Living With Your Best Friend

As children we grow up watching how “happily ever after” turns out and it’s always the most romantic thing ever. We find grace and beauty when the prince rescues the princess, marries her and lives a long happy life. Since our first Snow White tale and Cinderella fantasy, we start to imagine our lives with our true “Prince Charming” and how life will be forever after. However, our wonderful movie creators and authors forget to mention a lot about how living with someone can be stressful and how life isn’t as easy as wishing upon a star.

As kids, for most of us, we see life and living with our family as very easy, because if like me, your family will do majority of the things for you, making it easy to be yourself. Your parents will do the laundry and the majority of the cleaning, of course you would have a couple things to do like vacuuming or taking out the trash. Yet, you still had all day to yourself and whatever new hobby you had picked up that week. In our eyes, happily ever after has already begun, since we already “know” how our lives are going to be. Then next thing you know, we’re in high school, have a thousand crushes and nothing seems real or right anymore. Miraculously, we make it to graduation, some through college, some go straight to working.

Around this time of our lives we’ve figured out that our beloved stories and movies left out the fact that bills, student loans, insurance, and rent are very real. Emotionally, we are completely done and probably already shared a meme or posted the famous “#ForeverAlone” on our drowning social media. Randomly, one day it happens, you meet the person that makes your heart skip a beat and makes you believe in fairytales all over again. As the two of you know each other you start to wonder why you ever stopped believing, and as the years pass by you fantasize your life together. At this precise moment is where the “fun” begins and you really get to see your partner behind closed doors, and this can either be the most beautiful, annoying, or heartbreaking moment of your life.

Typically, when couples first move in together, they get an apartment, unless one of them is already a home owner, and the thing about moving in is “How many things do want to move in with?” Let's face it, some people like plain, well organized rooms and small amounts of furniture, and some people simply have too many thing and are not necessarily as organized. Usually, when you’re in your own world you could care less if you left your dirty clothes on the floor or your bed undone, but when your partner is a neat freak you might put them on edge. As insignificant as this might seem to you, this could be enough to make your partner regret the move, because now they feel like they have to be picking up after a child instead of feeling like they have someone to share responsibilities with.

However, if their cleaning style doesn’t put you on the edge, congratulations, but maybe their sleeping habits will. When you first date your partner and have a few sleepovers everything they do while they sleep is beautiful, funny, and just so darn adorable. A lot of us look right past it, until a few months of putting up with it every night! There are people who don’t like or simply can’t bring themselves to sleep early. So while you try to sleep soundly in your new home, you might have to put up with hearing your partner playing video games, pacing, yelling at a game they’ve already watched, or having the lights on at three in the morning while they gather their thoughts. Worst case scenario, you’re used to peace and quiet and soundless nights, but your partner (and mine) snores very loudly. Of course you didn’t care before, but now you have to put up with it every single night.

Despite all the many differences, and I do mean many, sometimes you don’t have to deal with such harsh things. I’m sure the lack of sleep will get to you, and their childish behavior is a mess, but you will stick with them due to your love for them. I have simply realized in the few months I have been living with my Prince Charming that we are rarely going to agree on anything. Surely that is the only reason we can’t finish decorating our apartment, because our taste in furniture, design, color is completely different. I can assure you, our tale is nothing like I’ve read in books or seen in movies, but if you can let go of that fairytale bogus you might just be happy. I’m sure Cinderella didn’t love everything about her prince, nor do I believe Aurora had the perfect life after she was awoken, but I do believe living with your best friend should be something loving and memorizing.