What Are Your Intentions?

by Gwen Cooper — October 22, 2007

So it's official: Robert and I have decided to move in together at the end of the month. It's something we've been talking about on and off for months, and finally the time came when the decision had to be made.

I have my reservations about the two of us living together. I once lived with a man for just over three years, and I swore that I would never "play house" again. The next time I moved in with a man, I would always think, it would be the man I was planning to marry.

I tried to explain this to Robert when we were talking this weekend. "I'm not saying you have to put a ring on my finger before you can move in here," I told him. "But there should be a definite plan in that direction."

It's the kind of thing that can sound dangerously close to an ultimatum, which I always swear on principle never to issue. Any man whose arm I would have to twist to get a proposal is a man I wouldn't want to marry in the first place. Call me a hopeless romantic, but I would only want to marry someone who was genuinely and completely thrilled at the idea of spending the rest of his life with me. From what I've observed among my married friends, life and marriage get hard enough down the line without having to add the additional strain of one person's not having been sure they ever even wanted to be in a marriage.

On the other hand, I have strong feelings about moving in together—or, at least, what I would want/need before I could feel comfortable about it. Ultimatum or no, when you feel that strongly about something, it's unfair to the other person not to get it out into the open.

So I was a little nervous as I waited for Robert's reply. But he smiled and said, "So you're asking what my intentions are?"

I smiled too, a little sheepishly. "I guess that's the best way of putting it."

"You know I've wanted to spend the rest of my life with you since the day we met," he told me.

And I'll tell you what: I'm an author and I've written dialogue for dozens of characters, but I still have yet to write anything as good as that...

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.