You Need Help: What If You Never Want To Move In Together?
Q:
My girlfriend and I have been seeing each other for about a year, longer if we count the beginning when we were in the talking stage and non-exclusive. She brought up moving in together a few months ago, and I told her I wasn’t ready. She respected my decision but recently she reopened the conversation recently and wanted me to elaborate on why I don’t feel ready. I found it hard to really talk honestly about my reasons and we ended up fighting but I think it was mostly a mis-communication.
I’ve never lived with a partner before, but I’ve had some bad roommate experiences in the past and saved money until I could afford to live on my own. I love living alone! I love when my girlfriend sleeps over, but I also like having my own space. It takes about 20 minutes to drive between our apartments but an hour for her to get to my place from her work. I’d admit we both spend a lot of time in our cars going between our places. And the idea of sharing rent is attractive. I have a second room in my apartment but I use it as a home office and studio space. When I think about what living together looks like, I have a hard time picturing it even just in a logistics way.
I asked her if there’s a world in which we always live separately but still spend most nights together, and she didn’t say no but she also said she was having a hard time imagining it. Do people ever do this? Is it sustainable? How do people know when the time is time to move in together? Even though I’m not ready now, it’s also might be because I think it’s too soon.
A:
My suspicion here is just that it’s too soon, and that’s okay! Do people move in together after dating for less than a year? Most don’t, but some certainly do — according to our 2018 Lesbian Stereotypes Survey, 25% of our readers had at some point moved in with someone they’d been dating for under a year. Do people live separately forever and still spend most nights together? I’m confident they do, apparently these days there is a trend of even married couples living apart. But! Forever is a long time. Do any of us know what we want to do forever? You don’t have to know that just yet!
Often the decision to move in quickly is driven by factors that don’t seem to be heavily at play for you, like needing to save money, not having the time to shuttle between apartments due to work or school or family obligations, or just generally preferring co-habitation over solo living. You’ve saved up to live alone, you like living alone, and it seems like the middle-distance relationship thing isn’t putting too much of a strain on the rest of your life, so your drive to move in might not look like everyone else’s. You don’t express any hesitation about the longevity or strength of your relationship, nor does that seem to be a factor holding you back from signing that lease. You just… like living alone and want to spend more time doing this thing that you like to do. And listen, I can relate!
I’ve lived with partners a few times — starting with a misguided college co-habitation with my then-boyfriend of nine months where I realized immediately after signing the lease that he was Not the Man For Me and promised myself to be more careful going forward. For my next four relationships I did the “living in different places but still spending every night together” arrangement. But a full decade later, in 2012, I moved in with my then-girlfriend after around two years together, which was preceded by over a year of living in different apartments in the same building. When we broke up in 2014, the real estate market in the Bay Area was bananas. The person I’d started dating couldn’t afford their own place in the area, so we made the very gay choice to move in together after six weeks of dating. It was pretty fun at first to be honest! We then got engaged, moved to the midwest and bought a house together. Although I clearly was still hopeful about our future when I answered this co-habitation question two months before we broke up, this situation eventually ended badly and I left it terrified of ever living with a partner ever again, certain it’d lead to them hating me and also me hating myself!
Which brings me to the present moment, which is like yours except we’ve had the value of two additional years together — my girlfriend and I have been together for nearly three years and we don’t live together. We live 30 minutes apart without traffic, 90 with traffic, and I spend a lot of time in my car and packing/unpacking. And I’ll tell you what, despite being a person who does enjoy living alone, I really really wish we lived together! But that overwhelming desire didn’t kick in immediately and it wasn’t until around a year ago — long after we’d started planning an indefinite future together — that we started talking more urgently about finding a place together. (Unfortunately, the Los Angles real estate market has yet to offer us an affordable option!)
So with the caveat that yes, I am projecting here based on my own personal experience — there will quite possibly come a time when you simply begin to desire more, when it feels like time, when it feels weird that someone your life is so intertwined with lives so far away. You may get tired, eventually, of all of the driving and shlepping and pre-planning involved in a mid-distance relationship. You’ll want to run errands together. You’ll wish it was easier to be there for her when she’s sick or sad, and vice versa. You may get tired of paying two separate sets of bills and buying two separate containers of peanut butter. You may want to be able to see your person in the in-between times and not just the times you’ve made a concerted effort to do so. You may want to be able to want to do different things on a Saturday night without that meaning you won’t see each other at all on Saturday night — you’ll want to be able to come home to her, or see her before.
But you might never get there, which brings me to: is there “a world in which we always live separately but still spend most nights together” is a sustainable option? I think so and I think it depends on the couple and the people in it. Famously, Annie Lebowitz and Susan Sontag lived in separate apartments directly opposite each other, but they had some coin to work with. Whatever you do, I’d ensure you live in at least a two-bedroom, if not a three bedroom. So you can have your space! (One thing I’ve never done is live in a one-bedroom with a partner, I think that can get very cramped, especially for anyone who works at home.)
My instinct is that such a thing might only be sustainable in the long-term for you and your girlfriend (who does want to live together) if you guys eventually find a way to live a little closer together. Would it be possible to live in the same building or on the same block, where you can still keep the solo space that you currently treasure, but can begin start sharing more of your lives with each other? Living an hour’s drive away from your girlfriend’s work is clearly less than ideal for her.
There definitely are people who want to live alone forever, even if they are in a serious relationship. If that turns out to be you, you’ll have to cross that bridge when you come to it and figure out an arrangement that meets your needs and hers. But I don’t think you’re at that bridge yet! I think you are still in the meadow, having a picnic. One year is really not enough time to know how you’ll feel about living together, especially if you’re still in the honeymoon phase with your own apartment after having difficult roommate situations in the past.
Finally; it sounds like your girlfriend took it personally that you didn’t want to move in together, so she might have some insecurities that your resistance is related to a lack of faith or interest in your relationship. From your letter, it sounds like that’s not where your resistance is coming from — so I’d suggest first and foremost communicating that to her. It could be helpful to talk through ways that she can feel more secure about your relationship despite living apart, or for her to understand that your love of solo living is simply a part of who you are rather than any reflection on how you feel about her.
The good news is that I’m pretty sure the longer you wait to co-habitate, the better it will be if/when you do — you’ll understand each other and your routines and habits better, you’ll be more adept at navigating the little squabbles that arise. You can figure out how to avoid the issues that plagued your previous roommate situations, and you’ll be less prone to question the entire relationship if you can’t agree about how often laundry needs to get done and who ought to do it. You’ll also have thoroughly rid yourself of the nagging concept that you wish you’d had a little more time to yourself first!
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
How To Move in With a Partner and Still Like Each Other After
Moving is the worst. Tensions run high, things break, and you find yourself questioning all of your values based on how many T-shirts you somehow own. Establishing a new home with someone in an attempt to merge your physical and material lives as a manifestation of your commitment to one another, aka Uhauling, takes the intensity of moving to a whole other level. Sure, it’s nice to have an extra person to help you carry boxes, but who will carry all of these feelings?
My partner Wynn and I moved in together in August, along with our friend Antonia. We experienced some ups and downs, but ultimately we emerged intact. Moving in can be a test of compatibility in many ways, which is pretty stressful when you’ve already put your deposit in. Here are a few tips for making the process manageable so you can get to the fun part — getting to live together with your partner and/or queer gal pal — and still want to talk to each other.
Be honest about your deal-breakers
When the three of us first sat down to talk about what we were looking for in a place, we agreed on quite a lot: price range, preferred locations, and avoiding a big apartment complex. But once we got into the details, our combined wish lists meant we were kind of looking for a unicorn. We wanted no carpet, some green space, two bathrooms, and preferably a third bedroom or office. Every time one of us found a place on Zillow or Trulia that seemed like a good compromise, someone would veto it.
Finally I called my friend who is a realtor and begged him to rescue us. He found us a place that meets all our criteria and also has some warts we never expected — the house is quirky to say the least, most of the blinds don’t work, and it’s across the street from an elementary school so traffic is a pain in the ass in the mornings and afternoons. No place will be perfect, but if you’re honest from the start about what you truly can’t budge on you can save yourselves a lot of time. It might be tempting to compromise and let your partner’s priorities win out over yours, but remember that you both have to be happy in a place for at least 12 to 18 months, and that the process will be easier if you start out with a realistic and clear set of things you both agree not to budge on.
Talk about your stuff with compassion
I’ve been a little nuts about putting stuff on the walls ever since I was a kid. As a teenager my walls were literally covered with band posters, movie ticket stubs, album art, greeting cards and other flat things that I could hold up with sticky tack. Although I’m older now and have started using frames and nails (or at least command strips), I still use my walls as a carefully curated gallery of my life. At first, the idea of another person putting their stuff on my walls too was very stressful.
So much crap, so little space
Merging aesthetic preferences and personal belongings was one of the hardest parts of moving in together, especially since it meant leaving some things behind and compromising on others. I recommend starting the conversations about this as soon as possible. You don’t want to find yourself telling your partner that you really hate that particular Star Wars poster once they’ve already gotten it framed. Of course, some things you won’t realize until you’re in the space, and that’s when you get to embark on the task of making seemingly meaningless but somehow very emotional decisions together.
