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Will living together ruin our relationship?

by Susan Quilliam

Help! My boyfriend has dropped hints that he would like to live with me as a 'lodger', but I can't make up my mind about whether to let him live with me or not.

I am moving into the flat I have bought next month. I have been seeing my boyfriend for the last eight months - we get on brilliantly and love each other very much. As soon as we first started talking we both felt a strong connection. After three months I felt ready to sleep with him.

We have been through a lot in the last eight months: my dad died in June and he has had family problems, too. But he has still shown me love, support and comfort through it all, making us even closer.

He makes me feel free and encourages me to achieve my ambitions. Everything about the relationship feels right and he is the first boyfriend that has truly impressed me. He is affectionate, funny, intelligent and reliable - I'd better not go on!

I did have a bad experience living with an ex-boyfriend, but that relationship was a disaster before living together, anyway. I am so happy at the moment that I am worried things might change or go wrong if we move to the next stage.

How do I know we will be OK living together? Should I live on my own for a while to see how I feel? I hope you can help.
M

answer

Hi M
I always believe that, given time and lots of support, anyone who writes to me will come up with a good solution to their problem. But you seem to have done this in the course of your letter - so, well done!

What I'm saying is that the answer you've come up with - living on your own for a bit and seeing how you feel - is exactly what I would suggest to you. Why? Because, by the sound of it, you and your boyfriend have a really strong relationship, and in time you will almost certainly end up living together successfully. But note my phrase 'in time'. I sense that you're not quite ready yet for that move. Holding back a bit longer would be the best idea.

For a start, you've only just bought this place of your own - and you seem to want to enjoy it on your own for a while. That's cool ... do just that.

Secondly, the very fact that you're hesitating means you're not quite ready for the commitment of living together. You had a bad time in the past, and that's made you wary. Even though your boyfriend sounds wonderful, you need to build up trust in him slowly - so do that.

Finally, the two of you have only been going out for eight months - so you probably haven't made the transition from infatuation to solid, workable love. This typically happens between one and two years after you meet, so you're just about coming up to it now. That's the time when you start to develop all the skills that make love work, even when the going gets tough - and you'll surely need those skills before the big challenge of living together.

One final hint: if he does move in, talk through what that actually means. Because, at the moment, your boyfriend is saying he wants to live with you 'as a lodger' - but my bet is that you want something more, a real commitment. I'm not saying he's less involved than you are - the offer to live with you as a lodger could be his way of suggesting commitment without scaring you off. But the two of you definitely need to talk through what your agreements are, and what it really means to live together.

Good luck
Hugs
Susan