Moving in with someone is easy. I tried it once. After a long, happy relationship, we took the next step and decided to cohabit. Then things started to go bad. So bad, in fact, that we split up and now haven’t spoken in years.
So what went wrong? Before moving in together, we lived in virtual cohabitation and spent most of our holidays together, so it couldn’t have been incompatibility. But then we moved in together, one place, one bedroom. About six months later it ended without either of us quite knowing why. Occasionally, I found myself pondering the reason in an idle moment, and always came to the same conclusion — the pressures of cohabitation.
I have since warned my friends about the dangers of cohabiting. Be very sure of what you are doing, I said, it can kill a relationship. So the announcement that I had decided to move in with my new partner was met with surprise. What had changed my mind?
When my current partner suggested we move in together I wasn’t averse to the idea. The thought excited me. But when I thought about our one future bedroom, the doubts began to reappear. A bit like not knowing exactly what you ate that made you ill, it’s only until you are about to eat the offending food again that the nauseous feeling sets in. My aversion, I realised, was not to sharing a house, but a bedroom.
”Separate bedrooms?” my friends uttered when I told them about the perfect two-bedroom flat we had found. Was I suggesting that we were involved in a dysfunctional relationship from the beginning? No, I argued, it is choice that is important. Having only one bedroom is a bit like being together because you are the last two people on Earth. If you each have a room, even if you do find yourself waking up next to him or her 365 mornings a year, you know it is because you both want to be together.
When we are young, our bedroom is the most personal space we have, the area that reveals the most about us. It is where you alone rule, where you can be yourself. Why should we have to give it up as adults?
In your own room no one can object when you decide to paint red squares on the walls and line the ceiling with a purple glittered sari bordered with fairy lights.
The power of luring someone into your bedroom is incredible, and the knowledge you are wanted in somebody else’s private space is both thrilling and reassuring.
The new flat is a merger of ourselves, but our bedrooms are us as individuals. When bedtime comes, we head either to his room, or to mine, depending on who feels like inviting the other person in. But we have an unspoken rule that if either one of us ever needs a night on our own, for whatever reason, we can do so, no questions asked, no insecurities.
We spend most nights in the same room and go to bed at roughly the same time, so in that sense it really is no different from having one bedroom, just sometimes it’s his, sometimes it’s mine.
”But is it really worth the extra cost?” my friends ask. Yes. And I can’t imagine living any other way. — Â