Finding ways to combine our favorites was a way to make everyone feel included and respected.
This part of the process is also a pretty special way to learn new things about each other. I found out that Wynn got their plastic police tape trash can as a present when they were a teenager really interested in forensic science. I explained that I may never get around to listening to all the records in my collection but I will lug them around for the rest of my life because they were the only thing I got from my dad when he died. As you encounter things in each other’s boxes, don’t be afraid to ask questions. Just do so gently or you might accidentally hurt your partner’s feelings when you talk about how excited you are to get rid of that dumb police tape trash can (sorry babe).
Figure out the finances
Money is fraught enough as an individual, but figuring out how to deal with finances with another person who has a different budget, priorities, and idea of how much curtains should cost is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. There will be some big decisions to make — can you afford to get movers? How are you going to handle deposits for rent and utilities? Are you going to split things evenly or based on income level? Wynn, Antonia and I used Splitwise, an app that allows you to track shared spending between two people or a group, so that we didn’t have to keep up with who owed who $10 for moving day pizza. Instead, once we were all done with the move we just hit “settle up.”
When dealing with the money stuff, it’s important not to make assumptions. Before you spend $80 at the Container Store and log it in the shared spending, make sure your partner really wants a wall-mounting tie rack, a travel steamer, and three sizes of laundry delicate bags or they will come find you when you’re under three feet of cardboard and ask what the heck they owe you $40 for.
I also recommend starting to talk about money before you book the moving truck — Wynn and I started looking at each other’s YNABs about two months before the move — so that you don’t find out during crunch time that your partner/roommate can only afford the slowest internet speed or absolutely insists on name brand toilet paper when your budget calls for single ply. In fact, it was by talking honestly about money from the very beginning of deciding to live together that led us to decide to have a third roommate, which turned out to be an amazing decision for several reasons and one I certainly wouldn’t discourage you from considering.
Realize that everything is going to change.
I underestimated how different things would be once we lived together. I thought of it more in terms of logistics without realizing how much that would change how I felt. On the upside, removing the stress factor of figuring out who had to be where when and whose house Wynn’s favorite shirt was at has freed up a ton of mental space. On the downside, learning how to set boundaries on my space and time when we’re in the same building so often has been really challenging. For me, living together has already made me feel more settled and safe in our relationship in a way that has inspired me to return to activities that make me feel like myself, like playing guitar, writing and connecting with friends. Rather than fusing into a single entity and disappearing, we’ve both been more conscious about making choices that feel healthy both individually and as a partnership.
Still, I wish I had somehow prepared for the radical shift in the way I think about time, space, my individual self and my relationship. It has been a lot to absorb all at once and I have a feeling that process is just beginning. Now that we’re out from under all the boxes and have a few things hung on the walls, we’re ready for the fun, and the real work, to begin.
View From the Top: Dominant Fantasy vs. Dominant Reality
My alarm goes off and I wake up refreshed. The boy is asleep at the foot of my bed on a large dog pillow, which works great for him because he curls up like a fox to self-cuddle, regardless of his sleeping arrangement; he only sleeps in the bed with me on special days. He wakes and stretches at the alarm, and I invite him into the bed for a kiss and tell him to suck me off.
When I’m done, I dismiss him, and he heads to the bathroom. He knows his proper morning routine, and takes care to brush his teeth, wash his face, do his hair, and get dressed in his casual daily uniform before heading to the kitchen. He prepares his own coffee and breakfast, eating outside, then cleans the kitchen and prepares my work area and breakfast.
Meanwhile, I’m deep in my own quiet and private morning routine: yoga, meditation, writing and a shower. When I emerge from the dressing room refreshed and clear-minded an hour and a half later, my breakfast is waiting on the table under a simple wooden cloche to keep it warm, daily supplements are in a small dish next to it, and my chai tea is just how I like it.
The boy comes back from walking the dog just after I sit down at my desk. He greets me excitedly and kneels next to me, and we quickly go over our goals for the day, any protocol experiments we’re doing, and any important upcoming deadlines. He keeps me company as I eat, refilling my water without me noticing and clearing away the dishes when I’m done.
Then, I get to work.
In reality, the cat jumps on our faces, meowing, so that’s when I know it’s time to get up. Maybe the alarm has already gone off; did I hit snooze? I did. Oops. I probably drank a little too much whiskey the night before, so I’m groggy. The boy is never functional before coffee, so he gets out of bed, struggling to find his glasses. He dresses while I start breakfast, then takes orders about how to help. We eat together, then walk the dog on a quick loop around the block, sharing share our dreams or processing our feelings from couple’s therapy or discussing some funny animal video we saw on Facebook.
When we get home, we both get our computers out and start working. Deadlines, bills, inboxes overflowing, did I update Patreon, did I reply to those tweets? And I have a doctor’s appointment later, so I never quite drop in to creating, I just putter around with administrative tasks.
After rife and I got together, we were long distance for a year and a half. Maybe three-quarters of our relationship was online, in emails, texts and Skype, and one-quarter was in person every couple of months for a weekend. Those weekends sustained us, the teasing promise of 24/7 and a functional, healthy D/s dynamic just out of reach, keeping me striving.
We wrote to each other all the time. Fantasies, desires, what I thought about when I masturbated the other day. I gave him dozens of tasks to complete, mostly prompts for making art. I mused about my desires as a dominant, as a master, and he met me — equal and opposite — with his own cravings for enslavement and being controlled.
I’m not sure what I thought moving in together and living our dynamic all day, every day, would really do for us, though at first I was worried that we would have so much sex and lust and desire that neither of us would focus on our work ever again. I thought we would keep escalating the power and control that I had, and we did — but after he was collared, I wondered: What more is there? What are the next steps? How do I grow further as a dominant, as a master? We pretty much had the basics down, but I wanted the fine-tuning, and I began to be more and more aware of my shortcomings — but how could I work on them? It became harder to feel into the growth once I had more experience. Any advanced study is all about taking one concept and diving deep into all the nuance, so I did, and I started giving rife more complicated assignments toward longer-term goals, too.
But we still have to manage the facts of contemporary American life. Mail and health insurance (thanks, Obama) and income and friends in crisis, and all the adult details that everyone has to deal with. Sometimes people ask me if 24/7 is a lot of work, but the truth is, it’s a very different kind of dominance than having a submissive for three days every two months. It’s more intimate, more vulnerable, but less postured and less mysterious. As a weekend dominant, I could put everything else in my life aside for three days, use every spare moment to fuck or play, make sure to dress up, bring only my best briefs, clean all my leathers and all my sex toys before I showed up. But in real life, sometimes I want to use the dildo that’s been at the back of the drawer for a month, and it’s covered in cat hair. Sometimes I wear pajamas for two (okay, five) days in a row. Sometimes I don’t shower in the morning, so I don’t do my hair.
I have to be willing to reveal the messy, intimate parts of my life to have this authority exchange really work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Otherwise, it just isn’t sustainable — that weekend dominant is a part of me, sure, but relegated to the weekend for a reason. In order to hand over that kind of control, there are dozens of areas of rife’s life that I don’t manage, but rather let him steer, knowing that at any moment I could take the reigns or give orders for him to implement change.
The reality of being a 24/7 master with a live-in slave isn’t quite what I expected, though I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I knew it wouldn’t be like the fantasies and erotica portray it, but I wanted to see what it would be like for me, for us. I know now that it has to be built around the realities of my life and my limitations, acknowledging my humanity and thus my many flaws, as well as his, in order for it to really last. So far, three years in, it has far exceeded my expectations, and I am grateful every day I am lucky enough to receive service from my boy.
PS: To read rife’s version of this, check out Submissive Fantasy vs Submissive Reality over on Sugarbutch.
Shameless self-promotion: I run Submissive Playground, an eight-week online course for in-depth study of core aspects of submission and bottoming. It won’t teach you how to be submissive; it will you to discover and articulate your relationship to submission. Registration is now open with a discount just for Autostraddle readers: use the code iheartautostraddle for $50 off.
You Need Help: How Soon Is Too Soon To U-Haul, Get Married, Have Ten Babies, Be Together Forever and Ever and Ever and Ever?
Welcome to You Need Help! Where you’ve got a problem and yo, we solve it. Or we at least try.
Q:
My girlfriend and I have been together for almost 4 months now and I am HEAD OVER HEELS OMG SO IN LOVE WITH THIS GIRL LIKE WHOA. All I want to do is U-Haul so hard and I don’t want to stop there. I want to marry this girl. I want to marry this girl right now and start a family.
Overall I’m a pretty slow moving, cautious person. I’ve had other relationships that have lasted years (read: YEARS) and only sometimes thought, “yeah, I could MAYBE marry this girl, but maybe I should wait to be sure…” But this girl, I know. I JUST KNOW I want to be with her forever.
We were friends for several months before dating but I’ve still only really known her for less than a year. So logically I understand that it’s too soon to move in and definitely too soon to elope. Right? RIGHT?!
But in my heart of hearts I know that I’ve found her. I’ve found the one. The one that I want to be with forever and ever. The one that makes me a better person and who loves me for me. The person I love and want to be with all the time. The person I think is just so great and just so great for me.
