I should be packing right now, instead of writing this blog post. Should have been packing for the last 90 minutes, really, but instead I dicked around the internet, procrastinating on writing this blog post. But here we are.

I’m so excited to move. I’m leaving an apartment that never felt like home, that I signed a sublease for in a mild state of panic, worried I wouldn’t find anything else. Knowing I’d never find anything nearly as cheap. Ever. I’ll never, ever find a rent as cheap as I’ve been paying this past year. It’s been a nice perk. Too bad time is money is the truest of all clichés. New Yorker know that better than anyone.

My commute into Manhattan from here has been awful: an hour at the luckiest, 2 if a passenger gets sick at Union Square or a signal malfunctions. Ya know, things that happen on any given Tuesday these days. With my boyfriend living and working in Queens, it’s really felt like a long distance relationship.

You know you have something special in New York if you can make it work between Brooklyn and Flushing, Queens.

So I’m moving….I must be moving in with my boyfriend, right?

I tell people I’m moving and that’s invariably the follow-up question.

This is New York! Rents are ludicrous! Only a fool would pass up the chance to cut that in half!

I’m a fool. A fool in love! So it really was tempting. The city’s timeline on the Moving In Together Relationship Milestone is often truncated thanks to our notoriously priced apartments. I’ve watched plenty of friends take the plunge…and seen pretty much equal outcomes of heartwarming weddings or gut-wrenching breakups.

But it’s what you’re supposed to do after a year of dating, right? It’s like the old saying goes:

If a move happens during a relationship but no one is actually moving in together, DOES THAT MEAN YOU LOVE EACH OTHER?? AT ALL??!!?

Say what? That’s not actually a saying? Oh good. I was starting to think it was after some of the reactions I get to telling people, no, I’m not moving in with my boyfriend.

We’re both happy with the choice, thanks!

I hate how this makes me feel a bit defensive… I can’t help but get a little sassy with my responses…

Do you know any couple who has ever said, “Yeah, we really regret not moving in together sooner.”?

We wouldn’t want to live in sin! Our shared Agnostic, spiritual values frown upon cohabitation before marriage! 

Here, read this timely essay from New York Magazine that perfectly addresses everything I’m feeling about this: You Don’t Have to Move in Together. 

My fella and I like to take things slow. We’re not ready to move in together. We want time to enjoy our relationship without any stress of cohabitation. What a goddamn luxury -time is money-  much more valuable than saving rent money.  As I said on my birthday, fuck everyone else’s timeline. Moving To The Same Neighborhood is the place we’re at now. Not exactly a typical Relationship Milestone, but it’s one for us.

And let me tell you, as I stayed up too late finishing this blog post, It was really nice that the only sleep schedule I had to worry about was my own.