So, a little bit of context:

My bf and I have been dating for a year and a half now, and I graduate next year around April. I am a medical student in my final year and I really want to become a surgeon and am working my ass off for it. My boyfriend works in the corporate sector. We have a great relationship and have been able to overcome differences that have cropped up. We work well together and it is a good relationship overall. He introduced me to his family very early on with whom I have a great relationship since they are such a wonderful family as well. Just for some context on his character, he is very gentle and calm, very well emotionally regulated and has, and will never force me to do something against my will. that isn’t his character. he is also the kind of person that will put back the item in the exact place you picked it up from in the grocery store ahahaha so i hope you get the picture. He currently lives an hour and a half away because his work is mostly wfh so he lives with his family and we commute every other weekend to see each other. We are pretty happy with this. It is important to know that I am South Asian and my boyfriend is white. This is relevant because my family, who live abroad, are not aware of him. My sister and mother are aware of him but my father is not. My mother and sister like him but my father is a very hard headed, stubborn macho traditional man but is an incredibly loving father. Our family comes from a well known in our city, and because of that, everything I do including ym career and who I marry carry weight and represent the family name. (I know this sounds very pretentious to say but I don’t have any other way of putting it other than plainly.) My father doesn’t have an issue with having a white bf or anything like that, but I am scared to tell him since he has incredibly high standards for my future partner. Either way, i hope to tell him after I graduate (though my mother’s advice is to wait till I am sure I want to marry my partner before getting dad involved, but thats a different discussion all together).

The situation:

My boyfriend wants to move in with me after I graduate. He has expressed that in his eyes, this is the next step to the relationship. I, on the other hand, am a little scared to do this. This is my first serious relationship, and my longest one. I have never moved in with a partner, and currently live with my bestie and roommate. I understand that he wants to move in with me and everything, but I keep feeling like it is too early.

In my head, a big influencing factor is my family being on board. them knowing of the relationship and approving it, including my dad, is obviously a big factor. However, even if they were to approve of the relationship and were happy for us to move in and etc, i still think I wouldn’t want to move in together.

Here are some reasons why I don’t want to move in together (i put them in points to help them seem more organised and make it easier to read):

  1. A part of me thinks it’s too early, and that moving together really solidifies the relationship – kinda like a “im going to end up with them forever” thing. I love my bf but I haven’t thought that far ahead because all I have ever thought about when it came to my future is my career. I love him but I don’t know if I want to marry him. Should I be thinking about marriage? I don’t know.

  2. I don’t want to make the mistake of ending up with someone out of convenience. I have seen it happen to a few people in my life, and I don’t want to make that mistake – just because that person is there all the time and you have built a routine with them doesn’t mean they are the one you are meant to marry. I want to end up with someone that I want to actually be with – not just purely because they are around all the time and thats it. I don’t know if it’s in my character to make such a mistake but you can never be sure, right? I’m no expert since this is all a first.

  3. I kind of want to just live on my own for a bit. I want my own place, I want to experience having a job and living on my own and everything else that comes with it. I will have to move after I graduate for my job (within country), and i don’t want to end up depending on my partner for social stuff does that make sense? like, I don’t want to be in a position where I don’t actively try to go make friends and socialise with my colleagues cause i have someone to come back to at the end of the day anyways. besides, i want to live on my own and have those experiences.

  4. I don’t him to end up feeling like a roommate. I don’t want to worry about splitting rents and bills and joint accounts and all that and whatever comes with living with someone. we eat in different patterns (i eat three meals, he likes to eat one massive one mostly, sometimes lunch too), we eat different thinags so how would that work? do we just cook the same thing and eat it together or cook our own things? i dont know how these things work and i feel like I have no one in my surrounding support network who has enough experience to be able to turn to for these things.

  5. im scared that i could end up resenting him. some people live together and hate it. im worried it could come to that.

(i know i sound very whiny with the above points, but please, bear with me.)

Here are some reasons he expressed why we should:

  1. It is the next natural step to the relationship and he doesn’t want to be in a position where it stagnates

  2. he said that all my fears about not wanting to live together wont actually go away until we do live together. the fears about resenting each other and working things out – he said they dont just develop overnight. it’s not like we’ll move in one day and hate each other the next. he said it is a process of working on things together as a team and a couple to ensure it doesn’t end up that way and that we are both happy.

  3. all the things about whether we will work out or if it will work and how it will work – he said that those are all things that we would have to face only by living together, and even then, living together is not a finalising thing. if we actually feel like it isn’t working out, we can then make a decision of how things will go, but until then, ruminating about it and fantasizing about it wont make a difference, instead it will just magnify the fear.

  4. he is also on board about not moving in until family finds out. he said he doesn’t want to do a big thing like that in secret and so on, but yeah.

so yeah, thats the basic points.

The thing is – we are also surrounded by a different demographic. I’m obviously surrounded by my friends who are mostly 21 and 22 and in uni, while he is surrounded by his friends who have all moved in with their partners, 2 friends are married, one is trying for a baby, and so on. I don’t know if that has an influence on how we view the pace of this relationship, but I think it definitely adds to it.

I’m not sure if I am overthinking this, or if the overthinking is natural, or if in fact, it is too early to move in. If you guys have any ideas, opinions, thoughts- I would like to hear them, preferably if you have had experiences. i love him, he is a wonderful man. but moving in feels like too serious of a step too early in the relationship.

TL;DR: bf (27M) wants to move in with me (22F), but I think its too early and i want to live on my own for a bit. he feels like its the next step and doesn’t want the relationship to stagnate. im torn.


Leave a Reply