So I need help. I need to be talked down from this crazy ledge. Or do I? Maybe I need a hopeless romantic to give me a little validation that sometime when you know, you know – and that’s okay. I don’t know what I need. I need help. Am I being crazy?
A:
You’re being in love! Being in love is a LOT like being crazy, especially at the start. Your skin is on fire, your teeth itch, you feel like 3-4 body parts are on the verge of explosion at any given moment. How did we get so lucky?, Oh my gosh this girl! This girl! I wouldn’t say I’m a “hopeless romantic,” but I believe in big feelings, unstoppable forces and not-so-tangible energies that make me vulnerable to the feelings you say you’re feeling so I’m not gonna talk you down. I’m gonna congratulate you on finding a magical thing, and then we’re gonna talk about what to do about this thing.
New Relationship Energy is a high, right? It’s a high. You feel high right now! And you don’t want it to end. Sometimes these choices — getting an apartment, getting engaged, getting married — are methods of maintaining that high, of ensuring there’s always something even MORE intense and devotional to do in order to feel that rush all over again. That’s one reason people make big decisions too quickly, but the other reason is that, as Harry famously told Sally, “when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” You want to do these things because, well, you want to do these things!
But should you? Well, I’ve been a strong anti-U-Hauling advocate since before I knew what U-Hauling was — at 20, I’d radically misinterpreted my own personality and moved in with my boyfriend, who really liked eating at Hooters. Two weeks into our co-habitation I realized I’d made a terrible mistake, but we lived together, so it was hard to exit, and complicated, especially ’cause I’d been paying most of the bills.
I’ve resisted, since, opportunities to shack up too early, or at all. I’d been known to declare it “always a bad idea,” claim it “killed romance,” remind people that “you think it’s the same as just staying at each other’s place every night, but it’s not.” My ex-girlfriend and I took careful steps: nine months in the same town, a year in the same building, and then almost two years in the same apartment. (and then we broke up.)
And then I found my current person. Like you, I’d been in many relationships prior to this one and this one was markedly different. This was it! This was special! Just thinking about her looking at me and smiling made my stomach do flip-flops! (It still does, actually.) We’d only been together for a month when she left a farm in Oregon to be with me in California, but the rent where I lived in the Bay Area was astronomical. So either she’d move into my (still expensive but) rent-controlled place and we’d see each other constantly, or we’d find affordable apartments far away from civilization and never see each other at all. The first option was clearly the winner, but I still worried that we were gonna kill this thing before it started.
It didn’t. It was actually really fun, like we’d tricked our Moms into letting us have a sleepover every night! I mean when you’re first falling in love, any thing you get to do together, even grocery shopping or going to IKEA three times in one day, feels like the funnest thing you’ve ever done. (To be fair, that IKEA joy has never faded.) There was bickering, for sure, and it felt like a cruel crash-course in our assorted psychological triggers at times, but we made it, more excited about the future than ever. Less than a year later, we got engaged, moved across the country together, moved into a very small house with my Mom for five months, and then bought a giant house of our own and moved into it. Short of having a baby, we were officially on track to do everything way faster than recommended.
The good news is that we’re still together and still in love and still planning to spend our lives together. But for a minute there — shortly after moving into our house — it seemed like we might not make it after all. It was terrifying. And when we finally sat down and talked about our true feelings and desires and the kind of life we wanted, separately and together, a big thing that came up was choice.
As in: we’d never really had the chance to actively choose to be together — whether that meant have dinner together, take a vacation together, be monogamous, or design career paths with the other in mind. The way our life was set up was for all those things to be the default, and for doing things separately to be what required the extra effort.
Yeah, there are practical things worth eschewing U-Hauling in favor of putting off, like the possibility of occasionally feeling homicidal about one another’s various household chore-related inadequacies or the terror of financial logistics. But the real argument against moving too quickly into Official Commitments is that there’s a value in extending the period of time in which the way you build a life together is directed only by what’s in your heart and guts and brain, not by leases and legal documents and bill payments and shared sofas.
When you live separately, you choose to spend time together, and that choice is deliberate and special, it’s not a default. You choose whether or not you wanna have a sleepover even though you’re tired or cranky or sick or distracted, or you choose not to because of those reasons. You choose to invite her over when your friend is coming by rather than automatically turning friend-time into a group hang ’cause there’s only one living room and you’re both it. If you struggle with mental illness like I do and my partner does and many of us here do, it’s nice to be able to keep some of those “crying in bed in the morning for three hours” days to yourself for a while! When you live together, pretty much any time is a time you could have sex, which at first means you have sex all the time but then can eventually mean you never do because well, there’s always tomorrow, or next weekend? (Look, I’ve read a lot of Lesbian Sex Surveys.) Even if you’re gonna choose spending every night together for the rest of your lives, the act of choosing and not doing it because you’re locked in to a lease or a marriage is an important act.
All that being said, we did everything “wrong” and we’re still okay! So it’s very possible that you could do everything wrong and also be okay. I don’t have any regrets. But if you DO have other options, I’d like to suggest considering them for a little while longer, or to at least wait until a practical time to make a change.
And, if you do move in together sooner rather than later, I’d suggest: radical honesty (don’t get passive aggressive, make room to be frank, don’t take household things personally), make lists for each other about your pet peeves and household desires right away, be clear about finances and get a two-bedroom or larger so you have the option of taking space from each other (and figure out how to do that without feeling insecure about it).
Remember that being in love doesn’t necessarily mean that you should want to spend every minute together, constantly be in touch, or rely on the other for all your basic life functions. But! Have fun. You’re in love! Follow your heart! You found her! GO FORTH AND BE MERRY.
Sincerely Forever,
Riese
ETA December 2017: The relationship I cited as “still okay” ended two months after this post was published, and the financial repercussions for me personally w/r/t home ownership when I needed to sell within a year of moving in were STRATOSPHERIC, just so you have the full picture here!! If I could add anything small to my advice, it’d be to avoid buying a fixer-upper in the middle of the country with only three (3) friends who live within a 3-hour radius of your home (and one of them is your mom) until you’ve known each other for a few years. And if you are buying a house, make sure you have a plan, in writing, for what will happen to it if you break up.
Every Current Lesbian/Bisexual TV Character, Ranked By U-Hauling Potential
The lull between summer TV season and fall TV season is a good time to evaluate where we are on television, in terms of queer female representation. As Autostraddle CEO + Editor-in-Chief Riese mentioned last week, we’re moving away from counting gay characters now; it’s time to talk about quality, not quantity. So while we await new episodes of our favorite regular season shows, we thought it would be a good time to address the thing you really care about: Which lesbian/bisexual TV characters would be the best to U-Haul with? And so we’ve evaluated every major recurring lesbian/bi character that currently has a place on American television and ranked them in order of Most U-Hauling Potential to Least U-Hauling Potential!
Off limits: Stef and Lena, The Fosters
Sorry, they belong together forever; you’re not invited.
Off limits: Nomi and Amanita, Sense8
They’re too in love to ever U-Haul with anyone but each other.
46. Sara Harvey, Pretty Little Liars
Pros: None.
Cons: Literally the most boring human being on earth. Takes too many showers.
45. Piper Chapman, Orange Is the New Black
Pros: Good at crafty, Pinterest-style home decorating projects.
Cons: Is a narcissistic abyss of Slytherin schemes and unquenchable insecurities.
44. Tituba, Salem
Pros: V. skilled in magic, could whip up healing potions, etc. in a snap if you’re feeling under the weather.
Cons: Worships the literal devil and would always be doing murder around the house and leaving blood and guts everywhere.
43. Barbara Kean, Gotham
Pros: Knows Batman.
Cons: Is a manipulative psychopath with no qualms about killing even her own family. Wouldn’t be able to spend much time together as she now resides in Arkham Asylum.
42. Rose, Jane the Virgin
Pros: Really hard worker, master entrepreneur; making rent would never be a problem. Interested in having sex in new and exciting places.
Cons: Deals drugs, kidnaps babies.
41. Tara, The Walking Dead
Pros: Loyal, savvy, strong will to survive.
Cons: Too much exposure to the zombie apocalypse, would need lengthy period of re-socialization, similar to a feral cat.
40. Audrey, Scream
Pros: Would stay up all night watching old movies with you and discussing themes of sexism, homophobia, etc.
Cons: Potentially would murder you, as she potentially did to her first girlfriend and others.
39. Faith, UnREAL
Pros: Sweet, really looking to take things to the next commitment level no matter what it takes.
Cons: Will be suffering from reality TV PTSD for the rest of her life.
38. Reagan, Faking It
Pros: Fun! Loyal! Really willing to get in it with you and help you work through your stuff and love your family even though they make her crazy.
Cons: Believes her own singular anecdotal experience of dating a bisexual woman who left her for a man is universal, never wants you to ever have even looked longingly at another human before you met her.
37. Emily Fields, Pretty Little Liars
Pros: Lots of lived experiences, plenty of stories to share. Pretty good at cooking. Deep, deep empathy for everything you’re going through at all times.
Cons: You’ll be murdered for absolute sure.
36. Shay, Orphan Black
Pros: Willing to take on all your significant baggage, into romantic gestures like bringing you breakfast in bed, basically a living ASMR video.
Cons: But like do you really know her? Do you?
