I Asked My Girlfriend To Move In With Me. It Was A Mistake.

Q: My girlfriend and I clicked from the moment we met. Conversations flowed endlessly, we have a ton of the same niche interests, and I'd never felt this kind of love before. After almost a year together, I asked her to move in with me. My apartment is bigger, I lived alone, and she had roommates — logistically, it made more sense than me moving in with her. She was excited about the idea of living together and building a life together, but her one hesitation was that she really loved her place. Still, she found a friend to take over her lease, and moved in with me two months ago.

We made a mistake. We never used to snip at each other, but it happens almost daily now. We used to have sex three or four times a week, and now, it's just once or twice. I hate to say it, but I've been thinking about ending the relationship. The thing is, she can't afford to move out on her own, and her old room in an apartment she loved is gone. I'm responsible for that. Leaving her in a lurch feels cruel. What do I do?

A: Knowing how life works, I bet she had just finished unpacking her last box when the idea of her moving out occurred to you. I will absolutely get to the emotional part of your dilemma, but let’s start with the fact that housing is precarious and expensive in most places, and she just moved. Because you asked her to!

So please, please, do not kick her out of the apartment. At least not yet!

It’s time to slow your roll and own this decision a little bit. Take a beat before breaking up with her. Not as a punishment — trust I wouldn’t suggest people live together for that reason — but so that you know what loving someone is like. Long-term relationships regularly involve these periods of questioning and mild dissatisfaction. Sticking together during these times is the sine qua non of love, in my opinion.

I don’t want to come across as one of those (often straight) people who are like: “Marriage is hell, my husband sucks, but by God I love my man!” I don’t want to romanticize suffering at all. But I don’t think you’re suffering. I think your relationship is growing, actually. And growth is? Say it with me: uncomfortable!

Loving someone is not making out on the dance floor and planning a cute picnic for their birthday nearly as much as it is sitting through the more boring days or months without flinching.

Don’t misunderstand me — love itself is not boredom. But it is, so often, much more boring than we’d all like to imagine. It’s remembering to call their mom for her birthday and helping their best friend get over a sh*tty guy she dated for the fourth time this year. It’s also hot sex and camping trips and finding a love note on the spicy chili crisp.

Moving in with another person is often annoying and disruptive. It’s not always sexy and flirty. Domesticity is fun and hot to play at when you don’t actually have to do it. Dancing in the kitchen feels cute; moving the fridge because it might be leaking and oh God, it is leaking, call the landlord isn’t as much.

The dailyness of love is, I think, what makes it hard. It’s certainly easier to feel the spark when no one is leaving their rotting arugula in the fridge or watching WNBA games at full volume when you were hoping to do some Yoga With Adriene.

You are a year in. This is around the time when a relationship can no longer be carried by excitement. I think you need to give this some effort, and if you can’t give effort right now, give it time, and then give it effort.

That’s going to look like (womp womp) talking about this. Think about what you’re dissatisfied with. Do you need more alone time? Do you resent that she leaves dirty dishes around the house? Do you feel like the romance is gone? Solve those things. Start with something like:

“I feel like we have not been as close since we moved in, and I know it’s been stressful, but I don’t want living together to make us not like each other.”

Then talk about the problems. I have to imagine she has felt the shift in your dynamic as well. Honestly, she might be planning her own conversation. Make a chore chart. Plan date nights. Spend the night apart occasionally, if there is an opportunity to do so. Get out of the apartment together. Get out of the apartment on your own. See friends. Open the windows. Turn off the overhead lights and get lamps. Make your life together nice.

I do want to note that the frequency of sex sometimes (often) decreases in long-term relationships, and not because the relationship is bad. That’s just how often you two both want to have sex at that point. You do not have to take that as a sign of something. You can let it be. You can decide, “We have sex when we both are really into it,” and divorce yourself from trying to divine meaning from how often that is.

Do not threaten to evict her. That is not only mean, but it sets up a bad power dynamic. Moving out should be a decision you both reach together, not a punishment you mete out if she doesn’t do exactly what you want or you don’t get the amount of sex you’d like.

Give yourself some time to adjust. Two months — when you’re building a life with someone — is nothing. Don’t let yourself be miserable for too long, but allow discomfort in and talk with each other about it.

If you’ve given this a few more months — months in which you two have talked about the problems and made an effort to change things — and you’re both still not feeling it, then it’s fair to call it. I wish I could give you a date, but I think you will know if that time comes.

Now, that still doesn't mean you can boot her from the apartment. You’re gonna have to give her some time to look for a new place. (And you need to split moving costs, by the way!) In that time, hopefully you two can be pleasant toward one another, but also maybe that’s the right time to visit your brother in Cincinnati or to take turns having cozy sleepovers at your friends’ houses a few nights a week for extra space. Also, you cannot, under any circumstances, suggest staying together but not living together. I know of at least two couples who tried this and it was, predictably, a disaster.

Life with someone is going to go through phases. The relationship is going to change over time. That’s kind of the whole thing. You won’t like all the chapters in the exact same way, but there is often something to learn from them. And you can problem solve. For example — speaking from experience — buy two separate comforters for the bed.

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