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How To Know When To Move In Together

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Moving in together prior to marriage, a.k.a. cohabiting, is more and more common these days. If you live in a fairly expensive city, it can be particularly tempting to combine forces with your significant other. Better to live with your girlfriend or boyfriend than some random roommate, right? The problem is, that isn’t necessarily true. Though it may seem more fun at first, if things start to go sour, breaking up with someone you live with can be extra disastrous. That means that this is a fairly weighty decision. Living with your boyfriend or girlfriend is effectively like being married, minus the marriage license and the shared bank account. Keep that in mind, and you’re more apt to give this decision the consideration it deserves.

Questions To Ask Before Asking Your Partner To Move In

If you are thinking about asking your S.O. to move in, what questions should you be asking yourself? First and foremost, do you really love this person? If you’re not at the point in your relationship where you can say, “I love you,” you’re not ready to live together. That doesn’t mean that you need to wait a year before you call the moving company. It just means that you need to know that you have strong feelings for each other. Secondly, you need to consider your compatibility with them. Imagine that they’re a stranger. What criteria would you want in a roommate that wasn’t your significant other? If your S.O. wouldn’t live up to any of them, you may need to question the logic of living together. If you wouldn’t reside with a roommate who was sloppy and made erratic rent payments, just being able to sleep with your S.O. probably won’t smooth over those problems.

Thinking About Situations That May Come Up When Living Together

Yet another major point to consider is how you’d handle bad situations together as cohabiters. The economy is rough out there. If one of you loses your job, will the other person be able to shoulder the rent for two for a while? That can be a high pressure situation, but if you love someone you’ll make it work. If you feel that you would, you’re probably ready to live together. If you disagree about levels of cleanliness or the balance of chore handling, will that ruin your relationship? If you think you’d be able to compromise and work around it, you’re golden. If you think you’d blow a gasket, then you probably shouldn’t sign the lease just yet. If any of the pressures of living together would likely ruin the relationship that you two have going, hold off for the time being.

What Happens If You Break Up?

The final point to consider is a biggie. If you eventually break up, are you prepared to deal with how much harder living together will make it? If you care about your significant other so much that you’d rather risk a more complex future breakup than live alone without them, then you’re ready to go. However, if the thought of divvying up your books and furniture in the future makes you cringe, think twice. That means that you better know that you intend on marrying or staying with this person forever before you move in with them.

Living together can be a really wonderful thing, or it can turn out to be surprisingly bad. That’s why it is important to treat it with an appropriate level of gravitas. If you wouldn’t rush into marrying someone, you shouldn’t rush into signing a lease with them. Just because it isn’t the ultimate form of commitment, doesn’t mean it’s not a big form of it. Keep that in mind, and ponder the aforementioned points before you make your decision. Taking a moment to clearly think things through will pay off in the end.

How To Cope With Being In An Interracial Relationship

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We live in a modern age and consider ourselves to be quite evolved, but backward things like racism still exist in our world. If you’re currently in an interracial relationship, you’re probably very aware of this fact. You can’t let other people’s bigotry keep you from being with the person that you love. How, then, can you cope with the additional problems of interracial romance?

How Being In An Interracial Relationship Can Affect You

You will most likely meet with varying levels of judgment over the course of your relationship. You may get stares on the street, or overhear disapproving remarks from random passersby. Terrible as that is, the passing of time will increase your ability to ignore the ignorance of these strangers. If you find that friends, family or co-workers feel the need to show you their inner racist side, that’s a whole other story. When facing bigotry from familiar sources, you must first and foremost remind yourself that you are both happily in love and a good person. Hard as it may be, this is your chance to be the bigger man or woman. Don’t go into hysterics or make a scene when your great uncle makes a crack. Take a deep breath, look him in the eye and calmly say, “Uncle, that may be your opinion, but it doesn’t make it right. I don’t want to hear talk like that about someone I love.” If this unsavory individual’s behavior continues, politely announce that you don’t want to be around someone who feels the need to spew hate speech. Then leave the event. Inform other friends and family that you don’t desire to be around this individual again unless they can control themselves. Remain calm, don’t stoop to name-calling, and provide a unified front with your significant other. It may be difficult, but it will get results.

Problems That May Come Up Within The Relationship

Cultural differences can also cause some problems. Religion can become an issue, particularly when you start to think about marriage or kids. You need to address this issue early on, and then again once you decide things are becoming truly serious. It’s important to establish whether or not one of you values religion more than the other, whether there’s an expectation that you convert or raise your possible children within a certain religion, etc. This is the sort of thing that could prove to be a deal breaker for many couples, so don’t wait until it’s too late to talk about it. It’s also important to learn about your partner’s cultural background in general. Showing your knowledge of common customs in their culture can impress your mate’s family. It also shows your partner that their background is important to you.