35. Lena, Ray Donovan
Pros: Is Shane 2.0.
Cons: Is Shane 2.0.
34. Nicky Nichols, Orange Is the New Black
Pros: Will always make you laugh, even in her most nihilistic spirals. Sees through the bullshit to the heart of things.
Cons: In perpetual Self-Destruct mode.
33. Sameen Shaw, Person of Interest
Pros: Willing to take a literal bullet for you. V. tech savvy, could figure out how to get all the remotes to work with just one remote.
Cons: Occasional psychotic tendencies.
32. Lt. Alisha Granderson, The Last Ship
Pros: A smart, hard worker with a golden soul.
Cons: Lives on a spaceship a billion lightyears away.
31. Delphine, Orphan Black
Pros: If you’ve got a problem, yo, she’s solved it. Like waking up next to a puppy every morning. Actual genius human, would talk you down every time you self-diagnosed cancer after visiting Web MD.
Cons: Potentially is dead, you might have to U-Haul with her ghost.
30. Lexa, The 100
Pros: Resourceful, probably could make dinner out of just some crackers and one condiment. Good at looking at the big picture. Enjoys a good give-and-take.
Cons: Is pretty sure love is a weakness, slave to justice.
29. Alex Vause, Orange Is the New Black
Pros: All overshadowed by letting Piper Chapman ruin her life on repeat.
Cons: Has also ruined Piper Chapman’s life on repeat.
28. Karma, Faking It
Pros: When she gets you, she gets you. When she loves you, she loves you.
Cons: Paralyzing inability to make up her mind, inexplicable fondness for one-dimensional straight white oafish man-children.
27. Nyssa al Ghul, Arrow
Pros: You’ll be safe here.
Cons: Her family is a real piece of work.
26. Luisa Alver, Jane the Virgin
Pros: Loyal and compassionate, super smart and super rich(!).
Cons: Dating a MMA fighter who could destroy you, hasn’t quite conquered her addictive tendencies yet.
25. Big Boo, Orange Is the New Black
Pros: Will go to war for you, can stretch a penny for a mile, not afraid of some sexual experimentation.
Cons: Actually kind of likes going to war?
24. Alison DiLaurentis, Pretty Little Liars
Pros: Has several billion dollars stashed away in various hidey-holes. Has a pilot’s license which will make for easy weekend getaways. Can hold her breath for hours. Knows at least one real witch.
Cons: Lives in a graveyard, potentially suffering from having her brain completely wiped clean.
23. Madame Vastra, Doctor Who
Pros: Always up for an adventure, not scared of any bumps in the night or bugs or anything like that.
Cons: Not really good at knowing what hurts a human lady’s feelings.
22. Root, Person of Interest
Pros: Once you have her heart, it is yours forever. V. good with computer things, could deal with all your wireless router troubles without blowing a gasket.
Cons: Hot-tempered a little bit, likes killing a little bit also.
21. Bo Dennis, Lost Girl
Pros: Doesn’t mind gettin’ into a little trouble.
Cons: Is always gettin’ into trouble.
20. Tiana, Empire
Pros: Would fill your house with the most beautiful music from her own personal vocal chords! Friends with Cookie Lyon!
Cons: Hakeem up in your business forever.
19. Clarke, The 100
Pros: Believes in your power, will never leave you behind to save herself if your apartment catches on fire, thrifty, good at medicine things, good at looking on the bright side even in the most dire circumstances.
Cons: Kind of also thinks love is a weakness.
18. M-Chuck, Survivor’s Remorse
Pros: Loves to laugh, steadfast and true in her love for you, will not tolerate homophobic bullying, up for making out in church even.
Cons: Really, really wrapped up in her family’s drama.
17. Betty, Masters of Sex
Pros: Like living with Luna Lovegood, kind of.
Cons: Her boss is the worst and she has a hard time leaving her work at work.
16. Amy, Faking It
Pros: Loves deeply and foreverly, a perfect mix of sweetness and sass.
Cons: Probably never going to be over falling for her best friend in high school, to be honest.
15. Suzanne, Orange Is the New Black
Pros: You’ll never need to spend money on books; she’ll write a whole library for you. Really likes to keep things tidy, doesn’t mind doing the hard housework. Her wisdom will blow you away probably every day.
Cons: Startled by intimacy, weirdly over-involved parents.
14. Cosima Niehuas, Orphan Black
Pros: Probably could invent a robot to do all the cooking and cleaning. Will go on ice cream runs in the middle of the night. Her smile would be your alarm clock, like the sun gently waking you up to begin each new day.
Cons: She’s been dying for a while.
13. Abby Isaacs, Manhattan
Pros: An ardent, devoted companion; ready and willing to try all kinds of new lesbian things she’s never tried before; just wants to make a happy home for you.
Cons: Married to a guy building an atomic bomb.
12. Arizona Robbins, Grey’s Anatomy
Pros: Failed first marriage has given her some perspective about what’s important in life. Really wants a comfortable, happy home. Very good with kids and probably pets also.
Cons: A little bit blame-y about things that aren’t your fault, workaholic.
11. Sophia, Orange Is the New Black
Pros: A hard worker who likes to laugh and also have deep discussions, willing to go the extra hundred miles for people she loves, unwilling to compromise on her principles. Just wants a quiet life with the people she loves most.
Cons: Love sometimes blinds her.
10. Brenna, Chasing Life
Pros: Has Her Shit Together, knows what’s important in life, stands up for what’s right even if it’s not popular.
Cons: Her (very valid) fear of losing the things she loves might make her a little clingy.
9. Tamsin, Lost Girl
Pros: Loves with a love that lasts forever, and she should know because she’s immortal. All the best qualities of all the best roommates you’ve ever had.
Cons: Sometimes has to travel to hell for extended periods of time for work.
8. Soso, Orange Is the New Black
Pros: Knows what she wants out of life now, treasures the moments that matter, ready to make a life with someone who deserves her.
Cons: Impulsive, occasionally gets pulled into a cult.
7. Gail Peck, Rookie Blue
Pros: She’s got a good career and a good heart and she’s done playing the game. She’s ready to settle down, start a family even.
Cons: 100 times out of 100, she chooses to listen to her gut instead of her brain.
6. Paige McCullers, Pretty Little Liars
Pros: Wants to spend time nesting but also hitting up diners and eating all the donuts, has looked into the abyss and survived, so loyal the Sorting Hat placed her in Gryffindor before it even landed on her head, forgives easily because she knows what it’s like to need forgiveness.
Cons: Sometimes she tries so hard she breaks things.
5. Maggie, Younger
Pros: A driven, successful artist with a hella nice rent controlled loft in Bushwick. Is cool going out or staying in, it’s up to you really.
Cons: Everyone in Bushwick drives unicycles now.
4. Callie Torres, Grey’s Anatomy
Pros: She’s not messing around anymore. She knows what she can and cannot live without, and she’s going to get it. When she says she’s there for you, she’s there for you.
Cons: A bad luck cloud follows her around like she’s Charlie Brown.
3. Lauren Lewis, Lost Girl
Pros: Selfless, nurturing, adorable, whip-smart, superheroic, Canadian.
Cons: Not very good at saying no when her ex-girlfriend is in trouble. (Her ex-girlfriend is always in trouble.)
2. Jenny, Doctor Who
Pros: She cooks, cleans, loves to makeout, makes you laugh, holds you when you cry, and also is a time-traveling kick-ass ninja-woman who errs on the side of misandry and will not stand for oppression or injustice!
Cons: Dies sometimes for just a little while.
1. Poussey Washington, Orange Is the New Black
Pros: She’s perfect.
Cons: None.
We’re eager to hear your opinions on our opinions on this subject.
When Two (or More) Become One: Relationship Budgeting for the Financial Planning Adverse
Is that the jingly jangly sound of U-haul keys I hear? Well, congrats, cowgurl, you and your partner(s) have decided to cohabitate. Remember to lift with your knees!
First come uhaul, then comes having too many mismatched dishes and no ice cream scoops.
Now that you are done combining your varied assortment of goods and furniture, it’s time to take a look at your household finances. In a platonic roommate situation, expenses are usually split evenly among all housemates. This can work for your family finances, too, but there are other ways that might work better. Here are some ideas on how to pay your bills and set up your household budget now that you are a live-in family unit!
The All-In Joint Checking Account
Many folks opt for this simple option. Put all of your moneys in one account. Now pay your expenses out of that account. Tada! There’s nothing inherently wrong with the all-in joint account, but I personally believe there are better ways. In the very worst case scenario, if your relationship becomes unhealthy or abusive, having your own separate account means your partner will be less able to control you financially. It will be easier to keep your money if you choose to leave. Even if you just have a regular ol’ break up, it can be painful and messy to separate out who gets how much out of the joint account. Or to rush to close it before one partner withdraws all the funds or buys a spite Dyson or something.
One Wage Earner Household
OK, Vanessa. Everyone knows you have great credit. We get it.
If there is only one wage-earner in your relationship, a joint account is not a bad idea, so that everyone has access to household funds. It’s very important, however, especially when one person earns wages and the other(s) does oft under-appreciated and unpaid work like raising kids, cleaning the house, etc, that there is mutual respect for the value of every person’s work. The stay-at-home partner(s) shouldn’t feel like they are asking for an allowance from the wage-earner, nor should the wage-earner think they have the final say in financial matters.
