Uhauling
Maybe you know the joke, maybe you don't, but showing up for a second date with a uhaul can be risky. In this episode, Libby goes over why she thinks cohabiting during the new relationship energy (NRE) phase might not be the best idea, and what to do instead.
Transcript
I'm sure you've heard the joke. What does a lesbian bring to a second date a uhaul? I'm told by my lesbian friends that this joke is very accurate, for myself, because I came into my queerness late in life.I did not have the luxury of bringing a uhaul to my second date, but what is true is that, I've seen uhauling, as I'm going to call it in this episode in polyamory as well. So what do I mean by uhauling? for those of you who didn't get the joke uhauling, would be getting into a brand new relationship and just very quickly moving in together, while you're in the throes of NRE and I'm going to talk today in this episode about why I think that needs some attention, some thought, and maybe whether or not to do it.
And, if you don't do it, what to do instead, or if you do, do it, what to do to make it work. Now, before I start, I do wanna say, even though, I have a lot of reservations about uhauling, I'll just be upfront about that. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with uhauling. I think it's totally sensible under certain circumstances to cohabit quickly. I think it's risky, though, but here's where I think it could be totally. Okay, one kind of criteria that I think could make it okay is that if you have a lot of just flexibility in your life, and especially in your domestic life, like maybe, you know, you just don't have a lot established yet in your domestic ecosystem, or, you know, you don't have a lot of sort of any rigidity in, in how you're living your home life right now.
And so it's easy to just sort of co-create and be accommodating on the fly because that's kind of how you're doing it anyway. So that's one, kind of criteria that I could see working really well for uhauling. And another criteria for uhauling would be if you have a lot of capacity for a lot of disruption to the way that you are living, and, and you have a lot of capacity to make a lot of adjustments to what you're doing on the fly. Like, you know, you don't have a lot of like dependencies on your home life being a certain kind of way. Like you can really tolerate a lot of disruption in a lot of shifts. And I wanna say also, like sometimes you hauling just is necessary. I mean, I think a lot of people, especially a lot of non-monogamous people, but I think a lot of people in general did sort of a lot of unexpected uhauling during covid.
I mean, that was kind of my sort of situation, not exactly because like , you know, I very quickly moved in with someone that I'd been in a relationship with for six years. But I mean, it was on an accelerated timeline. Like we were thinking that we would move in together in a few years, but instead, you know, covid hit. And, we had a couple of weeks to decide whether, Kyrr would move in with us or move to Florida to live with her parents, and we had to just, we had to decide, and then it, then suddenly they were there and had to clear out a room and clean out a closet and, make sure that they had a place to live. We did not have time at all to move slowly, and I think that happened a lot because a lot of people were in the situation of having to decide to either, not see their sweetie for they didn't know how long or to live with them.
another reason why I think, you know, moving in together in general and possibly a fuel for the fire for moving in together quickly is just the housing crisis and the rising cost of living, in this capitalist culture that we all exist in. I mean, living alone, or even just with one other person is expensive and labor intensive, like, like paying rent, managing all of the expenses of living is expensive. And when you're doing it all yourself, or like I said, even with just other one, other person, it's a lot to do. And then maintaining a home and if you have a home with a yard or, outdoor spaces like maintaining a home and maintaining outdoor spaces, all of that is labor intensive. And then, you know, there's living in the nuclear family, which is also really difficult and really expensive.
You know, when you're just two adults being responsible for however many children and you have to do domestic labor, and you are working to provide sufficient income to support the children and the home that you're living in. that can be, there's a lot being said now about how that's just like not actually sustainable. And I think Covid also brought this into really stark relief because, you know, when schools closed and all other sort of societal supports for parents went away for a period of time, it was for some, for so many parents, a drowning situation. And I think a lot of parents these days are still drowning, because even with, COVID not necessarily keeping, you know, keep taking away as many of those parental supports, there still just are very limited societal support for parents.
And, it's really expected that we're just supposed to kinda, handle it all. And, you know, God forbid you have a kid with special needs like I do. So, you know, thinking about expanding your network of people who live with you can provide relief to some of these problems. And if you are polyamorous and you happen to be in love with these people to boot, like, I mean, why not? Right? now I wanna place myself here, because I do live with two partners and I want it to be known that that's not, I would be happy to live with my other partner who, is long distance right now and live with his kids as well. And in fact, you know, every year for, one to two weeks we do kind of live together sort of like we, we go on vacation together and we, coordinate and collaborate all like 11 of us and, or no, 10 of us.
