By: Revanche

In which your heroine foolishly takes a leap of faith

July 14, 2010

Continued from the last post … 

For the last ten years, I learned painfully, repeatedly, not to trust anyone about money. My family’s track record meant that I had to take control or lose my mind. Or the house. I was darned if I’d let any more bad things happen to me again. *shakes fist a la Scarlett O’Hara (Did she shake her fist? Or is that unladylike?)*  Since then, it was always my effort that put food on the table, kept the lights on, the water running.  Not for me the bad roommates, dealing with shared rent and bills, cleaning up after people, or any of those popular horror stories. 

More importantly, while I don’t judge anyone else for their choices to or not to cohab, I can and do judge myself. For many years, cohabbing was never on the table and it’s been distinctly weird saying that… I … live … with … PiC.

But while this choice, more unguided than misguided, went against my decision never to live with a significant other before marriage, it cut to the bone of my philosophy about trust and people. Namely the part where they don’t go together.

By choosing to cohabitate, I depend on PiC. I rely on him to pay his bills, to provide my home, to support me.  (Heartburn.)  It’s not that he doesn’t earn a decent income or that he’s a bill-evader, he’s just not deathly allergic to debt like I am. Oh, and he’s a spender. (Aneurysm.)  I’ve always known that about him but figured that by the time marriage was on the table, which was the only time I’d allow myself to enter into financial co-dependence, we’d have found a compromise.

So this whole moving in thing? Can we say whole system meltdown?  

Funny thing, though. After three weeks of (mostly repressing) angst/anxiety about it, I began to discover that it can work.

I wrung some concessions out of him for my own sanity.  We keep spreadsheets on the things that my living here will increase like groceries, eating out, utilities and roughly split those.  I pay for groceries because my credit card gets better grocery cashback.  He pays for gas because he gets better prices (Costco).  I get to manage the monthly spending limits and I cook a LOT to keep bills down.  After three months, we’ll sit down and review our spending together and decide how to build a reasonable side by side budget.  I’d like to contribute more one way or another.  We’re not combining finances, but we’ll make them cohabitable.

We compromise a lot. We’ve had our spats but they were mostly about misunderstanding the other person’s motives. We step on each others’ toes because we try not to.  Once we talk it through, it’s fine.

He’s been amazingly supportive about my health issues. (Though, his supportiveness isn’t really amazing for him. If you knew him, you’d know that’s just the way he is.) We giggle a lot. We have the dumbest jokes and snipe at each other until it gets so ridiculous that we crack up.  He lets me grouse; I nudge him when he’s winding himself up. I can’t recall why I thought cohabitation was such a horrible idea now that I’ve experienced it.

Not only am I out of a toxically worrying environment, I can just sit in the living room and relax. In my entire adult life, I’ve never done that. Not in a safe, my-home kind of place, and definitely not with any sense that I can trust someone else to take care of me if I need help. How luxurious!

And because of all this weird and good stuff, the thought of marriage no longer causes anxiety.  That’s some serious progress.  Yes, my family still needs my help and yes, I still feel very responsible for their health and safety. No, I have no idea where I can afford to move them and no, I don’t feel at peace about them. But I can, for the first time, look at the future and think about making plans with a sense of purpose instead of panic.

Perhaps I need to start a courthouse fund.  Because I still think eloping’s the way to go. 🙂

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