Multiple Wage Earner Household
We are contributing equally to this piggy bank and also have the same hairstylist.
If you do decide to go with a single joint account and you are all putting your income into it, make sure that you respect each other’s contributions to the relationship evenly. In most cases, one person is going to be generating more income. That does not make them the queen or king of the household budget castle. Everyone who contributed to the household should get an equal say. So, if your partner is the one making less than you, they shouldn’t feel like they’re unworthy of that fancy hair oil they covet while you are out buying all the Autostraddle merchandise for yourself. That is unfair and it will lead to fights. This is why I think the all-in joint account is often not the best option, though it’s what a lot of people seem to default to. It can work well as long as everyone is treated fairly.
The Joint + Individual Account
This little piggy went to Netflix. This little piggy went to Starbucks. This little piggy was sad and empty.
I believe having your own personal account is the best, if you have a two-income (or more) family. My partner and I do the joint + individual account. We both have our own checking accounts and we are free to spend our extra income any way we want. We have a plan to pay for our bills and we have savings goals that we both contribute to, but if I feel like picking up Thai food on my way home and my partner wants to buy a new shirt, we don’t have to check in with each other. We can pay with the money we earned and feel rightfully entitled to. I’m not saying we don’t fight about money ever, but it helps that we are the masters of our own financial domains. We do have joint accounts that we use for specific purposes. Here are some ways you can make a joint + individual plan work for you.
Joint Evenly Spaced Bills Account
This is a great idea, but you’ll have to get some seed money first. If you’re getting a significant tax return, this could be a great way to use it. You could also start putting away a little money at a time until you have enough for this. My partner’s sister and her boyfriend do this and it works for them.
So how this works is that you use your joint checking account just for paying your monthly bills. You add up all your monthly household bills: rent/mortgage, utilities, Netflix, internet, porn subscriptions. The necessities. Then, you look at both of your incomes and figure out how much you would both need to contribute, per month, to pay for all those bills. You could split the amount evenly among you. Or you can weight it by how much you make. For example, let’s say one person makes $40,000 a year and their partner makes $20,000 and your total bills are $600 (That’s obviously way low, but I’m bad at math, so I picked an easy number to work with. Stay with me). So your total bills are $600 and one person makes twice as much as the other, so the higher earner would be responsible for $400/month and the lower earner would be responsible for $200/month. Get it?
Then you take how much you owe per month and figure out how much per pay period you need to contribute. Every pay period, skim that amount into the joint account and your bills will always be covered! You can even set up an automatic transfer or auto-deposit into the account, so you don’t even notice the money being taken our of your check. The nice thing about this is that you know exactly how much money you have to put in every pay period. There isn’t one week with a huge bill and another week with no bills. The downside is, that in order for this to work, you need to put in the total amount of your monthly at the beginning, so you’re always replenishing what is being taken out and never overdraw.
Regular Joint Bills Account
This is the simpler version of the bills account, where the payments into the account are not evenly spaced, but deposited on a bill-by-bill basis. You don’t need seed money for this one, so it’s easier to start right away. You get a bill. You figure out what each person owes. You all transfer or deposit the amount into your joint account. You pay the bill. You repeat this process for every bill, probably making deposits on a weekly basis. So, for example: Rent is due. It’s $1000. You each contribute $500 to the joint account. The bill is paid out of the joint account. Easy peasy.
Joint Transfer Account
In this scenario, you use the joint account for giving money to each other. Assuming you all have the same bank (which makes the joint + individual much easier), you can also use the joint account to quickly and easily transfer money to each other. Instead of dealing with cash or checks, if you need to get your partner $50, you just put the $50 into the joint account and then they withdraw it to their account. If you’re going to use the account this way, just make sure you have unlimited withdrawals. Most checking accounts do, but some savings accounts have a limit on the number of withdrawals you can make per month.
Joint Savings Account
You can also use a joint account just to contribute to household savings for special stuff: home repairs, vacations, a holiday gift fund, concert tickets, A-camp. This is like a virtual piggy bank. You just keep putting money in until you have enough for whatever you are saving for. It’s fun to watch that number go up each week until you have enough to withdraw it in singles and roll around in it like Scrooge McDuck!
If you’re really financially savvy and lucky enough to have some extra funds at the end of the week, you could use this account for emergency savings. In our household budget, we both put a small amount ($20 each) into our joint savings each week for emergencies. We are trying to eliminate a massive amount of credit card debt, so having a small emergency fund means that if one of our cars breaks down, we have a place to get that money from that isn’t a credit card. Financial planning experts recommend having at least three months worth of an emergency fund built up. Personally, I know no one who has that much in their emergency fund. It’s a nice idea, but without a living wage, it’s impossible. Even with a living wage, you have to have quite a bit of discretionary income or a ton of self-control to make that work. Our little emergency fund vacillates between $100-$1000, but we usually end up needing it and it gets dropped back down to $0. I’m glad it’s there when we need it though!
Other Ways to Split the Bills
Text: “I paid for your A+ membership this month, boo. You’re welcome.”
If you decide not to join your accounts in any way or decide not to pay your bills out of a joint account, you still need to pay your bills. Here’s how that may work for you.
Divide Up the Bills
Write down all the bills and household expenses (groceries, cleaning supplies, toilet paper, etc) you have each month and how much they cost. Divvy up who is paying for what, in a way that seems most fair. For example, if one person is responsible for the phone bill, then their partner can be responsible for the electric bill. In a household of three, if one person pays for transportation costs, another can pay for groceries, and the last pays for cleaning supplies. This way, everyone is responsible for something and, ideally, you end up each paying a fair amount based on what you earn. It may be that one of you is responsible for a really big bill (like rent/mortgage) and has to collect from the other(s) each month. For smaller bills, you trust each other to take care of them and you don’t have to pay each other back-and-forth for every single expense.
Go Even Steven
Of course, you can just divide everything up evenly, like you typically would do with roommates. You can set up an envelope system — one envelope with how much is owed for each bill. You can have one person be in charge of paying all the bills and collecting the appropriate amount from other(s). If one person is really financially savvy, this can work to their skills.
Talking About Money in a Relationship
I love you, but you have to stop with the pumpkin spice lattes. I know they are seasonal, but you are out of control. We just can’t afford it.
Money has broken relationships, torn apart families, devastated civilizations. It can get emotional talking about money. You may find you and your partner are on the same page completely or very, very different in your spending and budgeting habits. Most likely, you will find some common ground and some areas you need to negotiate. I want to add here, if it isn’t clear, that I know lots of people don’t have the luxury of saving funds or paying all their bills or even having one checking account. Our communities are disproportionately affected by poverty because we face discrimination in all areas of life, especially in employment and public accommodation. I hope some of these tips can be helpful regardless of whether you are rolling in the dough or scraping by to meet your basic needs. Especially when money is tight, it’s important that conversations about money don’t get swept under the rug in your relationship. Here are some things to think about with your partner.
Maintain a Judgement-Free Zone on Spending Habits
Unless your partner is spending money on things that are actually harmful to them or others, it does no good to make fun of them for what they spend their money on. I joke that my partner is a clothes horse because it is totally true! Seriously, who needs three dressers and a closet and still has overflow clothing?! But I digress. You should actually not make fun of your partner(s), really. In our relationship, I’m the one that is always giving money away. Seriously, I am donating to all the Kickstarters and giving money to people on the street and making donations to this org and this candidate. So we both make decisions about our personal funds and, as long as we are still able to keep up with our household expenses and other financial goals, it’s OK. However, if you are not able to afford food or heat and your partner is still buying another kitchen gadget off an infomercial, it may be time for a talk about spending habits.
Also, it makes sense to set a threshold for when you have to check in with each other on spending. This is especially true if you have an all-in joint account. $50? $100? $500? $1000? At what point do you need to be consulting each other on where your joint money is going? It may be that you feel you don’t need to at all, but the conversation is important.
Make Time to Treat Yourselves
If money is very tight, it’s hard to justify any excess expense, but studies show you are more likely to stick to your budget if you allow yourself some fun splurges now and then. So go out for that date night. Order takeout once in a while. Go out and meet friends for a drink. You can also find low-cost or no-cost ways to treat yourselves to something nice. Take a walk together. Go to a free museum or art exhibit. Make popcorn at home and have a movie night. Talking about money matters is less stressful if you are making time for self-care and fun in your relationship.
Support Each Other in Your Financial Goals
It’s often the case that one person is more financially-minded than the other(s) in a relationship. This is OK. It can be helpful to come up with strategies to stay on track together. For example, if one of you is bad at keeping track of when bills are due, set up a calendar system that reminds them when bills are due each week or each payday. If one of you has a lot of loan debt or credit card debt, support them in coming up with a plan to pay off the debt.
Consult an expert
If you’re at the point in life and in your relationship that you have your basic needs covered and are trying to figure out what to do next, make an appointment with a financial planner. Or, if you are struggling to create a budget for yourself or your household, make an appointment with a financial planner. At your local bank, there’s probably someone who will do a consultation with you for free.
If you have additional tips to share, let us hear ’em in the comments!