Yeah. And it's really beautiful and wonderful, but I still wouldn't uhaul like I still like, these are people that I've been in an established relationship with for a very long time. My long distance partner I've been with for six years. My longest partner I've been with for like 13 years now, no, 14 years now. And, the other partner that I live with I've been with for nearly eight years. So, lot of longevity here. We are definitely fully out of the NRE phase. And when I'm talking about uhauling, I'm talking about abruptly moving in together when you are NRE or when your partner is in NRE with somebody. So here's why I think that is tricky. First of all, if you have never cohabited with someone or you're in an established partnership, and it's been a long time since you have cohabited with someone new, you may, not be prepared to know what your needs are to be able to set appropriate boundaries.
You may not know how compatible your needs and boundaries are with the person moving in with you, and they may not know how to express or even know what their needs and boundaries are as well, especially if, depending on what their experience is with cohabiting with other people. Now, I mean, you could try having a conversation about all of this ahead of time before you cohabit or you might try to have a conversation about this, after you cohabit. But the tricky thing is, is you may not know where your boundaries are until they've been crossed, or you might not know what your needs are until they're not being met. And the tricky part also is that if it's a new relationship and you're in the throes of NRE, you may not want to set boundaries with that person because you're very excited and you don't wanna put any barriers between you and them.
Or you may not want to express a need as a need because you're worried that if you frame it that way and it's a deal breaker, then that'll totally scuttle the moving in process. And if there's all this energy going towards moving in, then you know, the fear of expressing a need and having that be a deal breaker might feel like, well then that, does that mean we have to break up if we're not gonna move in together? another thing about uhauling that I think is tricky is if you're getting quickly, deeply intertwined, and that's being fueled by NRE without being cautious about boundaries, what to me almost feels inevitable is that you may have to adjust them later and setting more boundaries after there weren't any can feel like there was a big escalation. And then a deescalation or pulling back can sometimes feel like a loss or a demotion or a pushing away.
And that can feel really destabilizing, especially if you're really vulnerable and you're in a new relationship. Now, really, in my view, it's just a recalibration when you're having to adjust boundaries. But that recalibration can be painful than if you were to just like proceed really slowly and deliberately. Another tricky thing about uhauling that I would see for like myself is if I'm in a more complex ecosystem, not everyone may integrate equally easily. I mean, just as an example, like let's say you are in a V and you live with one partner and your other partner is gonna move in. Well, if you're in that relationship with that person and the two of you are in NRE, you may be really enthusiastic about integrating your partner into your domestic life, but the other person may be more ambivalent cuz they're not in NRE, and they may feel more cautious, they might wanna set more boundaries, and that may, that imbalance may be harder for them to work through and for you to work through.
And if you're not prepared for it and you haven't talked about it a lot and haven't sort of front loaded the experience, it can, you might be in a situation where you have like two people who wanna go really fast and one person who wants to go slow and like, for the person who wants to go slow, they may feel railroaded or overwhelmed, they may wanna pull on the reins a lot and slow things down. And then the people who wanna go fast, that experience for them might be like they're feeling like they're being controlled or manipulated or, throttled in their own, you know, the growth of their relationship and all of that within, under the same roof. Like that can happen, you know, not under the same roof, but if you're all like living together too, that can just make it even more intense.
Also, if you're living with an established partner and someone else is moving in with you, whether a partner or a metamour, you may have a lot of ingrained cohabiting practices and habits and expectations with the person that you have been living with that have become invisible to both of you. And this new person may not be aware of those things, but that could also leave them, you know, just not on an equal footing with you. Like, they may be expected to just integrate without any of their own wants and needs, and they may really struggle to assert themselves in ways that may disrupt those practices and habits and expectations because they're the new person and they're really excited and they want everything to work out, et cetera. And I guess I wanna say here that like when you're in NRE, NRE isn't just excitement to be together and being in love and horny and all that kind of stuff.
There is also an element of NRE that is anxious, that is anxiety. NRE isn't just about, the stars in your eyes, right? there's also sort of a desperate, I need this person, I wanna feel, I need this person and I want them now, and I will not feel okay until I see them again. There's this, there's like sort of a love sickness, you know, and also you can have this fear of missing out, of missing your opportunity, to connect and go deeper. And there is an inability to be patient and really let things flow. And so NRE can create a sense of urgency. And my general principle is that urgency creates opportunities for coercion and for self betrayal because there's this fear of disrupting momentum. But in my view, urgency actually itself disrupts flow and prevents growth if it is the engine that is driving decision making, which in this case, you know, with uhauling, that's a real risk.
So I'm gonna tell you, I don't think you should uhaul I mean, I don't advise it. I under a lot of circumstances apart from the ones that I mentioned before. So, I'm gonna say if you're thinking of uhauling, consider slowing down. I think this is so important, especially when it comes to creating a living situation. It can be really, really beneficial to be grounded and intentional because like, look, cohabiting is sold by our modern normative, relationship, escalator culture as the one of the ultimate expressions of how important someone is to us. And, you know, we may be thinking, you know, if we just live with someone that we care about, like we love them so much, we wanna see them all the time. And so if they live with us, then we'll get even more of them.
