Sharing An Apartment Leads To…

by Audrey Ference

There’s a lot of stuff that changes about a person after living with a person they’re dating, after a while. There’s the Big Stuff, of course—ideas about the future, the possibility of personal identity in coupledom, masculinity and femininity, all that stuff.

Then there are the Specific Things, particular to each person. The messy learn to become neater, the antisocial get used to being dragged to parties, the disinterested-in-television start to enjoy watching Top Chef or Rock of Love or Gossip Girl — the gradual blending of personalities that takes place when two different people make the thousand compromises necessary to successfully cohabitate.

As a side note, I think it is the general unwillingness of a person to make these compromises outside of a romantic partnership-type cohabitation that makes some people terrible roommates. (Like me! Sorry, former roommates!)

But lately I’ve been thinking about the third and much more elusive type of change a person undergoes when living with a partner: changes of a more obscure origin. These are instances where one or both persons in the couple suddenly change a way of thinking or living for no real reason that makes sense. I’m sure you’ve observed this, either from the inside or out.