15 Things You Learn When You Move In With Your Girlfriend
There comes a point in every relationship when it makes sense for you to think about cohabitation. If you’re like most gaydies, within a few months of hooking up with a cutie, your toothbrush and spare underwear has slowly migrated to their apartment, and after all the nights of splitting Thai food and swearing their mattress is so much comfier than yours, you might as well throw in the towel and buy the (dog) farm. Moving in with your girlfriend, either to hers or yours or a whole new place you pick out together, can be simultaneously magical and terrifying. You’re about to figure out a lot of things about yourself and about her and about this crazy thing you are doing together. Here are a few things you’ll recognize if you have also joined the U-Haul Club.
1. One of you is inevitably the person running around the house turning off lights and heat. This person tolerates the same environment as a polar bear with sensitive skin. The other one wants to live in a Finnish sauna with enough lighting to perform pore surgery.
2. Chores are about roles, not about the actual chore’s pressing need to be done. One of you is the dish washer and the other is the dish dryer and putter-awayer. One of you is the bearer of the vacuum and one of you will clean toilets because the other person makes a gagging noise. These roles are similar to the feudal caste system, unbreakable even in dire emergency. If there are dirty dishes but the dish washer is not home, the dish dryer will stare at the pile of dirty dishes and then serve their food on a frisbee or paper towel.
3. One person’s tastes in decor will slowly start to dominate the other’s. The former bachelor pad with its gig posters and dumpster furniture will start looking like a pastel-themed Pinterest board. The self-identified House of Femme will be invaded by leather accents and dirty work boots. If you moved into the house together, someone’s style will inevitably rise to the top as victor, and before you know it, there is a definitive theme in all the new furniture. Hope you like polka dots and nautical paraphernalia.
“Oh, um…. sweetie, it’s really… it looks so… nice?”
4. If you don’t make a conscious decision to rotate who chooses the Netflix movie, plague and pestilence will befall your house. Woe to the partner who thinks they can get away with watching Rocky III for the ninth night in a row.
Can you spot the lie? You cannot, because there is no lie in this image.
5. On that note, you have to make time so you can each watch the entertainment too decisive for you to both enjoy simultaneously. The one who likes Downton Abbey gets her private hour to watch Downton Abbey, and the one who thinks British class dramas have all the appeal of foot fungus can watch her teen soap operas on her own time.
6. When you’re first dating someone, it’s likely that you are seeing them at their manufactured best. You’re seeing the product of hours of painstaking personal grooming, which could include intensive hair removal procedures, the use of an actual iron, and vigorous washing of certain body parts that rarely see the light of day. When you’re living with someone, you are going to see that person leaving the bathroom in a dirty pair of sweatpants with last week’s chicken tikka masala stuck to their tank top. Sometimes you have to remind that person to shower. Sometimes that person will point out that you have gum disease. In spite of all this, you will somehow still want to have sex with each other.
7. One of you may be revealed as a blanket stealer. The other person might think that blanket stealing is a crime punishable on the same scale as manslaughter and corporate espionage, but a decent round of cuddling usually cures this orneriness.On that note, you will definitely find out who is the space heater and who is the living icicle. It probably is in direct correlation to the stealing of blankets.
8. How is it possible that one person can leave so many half-empty glasses of water around the house in a matter of hours? How is this a thing?!
9. It turns out that there is a limit to how many U-Haul jokes your friends can make, and the limit is one. Unless you two are making them about yourselves, then U-Haul jokes are hilarious and will be trotted out when your periods align, or when you’re making joint purchases of kitchen appliances, or when you accidentally use the other person’s toothbrush.
The creator of this ecard is a hilarious cutting-edge humorist!
10. Learning how to share a bathroom is a lot like learning to drive: could be seamless, could be disastrous. Some of us will concoct labyrinthine plots to get the bathroom to ourselves. Giving your girlfriend a long list of pointless errands is a good tactic. You will learn who is the morning shower taker and who religiously showers at night. Even if you have to dance complicated dances around each other in order to coexist in the tiniest bathroom on earth, there’s something a little bit sweet about meeting each other’s eye in the mirror and laughing about how you both look like toothpaste monsters.
11. IKEA: High Temple of Moving In With Your Girlfriend.
12. Hopefully you both know how to cook. If all you’re bringing to the table is ramen and microwavable dinners, prepare for a shock to the system. Grocery store trips can become beautiful adventures full of bargain-hunting and pretending that this hunk of expensive cheese is an essential item. It’s also important to have someone who can keep you from eating an entire bag of Doritos for dinner.
13. Someone inevitably becomes the house DJ, usually the person with a paid Spotify subscription. Either you both were lucky enough to be born with an appreciation for Björk, or someone is going to have to suck it up and deal with it.
14. Money, money, money. Or, more accurately, bills, bills, bills. Having to be up front and honest about spending and sharing expenses can be absolutely terrifying, even for a generation of individuals who are so used to exorbitant student loans that debt is as much a fact of life as peanuts or death. Money isn’t always a fun topic, but learning how to talk about it with your partner makes you feel that much less like a stack of babies wearing an adult costume. At the same time, money seems to go away a lot faster when you’re living with someone. Whereas the single life may include choosing not to buy Kleenex because the napkins are free at McDonalds, sharing a house with your girlfriend means that your girlfriend may want to use real tissues. Being on your own means that when you make your own budget, you can choose to only eat cheese sticks for a week so that you can save enough money for a holographic backpack. Your girlfriend probably will not share this budgeting technique, and now you have to buy toilet paper and stop replacing meals with gummy snacks.
15. Agreeing to live with someone you’re in a relationship with is a huge big crazy thing. There are going to be really good times, and there are going to be times when you want to tear your hair out and cry in the corner for a few days. Learning how to deal with each other’s quirks and habits and broccoli farts is a journey, but it’s a journey that can turn out amazing in the end. Enjoy the journey, y’all.
New Study Shows Discrimination Makes it Harder to Move In With Your Girlfriend
feature image via shutterstock
Today in depressing news, finally getting a place with your amazing girlfriend might require more anti-anxiety meds and deep breathing exercises than you originally thought. Moving is stressful for everyone, but a new study shows it could lead to even more late night teeth grinding episodes among queers. According to the first ever American national housing study, same-sex couples have a harder time than straight ones when it comes to finding a place to rent.
via Queerty
The research backing this up is pretty hard to argue with. The study, “An Estimate of Housing Discrimination Against Same-Sex Couples,” focused on 7,000 housing inquiries in 50 metropolitan areas and took place from June to October of 2011. The researchers responded to online housing ads using two emails: one from a purportedly straight couple and the other from a same-sex one. Race, age, or other factors didn’t come into play because the only distinguishing feature of the emails was the sexual orientation of the couple. Not surprisingly, the fake same-sex couples received fewer answers to their inquiries than the straight ones. Gay men were less likely to get a response than lesbian couples, but there wasn’t that much of a difference between the responses to the two: only 0.3%, to be exact. While straight couples were favoured over lesbian couples 15.6% of the time, emails from seemingly straight couples were preferred over those by supposedly gay men 15.9% of the time.
Pretty horrible, right? It’s discouraging to think that discrimination against queer people isn’t prohibited by the federal Fair Housing Act, but at least there are protections in certain states, and that should help, right? While there are such protections, the Study of No Good News found that incidents of adverse treatment of gay and lesbian couples in the rental market was actually higher in these states! This doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, and the researchers wondered if this was because states with the protections were more likely to be discriminatory in the first place. But a Queerty article questioned this reasoning because it would mean California is more discriminatory than Alabama. It’s more likely there’s a serious lack of enforcement of anti-discrimination laws; and until that changes, their existence isn’t really doing anything to protect gay couples.
The other surprising finding was that there was no correlation between the response statistics and the size of the metropolitan area. So you and your girlfriend are more likely than your best friend and her boyfriend to face housing discrimination whether or not you’re living in a big city or just an average-sized one. There were no studies done in rural areas, however, and it would be interesting to see what the findings in non-metropolitan areas would be.
In the meantime, you can just hope your landlord isn’t a homophobic asshole and take solace in the fact that you and your girl/boifriend are getting a place together! Yay! It will just be 15.6% more difficult than it should be!
Home Sweet Homo: Moving Tips for Efficient U-Hauling
feature image via Shutterstock
Welcome back to our Home Sweet Homo, the ongoing series where we attempt to turn a cardboard box into a home. Learning to be an adult is hard and paying for it is even harder! Thankfully we’re your Handy Homos, here to make U-hauling as painless as possible. Plus we’ll make sure you get your damage deposit back!
Hello and welcome to Hansen’s dramatic life, wherein I have moved/will move three times this spring and summer and have moved maybe three thousand times in total. My wanderlust, ability to only educate myself in places very far away and naive U-Hauling past have really made me an expert in the logistics of moving. I don’t recommend this. In the immortal words of Tegan and Sara, “It’s not fun. Don’t do it!”
If you do have to move, maybe in with your girlfriend who you’ve been dating for three months but you’re just sure she’s the one (or maybe you’re moving out of that situation, no judgment), you might as well make it as painless as possible. I wish you luck. We’ve already discussed how to move from Point A to Point B with minimal crying, but there’s always more to learn. Here are some tips I’ve picked up along the way.
