It is totally okay to not move in with your significant other right away

I want to have a conversation with the girls who are in long-term relationships but are not living with their boyfriends yet. I have been in a relationship for three years. The first year of my relationship was long distance, then my boyfriend moved to Nashville and he moved in with roommates. And that was really important to me because I wanted him to have his own friends and his own community. I didn't want him to feel like, oh, all of my friends are just Mary's friends. And I think it's a lot easier to do that when you have roommates. And then he got to the point where he wanted to live by himself and have that experience too, which I think is great. I have gotten so many comments the past couple years saying, oh, you're wasting so much money, or it doesn't make sense that you're not living together. Like they think it's weird. And I sense some like judgment, maybe thinking our relationship's not that great because of it. Um, and people say, oh, well, I bet you spend every night together then. And I'm like, no, we don't, we don't spend every night together. We have our own lives and we hang out like once or twice during the week and we hang out all weekend. Like he'll come like Friday through Sunday and then go home Sunday night and we pick normally a day during the week to hang out. And so we're together like four out of the seven days a week. And to the point now where I am moving in with him, I feel like it is a good time, good next step in our relationship, makes sense. And I just wanted to say that you don't need to move in with your significant other six months into dating or a year into dating. Um, it's fine to spend nights apart. I just feel like it is very common now that you meet someone, you spend every single night together, you move in with them, but a lot of people are moving in before they're like fully sure if that's their person and then things don't work out. And then you have this big mess because now you have to figure out who stuff is whose, you have to move out, you have to break a lease, you have to do all these things. Obviously, I know it's an expense to live in two separate apartments, but I think there are a lot of positives to that experience of you live apart and you while you're dating before you get to the point of like, okay, I'm ready to get married, you're growing in your own life and you have that independence and you have that happiness within yourself that you can then bring in to your relationship instead of like relying on each other for every little thing. I just wanted to bring that perspective because I feel like it's becoming less and less common for people to not just immediately move in with a significant other. Just here to say, if you're not fully bought in to living with someone that early, it is okay to live apart and grow your relationship that way. And when the time comes, move in together and it'll be great.