Live with your best friend before your boyfriend

If you’ve been living with a string of Craigslist roommates and your man asks you to move in together, you may need to wait a beat. Living with someone you’re emotionally involved with is very different from living with strangers. The expectations are incomparable. That’s why you should live with your best friend before living with your boyfriend. Consider it a practice run. Here’s why.

You’ll learn to compromise

When you lived with strangers or acquaintances, your room was your room, their room was their room, and you probably left the common areas pretty sparse. You were just cohabitating.

Everything’s a common area now

Your best friend is sort of a surrogate boyfriend. The two of you will want to decorate the entire place, in a way you both like. You’ll want to make decisions about the apartment together, rather than keeping to your own areas. You’ll learn to compromise on things like which couch to buy and who is doing what chore. You’ll do that with your man, too.

You’ll get over bathroom stuff

When you live with people you barely know, you don’t talk about what goes on in the bathroom. Maybe you have your own bathroom. Everything is private and if it isn’t, you keep your private items in your room.

Nowhere is private now

You can’t really have his and hers bathrooms when you live with your partner. You’re both going to be going in one another’s bathrooms all of the time. You need to get over the fact that you just dropped the kids off in the pool. You need to get over leaving Gas-X out. You’ll get over it when you live with your best friend. And then you won’t accept living with a guy who you’re not comfortable with like that.

You’ll get over the “what’s mine and yours” thing

With a Craigslist roomie, it’s fine to label your milk and your plates and your towels. With your best friend though you can’t do that. There’s the expectation that you want one another to enjoy each other’s things. You’ll probably even share groceries. You’re family more than friends.

Because it’s all “ours” now

You need to get used to coming home and finding the box of Goldfish you bought yesterday is already completely gone, and you’re not allowed to get mad about it. You need to get over your favorite towel being left damp, over the bathroom door, for a week. Everything is “ours” when you live with your man. No more “yours and mine.”

Bill splitting

This one can sting. When you live with strangers, you can talk about bills without emotion. If one person is streaming videos constantly, slowing down the Internet so nobody else can use it, you just tell them to either stop it, or pay more of the Internet bill.

Because you’re family now

You can’t tell your best friend she has to pay more of the Cable bill because she watches more TV. It comes off as petty. Plus you understand she probably pays for some things that you mostly use. It’ll be like that with your partner, too. You stop counting pennies and keeping score.

Letting your place be social

When you lived with people you weren’t that close with, everybody probably had to notify the other tenants before they had people over. Maybe they even had to get permission.

Because it’s a home now

When you live with your best friend, her friends probably are your friends. She isn’t going to ask to have friends over: you need to get used to coming home and finding people there, even when all you wanted to do was be alone. When you live with your man, he needs to feel the place is his home. He will invite people over without asking you.

Learning to share responsibilities

Roommates you aren’t that close to might skip their chore and you’re allowed to send a curt email. You might even have a jar where people have to throw in $10 if they skip their chore.

Chores are a free fall with loved ones

You don’t want your home with your best friend to feel like a boarding school. There will be times you just do your chore and hers because she is busy that week, and you want to help her out. Get used to it because when you live with your man, he’ll pick up your slack sometimes and you’ll pick up his. There won’t be chore charts or punishments.

Learn how to get alone time

That roommate you met through your hairdresser doesn’t ask questions when you go in your room and shut the door for seven hours. You can do you.

Because it won’t be easy to get

When you live with your best friend, if you go in your room for seven hours, she’s going to worry about you. She might take it personally. You have to learn how to politely say you need alone time. You need to learn, for yourself, when to identify that you need it. When you live with your man, you’ll definitely need to do that because you’ll be sharing a bedroom.

You know what it’s like to live with someone close

In general, it’s important to know what it’s like to live with somebody you’re really close to before living with your partner. Everything is heightened. If a mess is left out, or someone isn’t talkative, it’s personal. If you live with a best friend, you won’t be so shocked when you live with your boyfriend.