And it's an expression of how important they are, et cetera. it's an escalation to share a home, but in my view, and I say this a lot to my clients, I've said this before on this podcast, cohabiting in my view is not an expression of feelings. This really shouldn't really be about feelings at all. Cohabiting is really about two things. It's about functioning and daily wellbeing. It's a business that you're running together. Maintaining and existing in a home is defined I think by labor. And, creating a vibe so much about living a in a home is about really serious work and then doing a lot of care, and tending to each other's nervous systems because as, Lisa Feldman Barrett says in her book, seven and a Half Lessons on the Brain, whether you like it or not, your nervous system affects all the other nervous systems around you and all the other nervous systems around you affect you.
The vibe you show up with, the energy you show up with on a day-to-day basis. You have to, you have to tend to that, and you have to tend to the nervous systems around you. That's just what it is to live with people. Living in a home together is serious work. As I said, the way that I describe it often is, you are running a business together. You operate and maintain a space. You manage resources in food, toilet paper, cleaning, supplies, electricity, water. And then there are products that come out. Your, work, your, you know, your job, gatherings. You host raising healthy children. And just like a workplace, you're creating a culture where people can either thrive or struggle. And if you own a house, you share a significant asset. Everyone who's living there is putting their labor and their finances into that asset.
There's daily upkeep, there's cleaning, there's care, there's repairs, there's additions and improvements and all of that in the hopes that eventually when you sell that asset, you'll recoup your investment and hopefully make some money. For me, I would not want to bring someone into a business that has not been thoroughly vetted and confirmed, pretty compatible with the business that has already been established. Now, of course, any new person is gonna change the business and affect it and, hopefully make it better, but it really would be damaging for it to be, destabilizing and disruptive in harmful ways. For me, the stakes are just really high. Like my partners and I, and my children's day-to-day wellbeing, our ability to function and have joy and have an income and, be healthy is greatly impacted by what happens in and around our home. And so, you know, it's not like it's this well old machine.
I don't wanna oversell it, but I wouldn't wanna be cavalier about it. For me, especially as a person with ADHD who's living in with a whole household full of neurodivergent misfits, I love you all dearly. But we have all kinds of systems and rituals and processes that we do ourselves, that we do together that make our house functional and a healthy place to live in. And of course, we're, it's a work in progress. But, you know, because of that, I would just be super careful about who I'm introducing into that ecosystem because disrupting that would just really up my life. And so I, for me, I would under no circumstances invite someone to live with me while I was in the throes of NRE, just like hell no. Like no way that would be, reckless, maybe after I've known the person two years.
But, you know, in this case, what was it? Five, I think. And here's the other thing, about, um, about NRE by the way. NRE, if you've been in it, you know this, it is a disruptive force all on its own. You're so excited, you're so enthralled and you gotta think about what would it be like for someone who is in NRE and coming into an established household ecosystem? They may feel like they're just expected to fold themselves into what's already been established without having the opportunity to make their situation fully work for them. So, you know, to use my example of like, if my house was like an actual well oil machine that was going really well for me, and really a source of like perfect, smooth ease, whatever, but then someone were to come into that ecosystem and just expected to fold themselves into it, well then, you know, they're not creating the domestic life that might actually fully work for them.
Also, it's worth saying that like living together and sharing that work, the labor of creating a functioning household that can have a real cooling effect on NRE, in a way that you might not want, especially if what's driving you to live together is just excitement to be together. What you might find is that a lot of your incidental time that you were thinking you might be using staring lovingly into each other's eyes or blank rabbits, is actually just doing a lot of functioning and labor and logistics. And, you know, if you find that you're not actually compatible in those areas, that can create a lot of stress and sort of take a lot of the fun and joy out of the NRE phase. Or if a lot of the NRE is, in sort of taking up a lot of space in the domestic sphere, then again, that can be really disruptive to the smooth running of things and might make the people who live there who aren't in NRE feel like they're carrying more of the load.
Last thing I'll say about this is that when a relationship is new, it's insecure. Just like fundamentally it's insecure. It so things just cannot, may not feel very safe. And so if you take that insecure relationship, that new exciting, but insecure relationship and you tie it to something that everyone needs, like housing that can raise the stakes of every single little relationship wobble can suddenly feel like a really big wobble and, that can cause conflicts to spiral and escalate in really dramatic ways. So I know, okay, I've made my case for why I think uhauling is a bad idea. I do think it's very risky. That being said, I don't wanna just leave it here and say it's a bad idea, because, I know some people are gonna do it, for all kinds of reasons.
