Is your lover about to move in? Be prepared for trouble and fun, says Tara King.

I always imagined our shared space would be a grown-up haven of white walls, clutter-free surfaces and dreamy lighting. A Zen-like pad to relax, unwind and have a great time in. My boyfriend moved in last week and the reality of our romantic togetherness is piles of crumpled clothes, cluttered furniture and a dodgy desk lamp. My instinct to remove all his stuff was quashed by the realisation that this is what sharing is all about: the merging of two lives into — almost — one.

Separate drawers
After having a close shave with a ghastly pair of Y-fronts (the ones he wears for sport), I fiercely removed my boyfriend’s underwear and put in a separate drawer. Sharing drawers can become very confusing, but not as confusing as laundry. Whereas underwear can be separated, washing becomes one. If you’re unlucky enough to have the type of boyfriend who goes temporarily colour blind when doing the washing, watch out for your pale pink delicates. Don’t let laundry break your heart.

The telephone
One of my friends was abruptly dumped after her boyfriend overheard her bitching about a mutual friend to another friend on the phone. My friends were getting increasingly heated, shredding this girl’s voice, dress sense, style of dancing and general demeanour. The boyfriend was so shocked and disgusted by this foul-mouthed, two-faced torrent of bitching that he marched straight out of her flat — for good. So perhaps he was oversensitive, but it’s fair to say you should watch the bitching around your boyfriend, especially in the early days of co-habitation.

Alarm bells
The romance of waking up together, along with sex every morning and all those other dreams of successful co-habitation, can be brought sharply into reality on the first morning of your working week. The sound of your alarm may drive him mad. Start the day in a foul mood and you normally stay in one. So if you argue about the alarm clock, bin it and buy a new one together. It’s not worth the stress.

Sex whenever
When you’re dating, there’s pressure to have a brilliant time, every time. If you see your boyfriend at the weekend and don’t have a great time or, more importantly, great sex, doubts can drift into your mind about whether he’s the right guy for you. One of my friends admits her sex life was disastrous before she moved in with her boyfriend. If she had a sex-free evening with her boyfriend she’d spend the following day worrying about her relationship, her figure and her sex appeal. Now that they’re living together she boasts about her lively sex life and how liberated she feels from the weekend sex stress. The pressure is off to have great sex every single night when you live together, as you can do it whenever you want. Whether you do is another matter.

The real you
My step-grandmother used to rise every morning an hour before her husband to draw on her eyebrows and paint her craggy face. This way, her husband never saw her without her full slap. She still insists this is the only way to keep a man and constantly harasses my mother with her archaic beauty tips. Whilst this is extreme, some of those rituals from the early days of your romance are probably worth sticking to. It’s advisable to keep aspects of your beauty regime private, especially the depilatory routines. Being caught bleaching your moustache, shaving your legs in the sink or inspecting your bikini line could become memorable for the wrong reasons. Check your breath before kissing — as a wise woman once said, ‘When you can taste the saliva you know it’s over.’

Duvet-hogging
If you are one of those girls who has a loving attachment to her duvet, then allowing your man permanently under the covers is quite generous. Although things appear polite at bedtime, come dawn when you are lying in the cold, with half a corner of the duvet over your shoulder while your man is snoring away, snug beneath the warmth of the whole duvet, you know you have to take action. Buy a king-size duvet. It’s worth the expense as only an extremely greedy person could possibly hog a duvet of this size.

Togetherness
You see each other all the time now. This can be a good or bad thing, but the reality is that you probably won’t see each other as much as you think. You may find you suddenly have a lot of free evenings when you move in together, as those were the nights you used to see him. It’s important to keep some of your social life separate and not feel you have to do everything together. The first few times you trot out to meet your friends leaving him vegging out on the sofa will feel quite strange, but the novelty of the situation will wear off fast. Try and make it a date once a week to spend some time doing whatever you like do together.

Have you just moved in together? Have you been living with your boyfriend for years? How long did you wait before co-habiting? Tell us about it here.