I love you. I just don't love living with you.

I Love you but I don't want to live with you

I love you. I just don't love living with you.

A Stylist reader on learning to live with a partner

Nicky Huggett, a television producer from South London, moves in with her other half.

"Living with my boyfriend is like living in an episode of Glee”, my friend Jess tweeted joyfully a few months ago.

It was just the push I needed to take that next step in my own relationship, and six weeks ago my boyfriend decided to leave behind his decidedly male share house and put his name on the lease of my tiny flat.

Less than 24 hours after he had arrived with copious plastic bags and enough cables to start his own telephone exchange, I was let in on one of the biggest kept secrets in “relationship world”: living with your other half is one of the hardest things you will ever do.

The bizarre thing is that no one talks about the endless frustration over conflicting television tastes, the constant battle to find room among the beer bottles in the fridge for yoghurt and man’s complete addiction to creating a wardrobe on the floor. It’s as if every couple firmly believe that it is their duty to pretend that living together is akin to being in a Disney movie, with mice helping to clean up the bath after your boyfriend has washed his football boots in it. These unrealistic expectations must be the death-knell of many a relationship.

Before my beloved became my live-in partner, I spent nights polishing up on my housewifely skills – naïve in belief that we would spend hours frolicking on the sofa like a DFS advertisement – breaking off only to consume the three-course meal I had created from scratch. The reality of working life in London is that I barely made it to Sainsbury’s to purchase some pasta and sauce before collapsing on the sofa in a coma. My boyfriend did try cooking for me, but when you have spent a three-hour finance meeting dreaming about sausages, to be presented by homemade broth… I have to admit it wasn’t my finest hour.

"It's one of the biggest kept secrets in “relationship world”: living with your other half is one of the hardest things you will ever do"

The more I struggled, the more I became desperate to tease out the truth from my so-called best friends who had let me waltz into this situation completely unawares. Finally, after several bottles of wine, the truth began to emerge. There were the crafty girlfriends who coerced their other halves into time-consuming hobbies, such as Jen who bought her boyfriend a mountain bike and introduced him to the joys of weekends away in the hills - without her. Then there were the financially blessed ladies who had a separate television room for when Britain’s Next Top Model clashed with the football.

I didn’t have either of those options, but I did learn a valuable lesson from those confessional nights. I learnt that guilt is a powerful emotion and one that can control our lives. From the moment that my boyfriend stepped over the threshold, I believed that we were supposed to spend every waking (and sleeping) moment together. My imagination had fooled me into thinking that living together meant doing everything together – not to mention jumping into bed when the washing up gets a bit tedious like they do in the movies. But when I took a step back, I realised that when you live together, it’s more important than ever to take some time for yourself. So I stopped beating myself up about taking my book into the bedroom and shutting the door, leaving my boyfriend to claim the sofa for himself.

My best friend is about to move in with her boyfriend – and I haven’t held back in terms of sharing the realities of co-habitation. I think she has listened as, despite their limited budget, they have found a flat with a tiny box room. Perfect for a little alone time, or for storing enough cables to set up a telephone exchange. Why do men need so many cables? Now that’s a whole other column…

Did you have the same experience as Nicky when moving in with a partner? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Want to get your work published on stylist.co.uk? Find out how to submit your own Reader's Column and read previous columns here.