@JustAnotherBee: I moved in with my SO after dating for a year. We have been living together for nearly 4 years and came out of a cross-country move relatively unscathed, hah. We are in our mid/late 20s and both lived alone or with roomates for many years before we moved in together.
The first six months were awful. Living with someone, when you’re used to living on your own, is not easy. I had certain things that I thought made total sense about cooking, chores, daily routine, etc that were the dumbest things on earth to him and vice versa. He slept on the futon more than once because we were to mad at each other. What changed after 6 months?
We learned how to communicate better, not to let our feelings build up and create resentment/blowups, to nicely ask the other person to do things (without nagging) and to acknowledge when they did those, to schedule time together and apart, and to create our own “space” where would could spend time in the house, physicially and noise-wise separate from each other. If my SO spends half of the weekend playing video games, it bothers me a LOT less if he’s getting everything done housework wise and if I don’t have to see it every time I go into the living room.
He has his own friends that he spends time with, and we actually try to schedule something every other weekend with other couples we are friends with to get some of that “together” socialization (I’m introverted and hate large parties, but he’s extroverted, so spending half a day with another couple feeds both of our “needs” and has helped strengthen our relationships with our friends and is fun). We try not to schedule more than 1 day of “stuff” on the weekends, so that we can have a day set aside to do housework, do groceries if we need to, go on an informal walk, or catch up on tasks (e.g., taxes).
IMO, you two need to have a serious talk about what living together and marriage is going to look like – how much alone time does he need? Is it important to you (as a couple) to have dinner together? What are your cleanliness standards? How will you divide housework? Keep in mind, some tasks require daily time (walking the dog, cooking) while others are recurring or seasonal but require more time overall (maintaining the garden). I do most of the day-to-day stuff while he does more of the weekly/seasonal stuff (take out the garbage cans, cycle our clothes, etc).
And also, the tantrums need to stop and he needs to learn to deal with his feelings like an adult. Taking all of his stress out on you is unfair, immature, and total bull. If he doesn’t have healthy coping tools, your therapist needs to give him some STAT.
I don’t think your relationship is a lost cause, but does need some tune-up/help.
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