You, too, could look this happy if you stick to the moving schedule.
via [Shutterstock]
Here’s a handy timeline for when you should be getting things done:
Six weeks ahead of moving day: Secure your new place to live. Get the new address and pay the security deposit. Notify your landlord you’re leaving soon.
Four weeks ahead of moving day: Put in a change of address with the post office to your new place, starting a few days before your move. Hire movers if you want the best moving day of all time.
Two weeks ahead of moving day: Hire a moving truck (compare prices on U-Haul, Budget, and Penske, which are usually the cheapest!), if you’re going to use one. Send out change of address cards to your friends and family. Begin asking friends if they can help you move. Start packing! Grocery shop for the last time. Arrange for gas/electric to be transferred and turned on the night before you move in.
One week ahead of moving day: Change your address for all bills and subscriptions. All of the knick-knacks and not-super-important things can be packed by this point, including wall art. Make a packed box corner to everything out of the way.
Three days ahead of moving day: Start cleaning your old place. I’m talking super clean. I’m talking tracks of windows wiped down clean. Do a little at a time to prevent yourself from feeling overwhelmed. Start with things that won’t necessarily be dirty in three days, like dusty blinds. If you’re moving far away, try to have all of your cleaning done a few days before your move to save on stress headache medication.
The night before moving day: Can you get the keys already? Do this! Or consider moving the day after you get the keys. Go over to the new place with toilet paper and other toiletries like shampoo and soap because you’ll want a shower after you move in. Take tons of pictures of the place before you move in to prevent future landlord disagreements. Move all of your boxes into one room to make getting out in the morning easier. Disconnect your major appliances and defrost your fridge.
Day of the big move: Be ready to move first thing in the morning. Have everything packed by the time your help arrives. Get the moving part done quickly and efficiently and don’t bother to start unpacking yet. If it’s an in-town move, come back in the evening and clean the rest of the way. Take lots of pictures of your old place to prevent landlord disagreements.
“Honey, we’ll definitely need the Rodeoh in our first night box.”
via {Shutterstock}
The Packing and Pre-Move Part
Pack a box with all of the stuff you’ll need right away or on the first night: toiletries, surge protectors, box cutter, phone chargers, toilet paper, trash bags, paper towels, etc. This will help you immensely. Do you plan to eat in your new place the first night? Pack a few cooking and eating utensils in your first night box. Load this last into the truck or car.
Pack important documents together and take them with you in the car. Do not pack them in the back of the moving truck or you’ll never find them. This includes passports, certificates, social security cards. Put them immediately in a safe place where they won’t get lost. I like to put them on top of my desk as soon as it gets moved in, but the kitchen counter has also always proven to be a safe spot.
Use clean clothing/socks as packing for breakables. Clean socks will get you a long way without bubble wrap and newsprint can sometimes leaves marks on white dishes. Kitchen and bathroom towels also act as amazing buffers in boxes with fragile contents.
Label your boxes. I cannot stress this enough. Label what room they go into or you’re going to have a bad time unpacking. Color coding your boxes also works great, like green tape for kitchen, blue for bathroom, red for bedroom and so on. If you really want to get intense, number your boxes and write out a list of everything that went in box 1, 2, 3 and so on.
Place any hardware/screws/etc. and electrical cords into plastic baggies, label them, and tape them to the back of whatever they belong to. There’s nothing worse than tearing apart your room looking for the power cord to the printer.
Don’t bother unpacking dresser drawers. You can cover them in saran wrap if you’re intense, but I usually just place them on top of one another. And don’t move your dresser with your drawers in, that’s just silly.
Figure out how to use as much of the food in your house as possible so you don’t have much to move. Obviously perishable items aren’t going to work in a cross-country situation, but even in cross-town moves, it sucks to have to worry about frozen meat.
Pack smaller things in bigger things. This seems obvious, right? Pack your spices inside of your crockpot. Pack your books inside of a suitcase (the wheels make it so much easier to carry heavy things!). Pack your clothes on their hangers in trash bags. Utilize every nook and cranny you can.
Should have hired movers. Good job on the plaid, though.
via {Shutterstock}
The Actual Move
Hire movers for the heavy furniture. And do so weeks in advance of moving. I know this sounds silly if you’re on a budget, but this will make your life so much easier. You and your friends don’t want to move things like couches, bed frames and large appliances, be honest. If you only have the movers lift the heavy things, it won’t take as long and it won’t cost as much. Plus, if they drop it and break it, they’re liable to cover the cost, as opposed to the terrible dramatics that will come from your friend knocking off the leg to your dining table and saying it’s your fault, anyway. If you don’t want to hire movers, at least get a dolly. You won’t regret it.
Feed your friends and family who helped you move. Or beer them, whichever they choose. Don’t skimp. They just saved you money and a headache. Also, remember them doing you this favor the next time they move or you will have no moving friends or maybe even just friends.
Moving cross country? Consider hiring PODS or movers to ship your things for you. I’ve also heard you can ship your things via Greyhound but your boxes will get a bit banged up.
Moving overseas? Container shipping is your friend! I moved overseas in two large suitcases and paid heavy baggage fees, which is crazy, but Space Bags are also your friend!
Packing Chihuahuas in boxes? Probs not recommended.
via {Shutterstock}
Moving with Pets
Pack your pet’s things last and move their things into the new place first. Section off a room, preferably a bathroom, that can become their safe space for the move. My vet recommended moving all of your furniture in before letting them explore the new place to give them a sense of security and fill the place with your scent. Most importantly, while you’re moving your stuff in, make sure they’re safe so that you don’t have the added stress of chasing your dog in your new neighborhood along with your move. Trust me. Also, don’t forget to update your microchip information.
If you have a dog, putting up a baby gate that allows them to see you but keeps them out of the way can cut down on their stress. Give them extra attention, but beware of showering them with treats because moving might upset their little tummies and we all know how fun that can be. Take them outside of the new place right away so they can mark their new territory and sniff all the fun new smells.
For cats, my vet recommended Feliway and it worked so well. My cat is a Sensitive Sally, so I was really worried about her Feelings. I sprayed the old apartment a few days before moving out to get her used to the pheromones, then I sprayed the new apartment before moving her in. She adjusted really quickly and without any bad stress-like symptoms, so three cheers for pheromones. If you have more than one cat or if you’re merging cat households, make sure you move them in at the same time for territorial purposes.
Moving aftermath: you’re doing it right.
via {Shutterstock}
The Aftermath of Moving
Make sure you wash all dishes and cookware, no matter what. I don’t care if you washed them immediately before moving. Wash them again.
To cook or not to cook? I prefer to eat out at restaurants or order in for the first few nights until I get my kitchen set up, so I like to tally that into my moving budget.
Personalize your place as quickly as possible. Hang up some art. Set up a bookcase. It’s going to feel weird for the first few nights in your place and these things quickly remind you that you’re not renting a vacation home, but that you’re really living there.
Don’t rush on unpacking. I like to be unpacked by about two weeks in, but I start with one room and set it up nice and then make it my safe haven for when stacks of boxes give me panic attacks about the state of my world.
What other moving tips have you found to be super helpful?
To Be A U-Haul Lesbian or Not To Be A U-Haul Lesbian: Almost Definitely Not
The snowdrops and daffodils are poking their shy heads from the new-thawed ground and the little lambs are baaaahing all knock-kneed and the Easter Bunny is about to bring my ass about a thousand discounted Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs the day after Easter, so what does all that mean…?
Why, it’s Spring, the season of new starts and rebirth!
Just as duckies are pecking their way out of their confining shells, every lesbiqueer in the land is sniffing the rich, earthy smell of the soil as it warms in the sun, thinking:
and then, for reasons that defy science to this day, jumping directly from those peaceful springtime thoughts to:
“You know, it sure is stupid that I spend almost every night at my girlfriend’s house but I still pay rent on my apartment.”
Yes.
That is the exact, scientific pattern of the thoughts we ladygays have in late March/early April. (It took researchers years of transcribing and paid brain studies to record this split-second synapse.)
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| [thanks Susie] |
No one knows how we as a people annually make that thought-jump, but make it we do.
As predictable as the seasons themselves, it’s the start of the Annual Dyke Moving Season! Hoooraaaay!
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| [via feministdating] |
Ohhhh c’mon. Don’t be like that.
I really want to talk about this.
I can’t believe we never have.
I mean, there are articles about U-Haul lesbians and lezzers who make fun of U-Haul lesbians and lots of lesbiqueers who insist that they aren’t U-Haul lesbians, but somehow, U-Haulin’ keeps mysteriously happening to the queers that surround us all.
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| [thanks Yaara] |
And what is a U-Haul lesbian?
(asks maybe someone? from another country? who is new to being queer and/or totally removed from queer culture?)
A U-Haul lesbian is a dyke who moves in with her current lover after only dating for a short amount of time.
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| [thanks Miranda] |
An alarmingly short amount of time.
An amount of time that makes the dyke-in-question’s friends gasp.
Anywhere from, say, a few weeks to juuust shy of twelve months.
I mean, we’ve all heard the joke, right?
Q: What does a lesbian bring to the second date?
A: A U-Haul.