How To Keep Your Relationship Strong

The best thing that you can do for your relationship is be open with each other. Whether that means discussing how to handle a problematic relative or talking about what parts of your heritage are most important to you, you’ll be glad that your partner knows where you stand. There may be times when you or your significant other feel that you can’t understand each other because of a cultural difference. In moments like these, the openness you’ve established can save your relationship from falling apart. If you can feel comfortable saying that you don’t understand this particular aspect of your partner’s personal beliefs, but would love to have it explained to you, the situation may soon be resolved. Likewise, your partner needs to be understanding when you can’t relate to something due to your own background. Be honest, be supportive, and be open to the new learning experiences that your differences will provide. If you can do all of that, you will be able to get through the specific trials and tribulations of interracial romance and come out the better for it.

Should Women Marry Wealthy?

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Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi shocked feminists everywhere we he said that women seeking a life partner should “follow the money” and marry wealthy. Of course, we all know we shouldn’t be taking relationship advice from 73-year-old Berlusconi: he was recently embroiled in a sex scandal based on reported encounters with younger women, including prostitutes. Although he denies the prostitution charge, he admits he’s “no saint” and he and his wife have since separated. Throughout the years, he’s told the media young women should look for wealthy, older boyfriends so when he dies they can inherit his wealth.

Marrying Wealthy vs. Becoming Wealthy

There’s much to be said about what’s wrong with this viewpoint, but in a country where we do value money and power very highly, the attraction to wealth can lie not far below the surface even if we’re not as vocal about it as Berlusconi. That said, it may be interesting to note that as women are making more, the so-called “need” for this type of perception is shifting to one where men may start to feel outpaced.

The majority of layoffs during this recession have hit men. Womens’ status as breadwinner continues to become more and more prevalent, according to a New York Times study. Last year – as companies from Citibank to GM announced massive layoffs – 82 percent of the people laid off were men. It won’t be long before women become the majority of the American workforce. Not to mention, women now control roughly 60% of wealth in the country due in part to the fact that they often outlive men and thus inherit family wealth.

So the question is no longer “How can women get wealthy?” – since they’re already doing so, and often without the help of a man – but “What can women do with their wealth?” According to a study by The Hartford Financial Services Group, women’s worries focus on three major areas: inflation, health and longevity.

Why Financial Planning Is Essential

According to the specifics of the study, which examined the projected retirement levels of nearly 2 million employees at 72 large U.S. companies, “both men and women are on track to replace 85 percent of pay at retirement, assuming average life expectancy. However, women, on average, need to replace nearly 130 percent of their final pay at retirement because they often take time off to raise kids. That’s seven percentage points more than men. When factoring in differences in longevity, that disparity jumps to 10 percentage points.”

So while women are making great strides in terms of earning power – and breaking assumptions like those made by Berlusconi that they need a man’s help to develop wealth – it’s important not to lose sight of the importance of planning. Nowadays (most) women’s retirement plan is not to get married to a wealthy man, but to create wealth of their own.

Enough With The Complaining About Your Significant Other!

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Maybe you’ve hit a rough patch in your relationship, or maybe it’s time to move on, but if you’re regularly complaining about your significant other, you need to reevaluate some things. There are many reasons that we feel compelled to complain about issues in our lives—sometimes we just need to blow off steam, and sometimes we have serious problems that require others’ help. When you’re constantly griping about your boyfriend or girlfriend, however, you’re doing no one any favors, least of all yourself.

Assess The Issues You Have With Your Partner

Before you can get a handle on your complaints, you need to take a moment to assess them. Do you have one or two big problems with your significant other, several small problems, or a combination therein? If the source of your complaint is something major—say, your boyfriend is cheating on you yet again—then you should probably just end things. There is no point in putting up with a problem of that magnitude, especially if it’s a repeat offense that you’ve previously addressed. If you’ve got smaller things you’re complaining about, however, then you need to decide whether those small problems outweigh the good aspects of your relationship. You also need to determine whether or not your expectations for your partner are unrealistic. Then you should discuss all of your feelings with your S.O., not your friends and family.

What Are The Pros And Cons Of Your Relationship?

How best to go about this process? If you’ve decided this isn’t an obviously a problem worthy of a break up, you have to start weighing the pros and cons of your relationship. Sure it may annoy you that your girlfriend baby talks to your cat, but if you dump her over it, you would also lose all of the support she gives you when you’re having a bad day. When you look at it that way, her cooing and calling your kitten her little fuzzy-wuzzy-face may not seem so bad after all. Secondly, you need to have a reality check with yourself, because odds are that you have at least one habit that annoys her. She’s probably not so keen on you leaving your dirty socks all over the apartment, but she overlooks it because there are lots of other things she loves about you. You should take a page from her playbook and stop whining about this rather negligible issue. Then wait for a moment when you’re both in good moods and mention the problem to your mate. Bring it up in a non-accusatory way, for instance: “I’m so glad that you love my cat, but my aunt baby-talked to me well into my teen years and it carries a bad association for me. Do you think you could try to cut back a little, please?” Making it about your own issue, and not about the other person’s, always helps. If you discuss the cause of your complaints with your S.O. in a non-heated moment, you’ll likely see him or her make an effort to modify their behavior. At the very least, you’ll feel better for being proactive about addressing the problem.

