I’m so frustrated. I’ve been in a relationship with my boyfriend for a little over 2 years now. He is my Daddy & I was more than satisfied with our dynamic for the longest time. However since we moved in together, it feels like we’ve lost our whole dynamic outside of sex. I take care of him more than he does of me – I handle the money, cooking, cleaning, work, college, etc – while he does little more than go to work and play comp. I don’t want to leave, I love him, but I need more structure.
Then you need to have a meta talk so the two of you can establish the rules of engagement now that you’re 24/7. A lot of guys, when they move into a domestic situation with a girl, start doing a replay of how they saw their father interact with their mother. Others start thinking of their partner as a combination Mommy and live-in maid. Have the talk soonest, and shut that shit down before he starts to get the delusional notion that this is okay.
This is actually a pretty notorious problem with cohabitation. Several problems, actually.
The big problem I noticed back when my friends were all moving out on their own and becoming (usually platonic) roommates is that when you’re actually living together there’s always “later.” Paradoxical but true, but when you’re apart it’s easier rather than harder to get together for events and activities that you both love and love doing together. Also paradoxically, when (platonic) roommates would move on they’d often go back to finding time to do those special best-friend things.
Another problem is satiation. Writing professors will tell you everyone has a novel in them. But most don’t have two. Or, more accurately, the lust and inspiration you have for each other may be bright, but may also take time to build back up again. That’s harder to notice when you only see each other once a week or (if LDR) once every few months – that’s plenty of time to build it up again! The important thing to remember about this, though, is all the passion you both felt is still there! Studies suggest that both partners in “low-libido” relationships miss having sex more often!
The final problem, the biggie, is covered very nicely in Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic by Esther Perel. Her thesis, related to my first point, above, is that especially here in Western Civilization, we overload our romatic relationships with allll the other responsibilities. Our sex partners have to be our romantic partners, which isn’t a problem. But they also have to be our social partners, our financial partners, our best friends, our health support, our career counselors, our confessors, our dinner companions, sometimes our fashion consultants, and so on. She uses a rowboat metaphor where each thing we stack makes the whole thing so precariously balanced that eventually we can’t move or try anything new for fear of capsizing the whole relationship. Seriously! Her insights revolutionized my understanding of relationships! It’s not that we “lose interest,” it’s that we gain too many others!
None of these are insurmountable problems. But they all take reconsideration,
The anon and their Daddy definitely do need to have a conversation. But they shouldn’t assume it’s only one of them who needs to have it.
