His Perspective: 3 Surprising Things I've Learned From Living with My Partner

Photo // Ratio Photography — Photo // Ratio Photography

You may recall my post from November in which I described surprising things I learned about living with my partner. That post was a bit one-sided, so he was kind enough to whip up his own post on our new living arrangement. I am pleased to offer you his point of view below. Check it out, and let us know what you think.

1. Decorating makes it feel like home

Our move in together wasn’t into a new place with empty walls and no furniture. Instead, it was moving all my belongings into my partner's almost fully-furnished apartment. At first, it was just exciting to see my stuff there, having my belongings at arms reach instead of a drive away.

However, as the weeks went by my new living arrangement began feeling like more of an intrusion than my own space. It felt like I merely lived in my partner’s apartment and not the apartment we SHARED. I mean my toothbrush was there, all my clothes and stuff were there, but I just wasn’t comfortable.

It wasn’t until we redecorated did the apartment start to feel like my space. We reorganized the art on the walls to include some of the stuff I collected from various comic cons, as well as other decorative touches from my collection of nonsense. It may seem like such an insignificant change but it was surprising how much comfort just having those prints on the walls gave me.

Even though we still haven’t quite figured out the exact layout to bring our apartment together, I can definitely say having a balance of my partner’s aesthetics and mine really helps me feel like we share the space.

2. My clothes no longer belong to me

Now I don’t mean that literally, it's not like they’ve been taken away from me, or someone is now in possession of them. Maybe I should be more specific as far as which items of clothing I’m referring to. What I should say is, my socks, sweaters, t-shirts, and long sleeves no longer belong to me.

Now we’re all familiar with the partner stealing the t-shirt of their larger partner and walking around all cute with no pants on or whatever. You could insert sweaters and long sleeve shirts into that scenario as well. I guess it’s the socks that surprised me the most.

I have an affinity for novelty and fun socks, often being genuinely excited when I receive them as presents for any holiday or birthday. When we began sharing our living space I often heard remarks from my partner about the ridiculousness or quantity of these socks in our drawers. They wanted to get rid of them and I wouldn’t allow it.

However it wasn’t before long that I began to notice something, I don’t know when it started or how often it was happening but it was definitely happening. She had started wearing my socks! At first, it was amusing to call out my partners hypocrisy and comment on how much I liked “their” socks, now I barely notice when I come home and I find my partner wearing one or more articles of my clothing. Luckily, none of my outfits hinge on a particular pair of socks, because then we might have a problem. However, it’s hard to blame them though, my socks are amazing.

3. Nothing has really shocked me

Honestly, one of the more surprising things about living with my partner is how unsurprising it has been. Despite having to adjust to another person in your space, balancing personal time with partner time, and other tweaks to routine and whatnot. No shocking dirty secrets have come to light, or disgusting behaviors revealed (well not too disgusting anyway). Life with my partner hasn’t thrown me any crazy curveballs…yet anyway.

Growing up with two older sisters killed any sense of what one might call “The Feminine Mystique.” I’ve always known girls are human, turns out they poop and fart. I’m sorry if you’re just learning this now. I’ve also developed a significant amount of patience for making sure outfits are just right, finding the right shoe, hair taking longer than expected, and most other time consuming endeavors. So when my partner does these things I have tried and true coping techniques and ways to entertain myself. It avoids any unnecessary tension and everyone stays calm.

If anything, living with my partner has revealed a lot of things about myself. I’m not saying that I’m constantly under a microscope being monitored by my partner with her judging everything I do. However, sharing space with someone definitely makes you reflect on the ways you do certain things. Especially when it comes to communication.

This should probably be topic all to itself but I’ll just keep it short for now. Having to express the way you feel in cohesive comprehendible words that your partner can understand can be one of the most difficult things ever. Also, living with your partner means you actually have to confront those feelings and talk about things. Its one of the more truly difficult things to do but it also helps you reflect on what the actual problems are and find solutions that work for both people. It’s definitely still a work in progress but it seems to be getting better all the time. I’m a little way off topic at this point but hopefully, that made sense.

- CONNER