And like I said, I think you can do it and it's even fine. Maybe even good, maybe even an adventure if you, don't have an established domestic ecosystem or you have a lot of flexibility in your ecosystem or you have a lot of capacity for disruption. But if you don't, and especially if you have kids and a lot of established routine and expectation and investment in your domestic life, I really would not uhaul, I would really go super slow and I'm actually gonna do a separate episode on like my top tips for successful cohabiting that include going slow, but there's a lot more to it. So I'm not gonna go too deeply into like if I were gonna cohabit with a partner, what would be like, how would I ideally do it? And to be clear, I have not done it perfectly for sure, but I've learned a lot along the way, so I'll share that with you.
But here's the deal. If you are in a situation where you are going to uhaul it's happening or you're already in a uhaul situation because of covid or some other circumstance, here's what I would do to make uhaul and go as successfully as you can. Number one, and this one is the most important one. Have a written roommate agreement that includes a plan to how to guarantee housing security and financial security such as you can to everyone living together, whether or not their relationship goes smoothly or whether it goes south. It is better to make this plan when everybody is feeling excited and loving about how you will handle it if someone has to move out or if someone, breaks up, than to try to do it when you're angry or hurt or scared because things are feeling terrible. And, you're worried about where you're gonna go.
That's the first thing. Second thing, try to like chill a little bit and have a mindset that everything is iterative. Nothing is set in stone and any decision can be made or unmade and, and where you can like lower the stakes of that. I think like because being in a new situation, is disruptive and can, raise the stakes of everything because there's the NRE flowing, the more you can kind of lower the stakes, the, and say, Hey, like, we're just gonna try this. We'll see how it goes. If it doesn't work we'll pivot. Having that attitude will help you a lot. And, three third tip to that end, have an at least weekly house check-in meeting where you just talk about how the cohabiting is going and that's it. Talk about things like cleanliness, expectations, money, guests, food, other shared resources, how they're being used, and, make intentional space for people to share their thoughts and feel empowered to rock the boat and make sure that everyone who shows up to the meeting has agency to have their say about how this is working for them.
And then consider using tools like the ones in, the workshop that I have, recorded, unstuck and understood to handle things when there's a disagreement or a problem so that things don't get out of hand. And I'm really serious about this one, like weekly. It can, even when you don't think there's an issue, even when there's not something urgent, I really recommend having just a regular check-in touchpoint that is there and that is consistent for at least the first year. I just think it's so important. It has saved my butt more times than I can count to have a weekly house meeting. Number four, have a conversation where you explicitly separate the importance of the relationship from your status as people who are living together. This will make it possible to change the living situation if that becomes necessary without it being some kind of repudiation of the love that you have with each other.
Those things are really separate. I can't say that enough. There are tons of people in the world that you could love deeply with your heart, but that you would not be able to successfully live with no matter how hard you tried living together. Compatibility is not the same as loving together compatibility, it's just not. And if you need more on this, you can listen to the episode I did about this called The Nine Relationships of a Modern Marriage, where I talk about all these different vectors of compatibility and they don't necessarily actually have anything to do with each other. So the more you can separate that, the more you can say, you know, if this particular thing isn't compatible, it doesn't mean this other thing isn't, it doesn't mean I love you less just cuz this thing isn't working. Last thing number five, have an agreement that any changes to the housing situation will be made from a calm and collaborative place unless for some reason, that just becomes impossible due to like unsafe behavior or something like that.
It's gonna be so important to agree that if anyone has a fight or just a difficult moment, that it is absolutely not okay, that it is not acceptable to threaten the living arrangement in the heat of that moment. Decisions about whether or not to continue to live together cannot be made abruptly with urgency. Like you can make the decision to live together with urgency, but you cannot unmake it with urgency and abruptness not okay. They have to, the decision to change your living arrangements needs to be made from a grounded and regulated place so that no one will fear that there will be changes to their housing if they have an upset moment or a dysregulated moment or if they decide to rock the boat. There needs to be room to make mistakes and to repair without that threatening your housing situation. That's it.
I wanna close by saying that living with multiple partners is, in my experience, the bee's knees. I love it. It's wonderful. It has made my life better in so many ways. I highly recommend it and I can't wait to do a podcast episode, about my experience and what I've learned and how I would recommend it. That being said, I don't recommend uhauling, I recommend proceeding with caution just because there are so many ways that it could go sideways. But if you decide to do it, I recommend taking my tips here and, you know, I just, I wanna honor that we're all gonna be on our journeys and so if uhauling is yours, please know that I support you even though I think it's a risky endeavor. You know, sometimes life is about taking risks and sometimes they pay off and sometimes they don't. If you do decide to take this step again or if you have already, I hope that my tips help you out. And if I have sold you on holding off on uhauling, then I look forward to sharing my episode on Successful Cohabitation with multiple partners coming soon to a Making Polyamory work podcast near you. In the meantime, take care and, live well whether together or not.