HA HA HA *barfs*
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| [via streets-are-uneven] |
Not only is this the oldest lesbian joke around…it stings a bit because it has juuuuust the teensiest ring of truth.
People joke about lezzers moving in with each other way too early for a reason—it’s often kind of true.
We do it.
It happens a lot in real life.
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| [thanks Rose] |
And I don’t know about you all, but this is a conversation I have on the regular with friends in newish relationships:
Friend: Soooo guess what?
Me: What?
Friend: Tell me what you think, but I think I’m going to ask Danni/Kym/Jess/current-girlfriend-of-several-months if she wants to move in with me!
Me: I think that’s a horrible idea.
Friend: Uggh I knew you’d say that. I don’t know why I’m even telling you.
Sluts, it’s true. I admit it.
I am a known wet blanket when it comes to supporting my friends who are U-Hauling.
It’s because I can’t with this shit anymore.
I just can’t.
Otherwise I’ll have no friends left, and then who would I go for tacos with?
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| [did you know kangaroos lie like this? me either.] |
But fuckit—this is the internet and no one ever feels repercussions in their real lives from something they said on the internet, right?
So here goes:
DYKES! HEAR ME! Moving in with someone you’ve been dating for less than, say, a year, is a horrible idea.
Almost always.
It’s none of my fucking business what y’all fags do, obviously, but it iiiiiiis, though, because I love you and I want your new relationship to be beautiful and lovely and happy and I want you two to work out.
I do.
I want you queermos to kiss each other in selfies and put that shit on facebook.
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| [Ricky and Stephanie haaaay do you like each other? |
I want you to post disgustingly cute Instagrams of the heart-shaped pancakes one of you makes the other on Valentine’s Day.
In my heart of hearts, I wish mind-blowing fuck sessions and adorable pillow talk and barfy secret animal nicknames upon you, along with snuggling and movies and brunch and inside jokes and holding hands with your partner while walking on a crisp autumn day.
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| [thanks Yaara] |
This is what I hope for you faggettes, and this is why I must rail against U-Haulin’.
But best believe: I get it. I really do.
You love your girl/boifriend, and you’ve been dating for awhile now with practically no problems. Y’all are basically perfect together.
No fights, not much drama, you’re over there all the time anyway, and sorry, but have you seen them? Danni/Kym/Jess/current-lover-of-several-months is sooooo fucking cute, my GOD.
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| [thanks pillowtalkmpls] |
Why wouldn’t you want to go to sleep with them every night and wake up every day with them? Why wouldn’t you revel in the fact that you’re coming home every evening from work to the cutest person in the world, who will help make dinner and then let you pick the Netflix and fuck you senseless and then sleep naked while spooning you?
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| [thanks yaara] |
It’s really hard to find an awesome girlfriend in this town.
You need to lock that shit down.
I know, I know.
But hunnybun. Cutie pie. Darling-of-my-heart: Don’t do it.
Don’t move in with your lovah if you’ve only been dating for three or four or five or seven months.
It will most likely fuck with your relationship and you will probably break up from the stress of it, unless you’re a couple in a million.
And maybe you were meant to break up in the long run anyway, but moving in early makes things a hundred times worse.
A new relationship is not ready for the responsibility and day-to-day work that living together entails.
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| [thanks Margo L.] |
A new relationship is at the point in the love story where you and your new sweetie get to stare at each other in coffeeshops when you should be working on the computer and fuck each other in cars because you can’t wait to get upstairs and take each other out on elaborately impressive dates and really miss each other when one of you goes home.
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| [thanks Lauren and Adrienne] |
Moving in together prematurely ages your relationship.
When you move in together early, you suddenly have to deal with Life Shit like paying bills and rent and whose turn it is to buy milk and cat food. Suddenly, at the same time, you’re also finding things out about your lover that you didn’t know at all or that you maybe find… kind of annoying.
Like maybe she clips her fingernails in the sink but then doesn’t wash them down the drain.
Maybe s/he doesn’t, um, ever do the dishes.
Maybe she has a dog she loves but you’re finding out she’s actually pretty bad about taking care of it, and suddenly, because you feel guilty about the poor dog who never gets let out…it’s basically your dog now.
TOO BAD YOU LIVE TOGETHER NOW, THOUGH, AMIRIGHT?
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| [thanks OISHIIMOMO] |
It’s entirely possible that, given more time to just date, you would have discovered that:
a) some of these things (omg the poor dog!) are dealbreakers, or
b) you love this person enough to work through the annoying things.
We’ll never know which one it would have been now, though, will we?
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| [thanks Zoe D.] |
You are now forced make a decision that actually needed a lot more time—how well do you work with this person? Do you want to move forward or move out?
If you want to move forward in the relationship, you need to work out and deal with the things that are driving you crazy about living with your partner.
And you may not have had enough conflict in your relationship yet to know how to, um, deal with conflict in your relationship.
But if you want to move out… the relationship is most likely gonna be over.
Because you live together, there is no breathing room for not being sure.
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| [thanks Emily S! zanybah.com] |
You can’t just continue to date your lover, finding things out about them slowly, and making a decision about them after knowing how you two mesh and what you’re getting into.
It’s all in or get off the boat.
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| [thanks Rose S.] |
And new relationships don’t need that kind of pressure.
They tend to crack under the strain.
I submit this incredibly legitimate study to you as proof:
Every gayelle friend I have ever had who moved in with her girlfriend before they’d been dating for at least a year… is no longer with her girlfriend.
With no exceptions.
(And I know a lot of lesbians.)
But! But!
You have good reasons for moving in!
You’re sure it will work for you!
You and your girl are so right together, and I’m an overgeneralizing asshole!
You have arguments!
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| [thanks Wynn] |
And here they all are, in no particular order!
1) We’re going to move in together after only dating a few months because…
“It’s cheaper to live together! We’ll be saving money.”
Aww, how romantic are you?
Gheys, I get it. The economy is bad. We’re young and/or we have shitty jobs. But if the sole reason you’re moving in with your girlfriend is to save money? Not only is this the most unromantic thing ever, but jesus, haven’t you ever heard of roommates?
Save your relationship. Live with friends.
Or non-creepy strangers from Craigslist roommate ads.
Anyone but your sweet girlfriend of four months.
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| [Thanks Victoria! From findingsnooze] |
2) We’re going to move in together after only dating a few months because…
“I’m over there every night anyway, it’s stupid to have my own place too, and I’m sick of living out of a bag.”
Yes. You are dating someone new. That means you will be over at their place a lot. They will be over at yours. This does not make your place useless—it serves a distinct function in that it is your place, a living situation separate from your new lover’s.
The thrill of being in someone’s unfamiliar space is part of dating someone new. Maybe get a toothbrush at your girlfriend’s house and calm down, honeybear?
Traveling back and forth between houses is admittedly inconvenient, but you know what’s more inconvenient?
Breaking up with someone you signed a year-long lease with when you only knew them for five months beforehand.
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| [thanks Britt] |
3) We’re going to move in together after only dating a few months because…
“We love each other soooo much. We’re meant to be.”
This is adorable and sweet and so, so hopeful.
How cute is it that it was love at first sight and you’re totally fated to be with this person you’ve only spent a handful of blissful weeks with?
You’re doomed.
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| [thanks Blake! eyesatme] |
4) We’re going to move in together after only dating a few months because…
“We’re such good friends, we’d be great roommates even if we ever broke up!”
Nope. No, you’re not. And no, you wouldn’t be.
If you and your new lover were friends to begin with, or consider yourselves friends and lovers, then the process of breaking up and moving out should (fairly neatly) take care of that.
Even if you two can somehow manage to continue living together after breaking up, it will be awkward. as. fuck. for the next few months.
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| [thanks Sarah T.] |
Ugh.
Actually, the only reason I can possibly think of that could possibly be a winning argument for moving in early with someone is:
5) “It’s an emergency.”
Things happen, mos.
Girlfriends of six months that you’re completely in love with suddenly lose their jobs and have no savings.
Your new girlfriend’s dad gets sick and the only way she can afford to keep flying back and forth to take care of her dad is if she gets rid of her apartment.
You get sick, really sick, and your lover of seven months moves in to help take care of you because you can’t move back in with your parents.
Of course things happen. And sometimes moving in together is the best of the few possible solutions. But in that case, you’re only doin’ it because you have to, and you do it with your eyes open, knowing that it could strain your relaysh.
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| [thanks pillowtalkmpls] |
Now, I’m sure there are some of you faggettes out there who moved in together prematurely, and it worked out fiiiine. (There have to be, or else why would dykes keep U-Hauling alive, the fine and thriving tradition that it is today?)
It must have worked out for someone somewhere.
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| [thanks OISHIIMOMO and Liza] |
But—at the risk of sounding like a True Love Waits teen purity rally—what, gayelles, is so wrong with just dating?
Getting to know someone thoroughly before jumping whole-hog into Living Together?
It can only help a relationship for both people to know exactly what they’re getting into.
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| [thanks Maria J.] |
And think about how exciting it will be to move in together when you do decide to do it.
There’s nothing like that first walk through IKEA, friends.
Nothing.
Lesbiqueers. Mine is not the only opinion out there.
This post originally appeared on Effing Dykes! Republished WITH PERMISSION, MOTHERF*CKERS!