Randi Kest, an editor with the Discovery Health Web Site, is in the throes of moving in with her boyfriend after a four-year courtship. Her occasional series will explore the good, bad, and ugly of cohabitating with her significant other.
It's been four years. FOUR. Not two, not three. But four. So you'd think I'd be ready. After all, it's been 203 weeks, or 1,460 days (give or take a day or two). But as the piles of boxes begin to rise from every corner of my apartment and I painstakingly sort my belongings into two piles — one marked house, one marked storage — it hits me … and hard. My days as a single lass are over. I'm moving in with my boyfriend!
It's something I've long looked forward to: coming home from work each night to my boyfriend's smiling face, dinner waiting on the table, candles burning — nights filled with laughs and shoulder rubs — the stuff that memories are made of.
Ahhhhh…
Nightmare Alley
So why did the thought of cohabitating take a sudden turn down "nightmare alley"?
It's funny. The months leading up to the "big move" were filled with work projects, baby showers, wedding showers, birthdays and illnesses, so the thought of living together never really sunk in. But just days before the Uhaul was set to arrive, it clicked.
There would be no more private marathon couch sessions watching back-to-back reality shows. No more song and dance routines in front of my bedroom mirror without fear of being caught. No more hour-long yap sessions with my two best friends from New Jersey about all our high school crushes. No longer would I be able to throw my shoes, purse and jacket in a pile on the floor just inside the front door the second I walk in from work. No longer would I be able to stack my fashion (and gossip) magazines into a tower taller than me. No longer would I live A-L-O-N-E. And most importantly, no longer would I have four — count 'em, FOUR — closets to myself. And most every woman can appreciate that anything less than ample closet space is a recipe for disaster. And don't even get me started on the bathroom.
Questioning My Decision
My about-to-be "perfect life" was becoming dampened by a dark, sinister cloud. I was staring fear of commitment square in the face and I began to question whether my decision was right. But it was this thought that really got me — what could happen? It didn't help that just two weeks before our big day, I got a call from my very close friend whose boyfriend moved out one month after he moved in — this after two and a half years of dating.
Indeed, moving in with your significant other is pretty serious business. I'm just two days away from kissing my bachelorette-hood goodbye. Will I do it? Stay tuned!
