Warning: Moving In Together Could Be Hazardous to Your Relationship

By Martha Beck
Entranced by true love's dazzling combination of hormones and ignorance, we may commit to sharing a home with our beloved before we've thought through the consequences. If you're considering moving in together, you may want to push your imagination some distance beyond the usual happily ever after. Love can conquer many a romantic hiccup that arises after a move-in, but only if you take a few key precautions.

Step 1: Pledge Allegiance to Red Flags
No, I'm not suggesting you turn communist. By red flags I mean the uneasy feeling that there's something fundamentally wrong with your relationship. I know several clients who've moved in with partners in order to silence just such hunches. Two, ten, 30 years later, as I'm helping them process the inevitable breakup, I ask, "When did you see the problems?" Almost invariably, they respond, "On our second date" or "The week we met" or some other astonishingly early moment in their relationship.

Research suggests that we can sense red flags in someone else's marriage after watching a troubled couple interact for just a few minutes. Turning this intuition to ourselves, we can scout for scarlet banners in our love lives—before, not after, moving in together. Pay particular attention to what psychologist John Gottman calls the Four Horsemen of relationship apocalypse: withdrawal, criticism, defensiveness, and, above all, contempt. If these elements characterize your relationship, you might want to hang on to that loft-for-one. Thinking you can solve basic interpersonal problems by moving in together is like trying to transform a rabid pit bull into a love pup by stapling its tail to the parlor floor. You'll still have a big angry mess on your hands—only now you'll be living with it.