Love Life with Matthew Hussey - Are You Ready to Move in Together?

Episode Date: April 6, 2016

How soon is too soon to take the plunge and move in with your boyfriend? Should you wait until marriage is on the table? That’s what our caller Amber wants to know in today’s episode of LOVE Life. I give her – and you – my (somewhat controversial) opinion about the significance of this “milestone” as well as some concrete advice on the risk-free way to move your relationship forward without freaking him out. 

Hello everyone, this is Love Life with Matthew Hussey. You know, we've all been hurt in relationships. If we're not careful, we can end up shutting ourselves off completely to protect ourselves from more pain. But that cheats us out of opportunities to find the love we really deserve. So what should we do instead? I want to come back to this at the end of the show. But first, let's get into today's episode. We have a caller in today.

Her name is Amber. Amber, are you there? Yes, I'm here. How are you? You know what, Amber? I woke up and I didn't have time to get ready properly. So I just threw on clothes and it shows. Good thing you're on the radio.

Right? Except for the fact that jameson is filming me so i technically i'm both uh on camera and radio so i'm getting the worst of this oh no good no at least you can't see me yet so that's something um so what was your question amber um i was wondering i've been my boyfriend and I have been together a little bit over a year, and we're starting to think about moving in together. And I was just wondering, when's too soon? I've always kind of wanted to wait until we were talking more about getting married and things like that. And I just wanted to get your advice on, is it too soon?

How do you know you're ready to move in with someone? Yeah, I think that's a very good and intelligent and important question. There are lots of people I feel move in too quickly. They do it in the throes of the passionate stage of the relationship. And look, who among us hasn't fallen in love with someone and immediately thought, I just want to move in with them right this second, right now. And then they are really glad two months later that they didn't, because it would have been too quick and they would have possibly wrecked the whole thing. Now, the opposite of that, I think can be just as bad. If you, for example, and people have different beliefs on this, I'll just throw mine out there. When I hear people say, well, I want to marry, I want to get married to someone before I move in with them.

I always find that to be a very dangerous concept. I, for me, I would much rather have lived with someone before I make the decision to marry them because who knows what they're like in that environment. I, I, things change when you live with someone and everything to some extent is sped up and intensified because you're around each other the, the entire time. So I think for you, you have to make your own decision about whether it's really important for you to wait till marriage to do it. But what I would say is somewhere between the crazy passionate phase where you feel irrational and making a decision to be with someone forever, you should have a trial run at living with them. And I don't think that means necessarily going and taking out a mortgage together. But it does mean going and renting a place together that you can just have the experience of it. Even if it was on the basis of doing it for a few months,

I think that a lot of the time moving in together is something that should take the form of a more of something more casual than it really is. If you understand what I mean, I think I don't think we should introduce moving in together. Like, shall we move in together now? I think it's terrifying for people. And I think it puts too much pressure on if people say to each other, you know what? Look, we really like each other or

we love each other and we've had such an amazing time together in our relationship. It feels like it's going somewhere. Shall we try it for a few months? You know, no, there's no black and white. You know, it's not like we're doing anything that we can't reverse. If it doesn't work out, then we'll change the situation. But why don't we try an apartment together for a few months and just see what happens? That to me is a very risk-free way of doing it that allows people to take the next step without the pressure of forever, which so many people throw themselves into. Does that make sense? Yes, it definitely does. That's a really good way to look at it i haven't thought about that yeah i think i feel like some of the most serious steps that you take in a relationship should be

treated in a uh relaxed way yeah and that allows people to go into them especially guys who we all know can be terrified of the notion of a greater degree of commitment or investment. It allows them to have the best of both worlds, to both walk into more commitment whilst at the same time not giving it this grandiose meaning that people like to do. I always feel like the moment a woman starts saying, this is our first doormat together. Oh, my God. These are our first teacups that we've ever had together. As soon as she starts saying that about everything, he's like, oh, my God, it's happening.

I'm living with someone. I'm never going to be on my own again. He starts freaking out. But if you don't go down that route, instead, you just treat it in a relaxed way, but allow it to happen. Both of you, I think, will be a lot happier. Okay, awesome. Thank you. That's really, really good advice.

Thanks, Amber. I really appreciate you calling in. It was a cool question, a little different from some of the other things we've been getting. So thank you. Of course. Thank you. Have a good day. All right, you too.

Bye. At the beginning of today's show, I brought up the question, how can we open ourselves up to love again when we've been hurt? In one of my live seminars, I actually coached a woman through this in a Q&A session, and I want to give you free access to it today. I call this video, The Three Female Mindsets That Drive Men Wild, and it's filled with empowering and practical advice that you can use today. To get your free access, just go to lovelifepodcast.com forward slash mindsets.