This week, Lee from The Obscene Sailor and I talk about getting serious. Not me and him, that is, but about how we shift from the life of first dates to an actual relationship. What does it mean to become a committed couple? What are the mechanics of becoming partners? How do you introduce your new partner to the rest of your life?
Moving in can be a big relationship milestone, so we spend much of our time talking about how to decide when it’s right and how to make it work so that your relationship and you stay healthy and happy, not to mention financially secure. Communication skills continue to be an important focus, especially as lives become more entwined and it’s no longer desirable or possible to avoid your partner for a few hours or days.
There’s also the question of when you introduce certain, more private aspects of yourself to another person, including the big question of how you tell someone that you’re a gun owner (which is, by the way, a great proxy for thinking about other potentially problematic issues you will need to disclose as a relationship deepens). On the flip side, we also discuss how we manage learning all of those things about our new partners.
Finally, it’s not just how we talk inside our relationships. Part of becoming more serious is navigating family, friends, and other important people in our lives, so we also discuss managing those experiences and expectations both for our new loves and for ourselves.
While this episode is largely about romantic relationships, a lot of it is applicable to friendships in general because, of course, a romantic relationship is in some ways a “normal” friendship with extra, so you might find it helpful for managing roommates and others who are expanding their roles in your life, for whatever reason.
