Location is everything. Not just in regards to where you are in a relationship with someone, but where you are physically located. On a relative scale if you are living together or close to one another this puts different challenges and advantages towards your relationship. If you are living together and the space was previously yours or their solo pad, that can come with another slew of perceptions. It can be difficult to feel at home when you feel like you’re living in someone else’s house.
The environment in which you are living impacts your entire relationship, it can either bring you closer together or drive you farther apart. It’s well known that living with winter for six months out of the year, or complete darkness for a few months can put a strain on people and cause depression. This will obviously impact your relationship.
Let’s say your five year plan is to move to a big city or out into the country. That adds another level of difficulty to finding a relationship or maintaining your current one because they have to be in agreement on location.
Location in Your Relationship:
Making it “our place”: it can be hard if one person moves in with the other, it’s important to eliminate the boundaries between “you” and “I”. It needs to be “our” space. A way to do that is to ensure you get a voice in decorating and merging your things together. One person shouldn’t be making all the changes, it’s about changing and evolving together.
Creating couple memories in your location: whether you live in your hometown with your beau or in a completely new town, it’s important to establish your “places” whether that be a favorite coffee shop, chinese place or visit to a certain park. You need to create an environment together
Be in agreement on long-term location goals: Neither of you need to be jumping to plan every second of your future together, but you should have some idea of in the future what state or town you want to live in. Maybe you’re open to wherever, but make sure it’s discussed. If you have always had the life long dream of living in the Alaskan wilderness, you might want to make sure your significant other is on the same page.
Put that hideous life size cutout of the Red Sox player in storage and go on the hunt for the best coffee place of the century.