Firstly, your home is a very important place and for lots of reasons. Obviously you can see the benefits for yourself, but let’s have a quick run through for the sake of clarity.
- It’s your personal space where you can relax and feel safe in your surroundings.
- It might have been renovated to your personal taste, and/or decorated to them.
- It’s probably where you keep all of your worldly goods (well, most of them anyway).
- It’s been a family home that your children grew up in, or maybe still are growing up in.
- You don’t have to have anyone in there that you don’t want.
- You get to make all of the decisions, period.
- You might just love it as a home.
These are all reasons why it can be difficult to move into someone else’s home. Ideally, you will have a significant amount of time there already, but life is rarely perfect and it might be something that’s just not happened for some reason.
So – ask yourself a few questions:
- 1.If you both want to live together, why do you have to be the one that moves house? Is it a joint decision or one you feel pushed into?
- 2.Does it make logical sense? For example, does it make life easier in terms of commuting or distance from schools, etc.? But, to be fair, it might not make that much of a difference.
- 3.If you’re uprooting the children, is that the right thing to do?
- 4.Will it be possible for you to bring some of your own furniture and/or large items? Garden furniture, for example. Or will you have to put it all into storage?
You stand a much better chance of being happy if you iron out the wrinkles first. Especially with the major things, like why do you have to move? It might make logical sense, e.g. a bigger house, but that doesn’t necessarily make it right, you can still hate it! So, what do you do if you’ve moved in happily with your partner but things don’t turn out the way you imagined? Firstly, this is such a common problem. It happens to lots and lots of people, even to those who thought long and hard about moving in with their partner. You don’t know exactly how the situation is going to feel until you’re in it, even if you’ve spent a lot of time there before and it was a mutually agreeable decision for you to move. Consider these things:
- Don’t make any snap decisions after a few weeks. It can take a lot of time to feel comfortable somewhere new, so don’t think that you have to cut and run immediately.
- Is it the home you don’t like or the area? If it’s the latter, then maybe you could compromise by moving to a new property in the same location.
- Do you have the option of moving back to your old home? If you’ve kept it and rented it out, for example.
- Are you of the opinion that it would be better for both of you to move back to where you came from? This one might need a lot of talking about.
- Do you feel uncomfortable because your partner has lived there with a previous partner? That’s never going to feel nice, but is it so much of an issue that you simply cannot live there? Could you perhaps redecorate so it’s more to your taste and erases the ghosts of relationships past?
- Are you struggling with the location? It might have seemed a good choice to move to the other side of town, but perhaps you hadn’t factored in the one-way system through the centre of town in the rush hour.
There can be lots of reasons why you’ve got cold feet, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But don’t simply up sticks and leave, talk it over with your partner, have an honest and open discussion even if you think it’s going to hurt them. You can’t stay in a relationship with someone just to keep them happy. If it’s an option, offer for them to move in with you, for a period of time at least. Or you can agree that you’ll stick out a trial period, say, three months, and if you still hate it then a solution will have to be found.
Whatever you think is right for you, it’s important that you don’t rush into any decisions once you’ve moved in. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by living in a completely different property, with someone else’s choices of furnishings, paintings, bathroom suite. But don’t mistake finding it an uphill struggle right at the very start with something as final as deciding that you just don’t like it there. Hopefully, you’ll have a supportive partner to see you through and help you feel supported. Finally – don’t panic. It’s always a reversible decision, even if it might be difficult to orchestrate. Don’t run away from conflicting, unexpected emotions, instead examine them from each angle and work out how your heart feels.
