in September. If it’s a situation where either I go or she does, then she’s gonna have to pack her bags, because I’m not going anywhere.
My girlfriend hates where she lives and hates her roommate even more. If it weren’t for me being intimidating to her roommate (not in a violent way), her roommate probably would’ve already skipped out and left her with 7 months’ rent to pay by herself. Her roommate is dirty, nasty (she sleeps with dirty dishes in her BED!), and only puts money toward the bills when nagged.
My girlfriend spends three, sometimes four nights out of the week at my place. She has mentioned several times that she thinks living together would be great. We’re both clean people who pay our bills on time.
I’m on the fence. I’m not sure whether I’m ready to make that kind of commitment yet and besides, I highly value my alone time. The upside would be that I know she’d be a good roommate, far better than the one I have now.
Dude, I’ve ripped ass in bed and woken her up on numerous occasions. She has yet to refuse to sleep with me.
She laughs whenever I refer to my farts as a “symphony.”
Then you’re ready!
On a slightly more serious note, your adjustment depends on how well your personalities mesh…two clingy people do really well, and two aloof people will do really well. But put one clingy and one aloof person together, and it’ll be disastrous. Well, maybe not disastrous, but very hard. I like spending time alone too, so it was a huge adjustment for me. Playing Madden all day in my boxers is suddenly not okay? WTF?!
Other. When you’ve talked about marriage or if you don’t believe in marriage or are a gay couple, if you’ve talked of “forever and ever”, then you can move in. So it’s flexible - it can be a month, it can be several years.
This is on the end of someone who has many, many friends who moved in together to save rent/because they hate their roommates/because they’re in love/because it’s convenient…and watching it implode on every single one of them, with the only common factor between them all that they didn’t want to be together forever or get married.
How old are you guys? For reference, my friends fall between 22 and 28 years old.
We’re both 30. She’s about three months older than me.