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| Howl's Moving Castle |
The deed is done. My house ain't mine. And now, I have nowhere to run if things don't work out--Kinda too late now....deja vu....and off we go to live with Xing Fu for 10 days. The next great adventure. Strange to not "go home." For as much as Xing Fu would like us (my son & me) to feel free to be "at home", we don't. It's not his fault, he isn't doing anything wrong, it's just not our home & we feel it acutely. I'm sure the new house will feel that way for all of us for a while. But it's the subtle things that you can't quite put your finger on...like wanting to watch TV but feeling like mebbe you shouldn't because no one else wants to watch what you do, no DVR to record the shows that you want, or that you're living out of a bag. I joke a little about being "homeless"--it is no joke if you are, but I do think that we have a sense of what that must be like. It isn't the most comfortable feeling even if we're shacked up with my boyfriend & we do have a destination & know where our next meal is coming from (don't get me started about shared grocery bills--another time, another blog post).
I also know that it is a huge adjustment for EVERYBODY. Xing Fu's kids need to be cognizant of us being there all the time when before we could be taken in smaller doses if they wanted. And the same could be said for us--there's no place to hide. And we're trying to figure out how to do this together with our joined families--I keep saying to Xing Fu that I don't want us to live in the new house as two separate families living together but as one big extended bonus family. That is my hope & my fear. So while this is the next great adventure ( & I truly feel that it is), we are all concerned about the minutiae of daily living. Food, laundry, neatness (my son & I may be a little less concerned about everything being put away), drinking glasses being left everywhere (my big pet peeve) & who takes care of this stuff....the following is something I found on yahoo about blending finances when you move in together:
Money Mistake #6: You Fell in Love
Love can cause money
problems--but not the ones you might expect. Most individuals have an
internal financial math that makes their budget work: They cheap out on
the things they don't care about and splurge on things they value. For
instance, you may be perfectly happy to keep your grocery bills low by
eating cereal eight times a week so you can splash out on clothing. Then
you fall in love with a guy who lives in blue jeans and flip-flops but
would never eat day-old bread. It's easy to start sharing each other's
pleasures, but hard to give up our own. So you take his wardrobe up a
notch, and he buys truffle salt at the grocery store...and as a couple,
you pile on the new expenses while abandoning your former budgeting
strategies.
Solution: Asking partners to stop doing the
things that make them happy is a great way to build resentment and
encourage financial infidelity. So instead, start with the fun stuff:
Come up with a list of what you both value most and together build a
budget that will help you achieve those goals. During that process,
you'll each have to make sacrifices, but it won't feel as if your
partner is living it up while you are being denied.
The statement in bolded red is the biggest takeaway from this piece of advice. It is very true--I think Xing Fu & I have brushed up against this already--I value cooking with high end ingredients & good wine far more than he does & this could be a potential pitfall--so we need to figure out how to make it work for us--and I know that we're committed to doing just that. But being without my home is still very strange.
The above comic strip is so true. It is so easy to misconstrue the other person's meaning. I'm not saying this has happened, but it is easy to do so especially as we move into a more familiar aspect of our relationship--we are no longer in the throes of the "first bloom", sweep me completely of my feet (although I have been told that I still glow...) part of life and have now entered into a more realistic perspective--I'd like to think it is actually a more intimate stage.
That being said, there have been adjustments especially since Xing Fu has been away recently & finding time for one another becomes sometimes difficult (I reference back to an earlier post: http://boyfriendplease-sailorgrl.blogspot.com/2010/02/finding-rhythm.html ) We keep reminding ourselves that communication is key because like that comic above, there are many areas where there could be a break-down, especially with so many priorities & people vying for our attention. It certainly is a balancing act on so many fronts....one word comes to mind fairly often: COMPROMISE.
I think the last few weeks have been kind of rough for me, an adjustment, a reality check on what I'm thinking. Xing Fu remarked about that last night--he is right--the real world comes crashing in & working with the reality can be difficult at times for me, but I think we both are working hard to understand what the other needs & adjust accordingly as best we can under our own constraints. The work we put into this relationship thingy...I wrote this in an email today: "makes me appreciate the positive work we put into us (something we may not have been so willing to do with others in the past)." Again I can reference Lori Gottlieb & her comments about working into a partnership. And that's what we want.
Stage: Work in Progress
