Life
The Best And Worst Of Living With Your SO
Moving in with your significant other is obviously a pretty big step. It's a thing you do to check if your relationship is going to go the distance, possibly to marriage (if that's in your plans) and beyond. Hopefully, it's a lovely process that includes many home-cooked roast dinners, near constant smooching, and agreement on paint color swatches. That, of course, is the co-habitation dream. But the reality of living with your SO is that between all the artisanal cheeses, guilt-free Saturday nights of not going out, and constant access to peen/vag, there are some things that will always be the absolute worst.
It's got nothing to do with how much you love someone, or how much you love living with them, and everything to do with the fact that you are human, and some things are universally annoying. But all the worst stuff is kind of the best. Knowing that you can live with someone harmoniously with all the crap that goes with it is an incredibly comforting feeling. Being able to watch someone pick their toe gunk out on the couch next to you and still wanting nothing more than to fall asleep in the same bed as them, possibly while spooning, is happiness at its most essential. Here's why living with your SO is simultaneously the best and the worst.
BEST: Snuggles, like, ALL THE TIME
I've never met a human being that didn't enjoy trading snuggles with their partner. When you live with someone, you get to throw your arms up whenever you like and declare "SNUGGLES, PLEASE!" and the other person must immediately provide said snuggles.
WORST: Having only half a bed
When you live alone, you're able to spend nights spread-eagle, taking up the entire bed. When you live with someone, your bed space is permanently halved. Unless you're lucky enough to have a giant king-sized bed (well, aren't you fancy?), this sucks. Especially because you also have to deal with: sleep farts, loud snoring, the other person rolling over in the night and landing right on you, blanket stealing and being unable to wake your SO when all you're left with is half an inch of bed space and you're balanced precariously on the edge of the mattress.
BEST: Sharing food
Cooking for one is challenging and not in a good way. It's hard to make food in small portions, without their being waste. When I cook only for myself I try to only make things I can freeze and revisit later, because otherwise I end up throwing a bunch out when it goes uneaten and I hate that. Cooking for two makes it much easier to use lots of ingredients and not wind up trashing a bunch of good food. There's also the loveliness of knowing there will be someone there every night to chow down next to.
WORST: Sharing food
And then there's the painful side of sharing food. Like when you ask your SO if they would like a piece of toast and they say no, then after you've gone and made your toast, they ask for a bite, which turns into them eating half of your meal and you not being able to say no lest you look like a selfish prick. Or when you come home after a long day to find half of the groceries already eaten. (I'm a serial perpetrator of eating all the olives.) There's a fine line between love and hate when it comes to food and your SO.
BEST: Netflix and wine levels up infinity levels
Binge watching Netflix while drinking wine is already the most fun a person can have without taking off their clothes of (although my pants are generally off when I'm doing this.) Add your SO to this equation and you just went from having the time of your life to having a straight up PARTY. My latest suggestion is get drunk and watch Jack Reacher, yelling at the TV the whole time about how terrible it is.
WORST: Farts
I spend a lot of time sucking in my farts around my boyfriend. It's not because I'm embarrassed about farting, it's that my farts sometimes smell like roadkill fell out of my ass, and I wouldn't blame him if he left me after smelling that. Having to release gas around your SO and having your SO constantly farting around you can be a bit of a mood killer, even though it's something entirely natural and inevitable.
BEST: Seeing their smile at the end of the work day
But even in a cloud of noxious gasses, seeing the person you love's face turn into a smile when they come home from work has the ability to send your heart aflutter. It's like a first kiss at the end of every day, a little moment of pure joy.
WORST: One messy vs. one clean person
I feel like in most couples I know, there is one person who is infuriatingly messy, and one person who is infuriatingly clean. Whichever one you are, living with your SO can be the worst. You're either being constantly followed around and picked up after/nagged, or you're constantly following someone around picking up after them/nagging.
BEST: Having someone to talk about storage options with
Before you move in with someone, the only person you really have to consult about home organization is yourself. While that's mildly fun, it's no where near as good as the pleasure you get from engaging someone in long conversations about putting all the pasta in jars and displaying them on the shelves. Home improvements with an SO are just so much better than home improvements alone, especially because with your collective brain's trust, you're likely to come up with some pretty innovative domestic storage solutions.
WORST: Finding toe nail clippings that aren't yours
The amount of times your SO will make you throw up in your mouth a little bit can't be quantified. A lot of the time they will happen when you least expect it. Like when you find a toenail that isn't yours in the couch cushions.
BEST: Impromptu two-person dance parties
When you live alone, there's plenty of dancing around the bedroom in your knickers singing into a hairbrush. Think about how fun that is for a moment – now times it by two. Times it by three if your SO has a guilty penchant for 90s one hit wonders and early era Usher songs.
WORST: The difficulty of surprises
Trying to have gifts delivered, wrapping them and hiding them is a nuisance. Trying to make your SO a surprise (like getting crafty with scrap booking or baking) is damn near impossible. The stress of them potentially walking in at any time and ruining everything can give you heart palpitations, and trying to sneak in surprise making sessions when they're not home is hard when that clashes with your own schedule. Also, it's hard to walk out of the house with no explanation if you're going to get them something, so most of the time your partner will know a surprise is coming!
BEST: Afternoon naps
Afternoon naps alone are kind of pathetic, and they always make you feel so unproductive. But when you've got someone at home to nap with, suddenly napping becomes an activity with your partner in crime.
WORST: Finding time to bleach your mo
The most difficult thing for me is finding time to do all my weird girl things. I can't just sit around in the evenings with my knees behind my ears, farting and picking out ingrown hairs while watching ANTM. Bleaching my sideburns and waxing my moustache is also tricky. There's lots of private preening that you never really want to share with anyone, whether it's your SO or a friend or even family. Living in close quarters obviously makes it difficult to find the alone time to do this stuff.
BEST: The unconditional love part
The best thing by far and beyond about living with someone is loving and being loved unconditionally. Because like I said at the start: all the creepy, disembodied toenails in the world are worth it when you get to spend every night falling asleep with the one you love, and every morning waking up to their stinky morning breath.
