Things You Need To Know About Dating A Freelancer - Page 3

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If someone can support themselves full time working remotely, then they’ve made a nice little life for themselves. They don’t need to deal with the multitude of personalities that can come with a brick and mortar office; they can work from literally anywhere in the world, they can run errands in the middle of the day when the lines are short, and they can have a dog! That doesn’t even come close to covering all of the benefits of being a freelance or work from home professional. If you, however, do work a 9 to 5 (or similar hours) job at a brick and mortar office, but you date a freelancer, you may notice parts of your lifestyles don’t quite mesh. You can certainly make it work, but there are things to be prepared for. Here is what you need to know if you’re going to date a freelancer.

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He won’t have an alarm clock

There is a good chance your freelancing boyfriend won’t set an alarm clock—he can afford to sleep a little extra because he doesn’t need to make a commute. So don’t count on his alarm clock to get you up.

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He won’t like your alarm clock

Oh, and he will not like your alarm clock waking him up. He’s spoiled—he isn’t used to being woken up to the offensive, brutal sound of an alarm and now you’ve introduced that into his life. Don’t take it personally if he’s a little cranky in the morning.

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You can’t just drop by

If you are taking your vacation days, that doesn’t mean you can just drop by his place and expect him to play hooky with you all day. He still has things he needs to get done.

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He doesn’t keep regular hours

For that reason, he may not be able to come to dinner with you and your friends at 7 pm on a Tuesday—he may be working until 10 pm because he started work at 2 pm.

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He’s always working

Freelancers and contract workers can rarely turn their minds off. Contractors especially are always lining up their next project, while working on the current one. It’s hard to get a freelancer to forget about work for a couple of days.

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Be ready to brainstorm

Because his job infiltrates his life, you need to be ready to brainstorm and riff. When a light bulb goes off in his head, he may need to bounce ideas off of you—even if it’s during post-sex cuddling.

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He’ll tempt you to stay up late

It’s going to be very tempting to stay up late with your freelancing boyfriend…beware. You’ll probably go to work with a few hangovers in the first few months of dating him until you learn better.

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No really, he’ll tempt you

He’ll also tempt you to cut out of the office early on Friday to go on a trip with him, and to ask for more vacation days. He may tempt you to do things that get you in trouble at work.

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His desk is more private than most

Remember that his home is also his office. That means that his computer and his desk are filled with very important files that are related to his livelihood. That means you can’t just “close this page” on his computer so you can open Facebook.

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Freelancing is lonely

While he may not want you to distract him when he’s working, he might appreciate you bringing over your laptop and working with him one day. Freelancing is a bit lonely.

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He can see your family for holidays more

Since he isn’t limited to traveling on holidays, he can visit his family anytime, and buy a little time to visit yours during the holidays. That’s a plus!

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He could be sleeping at anytime

More on sleep; since your boo doesn’t keep regular hours, he might sleep until noon, or take a nap at 2 pm. So don’t knock on his door unannounced—you may interrupt precious snooze time.

He may not have grown up clothes

He may not have enough grown up clothes to go to your friend’s one-week wedding. He doesn’t need slacks and button downs for his work, remember.

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He may not know how to act at your office parties

You have had office party etiquette drilled into your brain for years. If he’s never worked at a company or corporation, he may not have that formal behavior intuition you have when you bring him to your office party.

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His goals may be different

If you work at a corporation or structured company, you may know what your five year or ten-year plan is. There is a lot more uncertainty in freelance work. That freedom is at once exciting and also scary. Your guy may have days when he feels uncertain about the future.

He’ll check his email and phone constantly

Even though he can take days off and travel whenever he wants, that doesn’t mean he ever really leaves work. On trips, he will likely be checking his phone by the pool.

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He may like his quiet time

If he really wanted to be around a ton of people then by now, he probably would have taken a more conventional job. He probably likes a decent amount of quiet time, so he may not want to come to boozy brunches every weekend or lots of parties.

He’ll eat at really weird times

It’s true—something about work from home life makes you eat lunch at 5pm and dinner at 11 pm. He may have a hard time adjusting to you wanting to grab lunch at noon.

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He’s disciplined

When all is said and done, it takes a lot of self-discipline and ambition to be a freelancer. You have nobody breathing down your neck to make sure things get done. So, you can probably count on a freelancer to be dependable.