Moving In: Stellar Magazine
Title: Moving In…
Author: Jonathan McCrea
Date: 15th September 2008
Publication: Stellar for publication
So I took the big step of moving into my girlfriend’s house recently. I suggested it. I never would have thought it beforehand, but it’s actually quite a difficult topic to bring up. Sensitivity is important. “Think of the money we’d save” is not, I have learned, what a girl wants to hear when they think their boyfriend wants to take the next serious step in a relationship. Nor is “Your Sky sports package is just going to waste”. Now don’t be so quick to judge: of course I felt the time was right, that it was special enough to give the whole relationship a proper go and all that. It’s just if there’s a choice between discussing logic or talking about our true feelings, men will always opt for the former. So in the end, let’s just say the required level of mushy stuff was said and I was changing postcode.
The night before the move I was down the pub with my mate Brian. “Wait til you see”, he said in an ominous voice, “your fantasy girlfriend will slowly disappear and be replaced by the comfortable girlfriend”. Brian’s longest relationship was with a girl he met on holidays in Magaluf, they dated for practically the whole week. He was eight. But he did have a point: moving in is the real test of a relationship, because you’re letting the other person see you with your guard down and vice versa.
In the first week of living with the love of your life, you find out soon enough that you were dating an illusion all along. It becomes apparent that her hair is not permanently blow dried, she sometimes wears tracksuits and occasionally eats stuff off the floor (kidding, kidding). But it’s not all bad – it’s an educational period too. You get to ask the questions you’ve always wanted to ask. I finally found out what a pumice was for after 28 years of wondering. I learnt that women bleach their upper lips and that fake tan comes in a mousse that is applied with an oven mit. It’s fascinating. For her part, she realised that I sucked in my stomach for pretty much all of the time we were dating up until that day. She saw that dirty laundry is my Achilles heel and that I have a really annoying and mildly dangerous habit of leaving the front door open.
After the first night of excitement, there was the inevitable struggle for space. There should be loads, but it seems to me that a girl’s belongings are like a gas: they expand to fill the space it occupies. No room has an empty wardrobe or an unused drawer. Women have stuff. An incredible amount of stuff. Shoes, boots, bags, belts, we’ve got more leather in our bedroom than a gay pride parade. On top of the functional stuff, there’s the miscellaneous stuff that has no obvious purpose. Coloured feathers, beaded necklaces, wine bottles holding dry flowers. There’s boxes and cases and little lamps that don’t work and countless half-empty packets of incense. It’s like Aladdin’s cave, except nothing’s really worth more than a fiver. It’s a completely alien world. Every guy I know could fit his entire life into the pocket that holds the sick bags and emergency manuals on an aeroplane. I think it’s partially to do with our innate phobia of commitment. We like to know that if we absolutely have to, we could disappear without a trace.
There’s a slight protocol change required too when you’re the one that has to relocate; you’re no longer in your own domain. You surrender to the following when you move into someone elses house: Family pop-ins, TV schedule decisions, her preferred side of the bed, and interior design decisions like leaving the toilet seat down (I actually think it looks better the other way). But it makes you a better person too. Before I could walk around in my underwear, eat pizza and play Call of Duty 4 on the Xbox 360 all day. Now I know that that sort of thing is childish and I should be bettering myself by putting up shelves for more stuff. In fairness, I still haven’t a clue where the hoover lives, so it’s fifty-fifty.
But while there’s small sacrifices on both sides, there’s twice as many benefits to moving in. It’s really good fun. There’s reading the papers in bed on a Sunday morning and there’s the little treats brought home from shopping trips. There’s knowing that someone will willingly listen to you moan about whatever it is that’s giving you the hump that day. There’s playing grown ups and having people over for dinner. There’s having someone to buy you Motilium when you get food poisoning the next day. There’s the glimmering hope that maybe, just maybe this girl is the one. Not to mention the money you save.