Should You Just Break Up?

Oftentimes the assess-and-discuss method above will help alleviate your issues much more than complaining about it to uninvolved parties. If it doesn’t, perhaps you need to question what’s really causing your complaints. Maybe you’re really just looking for an excuse to break up with someone who no longer holds interest for you. If that’s the case, just end it. There’s no point in dragging out a bad relationship—you’re just making you, your partner, and all the people you’ve been whining to miserable. No matter what your situation, you should also give serious thought to who you complain to about your relationship problems. You put your friends and family members in an awkward position when you constantly gripe about the person you supposedly love—especially if those friends and relatives like or have befriended your S.O. You also risk them telling your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse that you’ve been regularly complaining about them, which could be disastrous. Better that your mate hears it from you than through the grapevine. Regardless of the outcome, you need to take steps to cope with or eliminate the source of your complaints—otherwise your relationship will never be a healthy one.

7 Ways To Rekindle His Interest In You And Your Relationship

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Are you frustrated that your relationship doesn’t have the magic and romance that it once had? Scared this may affect or eventually end your relationship? You’re not alone. Living with the same partner for a long time can become stable and comfortable, and, as a result, can also cause the loss of the spark that made your relationship so special in the first place. Here are some simple, fun and creative ideas to reignite that magic!

1. Send Your Partner A Unique Gift At Work

Get a piece of paper and some crayons. Draw a bright childlike picture with a smiley sun and two stick figures holding hands. Add labels with your two names pointing to the stick figures. Write “I Love You” inside a heart. Next, get a large formal envelope. Place your drawing inside and type up a formal address label of your partner’s workplace, such as: “For the immediate and urgent attention of: Rebecca Jones, Level 20, Collins & Smith Solicitors, New York.” Mail it to your partner so they receive it in the middle of a busy day. Your partner will feel so surprised when she opens the letter, thinking that it will be something boring that she needs to do for work and instead finding the picture you drew saying that you love her!

2. Become Kids Again

If you are walking by a park, visit the swings and give your partner a ride. Push your partner on a merry go round, or go skating at the skating rink. Grab an ice cream cone as a treat, or play a game of Monopoly at home if it’s raining or the weather isn’t nice. Doing anything that you used to do as a kid with your partner will often bring back happy memories from their childhood as well as yours and make you both feel giddy again.

3. Have Fun With Water

On a hot summer day, buy two large water pistols and take them to the beach with you. If you can’t get to the beach, head outdoors to your very own backyard! Pull them out and throw one to your partner and then have a huge water fight. You can also do the same with water balloons or even just the water hose! You’d be surprised at how much fun you can have when you’re acting like a kid again and how turned on you both will be when you’re soaking wet and panting for air!

4. Bring Back Another Childhood Memory

Contact your partner’s family and ask if there was anything she always wanted when she was a little girl. For example, if she always wanted a porcelain doll, buy one for her birthday. If he always enjoyed a trip to the toy store, take him and let him buy anything he wants. Your partner will not only appreciate the gift, but also the fact that you were thoughtful enough to find out what they always wanted or enjoyed doing as a child.

5. Organize A Picnic In Your Backyard

Spread a picnic blanket on the ground and get together some snacks, sandwiches, chocolates and champagne. Put them in a picnic basket and head outside. Lie down on the blanket with your partner and gaze up at the sky together. You can do this during the day or at night, depending on whether you want to be looking at clouds or stars. You can go to the park too, but if you have a fairly private backyard, you don’t have to worry about people catching a glimpse of you and your partner if you start kissing or decide to get a little frisky.

6. Show Your Partner You’re Grateful For Them

Leave a long-stem rose where your partner will find it, with a note on it saying, “thank you for coming into my life.” You can also do this with a box of chocolates, a card or anything else that your partner would think is special. Doing small things for your partner on a regular basis is a great way to let them know that you love them “just because.”

7. Spice Up Your Sex Life

Surprise your partner with a little gift after you make love, try new sex positions, learn to give your partner a sensual massage before or after sex,  or just spend some time staring into each other’s eyes and caressing their bare skin before making love. Give her oral sex if you don’t do so very often, or make the night all about her and her pleasure. She can also do this for you too on a different night! Better sex means a happier, closer emotional relationship too.