I have been pretty transparent that I had been doing some deep self help/dating coaching when Shawn and I met. It was exactly what I needed to figure out how to let someone love me and be able to confidently express my love as well. In my training there were some rules. Once I started follow the rules things started to fall into place. So when Shawn and I got a bit more serious I used a “feeling statement” to tell him that I felt strongly that we could not move into together until we were engaged. Why buy the cow when you can get the ice cream for free so to speak!

Another rule I kept to myself mostly was that I was not going to date him for more than a year exclusively without getting engaged. Well guys… I broke both of my rules! We have recently celebrated two years of dating and we just moved in together! A bit back story before we get to far!

The two years… I am not sure what to say! It has flown by and I think that is because we are so happy. The moving in together was a process. When Sam left I was back to living alone, which do not get me wrong has some perks. But I knew that it should be short term as my house can be a good source of income. After 18 years and over 20 different roommates I knew that I didn’t want to get another roommate. So interestingly enough over the summer someone was telling me that they had been renting their house on AirBnB and it was going really well. Shawn and I started discussing the idea and were traveling one weekend so we thought why not try it?! Well it rented quickly for that weekend, and the next weekend and the next and next thing you know it had rented for a full month. It was a perfect storm because of all of our summer travel and vice versa everyone else wanting to traveling to Charlotte.

In our discussions we had decided that I would mostly stay at Shawn’s house, but had Brett and Greg’s or the lake house as a back up. Or I could always get back into my house if something went really wrong.

So I “moved” into Shawn’s house. Not everything obviously because I had to leave most of the major stuff for my BnBers. But I move a lot of stuff over. Including my two pups! Everything there was great. It was a good phase for us. The complicated part was that Shawn already had two roommates and they had two dogs. So as you can imagine 4 people and 4 fur friends was a lot for all of us. So when I really started renting my house out long term we started talking about the future.

Such a fun part of a relationship. Talking about the future. Past all the doubts of if we have a future and on to we can’t stop thinking about the future. To round that corner with someone is a lot of what I have personally hoped for. And Shawn is by far the best person to talk about the future with. He is realistic but lofty. He is calm but strong willed. He is light hearted but passionate. He is pretty private but a friend told me that he had told them how excited he was to move in with me. She said that he was so proud and genuinely happy. I knew I was happy breaking my own rules and I thought I knew how happy Shawn was but to hear and feel the elation through another person was quite reassuring.

So we moved! To what I am affectionately calling the APT. Next in this series is a post about the actual moving process! And the hardest thing in the world communication:)