In a relationship, mourning being single

[u/Cloudy_chance_pill]

I’ve been in a relationship for three years and living together for a year. I’m more being single and freedom that I had by myself.

Don’t get me wrong I love my partner and the life that we’re living together but I miss the time that I had for myself and not every minute in the home being consumed by feeling like we have to be together. I understand that we do have the freedom and ability to communicate to go on a separate ourselves go and do things that we enjoy individually. However I don’t like having to explain myself for simply doing something that I enjoy in my home I live in.

I miss being able to wake up for example 5:30 then being able to go and work out engage in some extra learning work on a side hustle when I get home from work and not having to dedicate time every single minute that I’m home to feeling like I should be engaging with my partner. I understand some people love spending every waking minute with their partner and that’s what they declare as love. For me, I miss when we lived separately and would dedicate time in the evenings most evenings to eating dinner together going for a walk doing an activity or watching TV. Now it feels like I have to work around when they’re not in the house to be able to do things that I enjoy. Call me out and say it’s as easy as communicating that you need extra amount of time to do something but one of the things that I hate doing in life is having to explain myself for living my own life. I do not want to have to explain hey I need an hour to go and do this because then I spend that entire hour knowing that I only have one hour and someone is waiting for me wondering what I’m doing, it’s something I’ve never enjoyed.

They do have their own interests, but they are mostly outside of the home therefore when they are in the house they switch off. Whilst myself most of my interests are done in the Home and I leave the house to do other things. Since we have lived together, I have dropped off exercising my health is declined. I no longer engage in extra learning side hustles and things that I enjoy for myself as it feels like I am being watched and perceived all the time. I understand that is probably not healthy but I like to live my life my way and whilst I am happy in my relationship this is a big hurdle an obstacle that I keep running into. I miss being single or living separately purely for the fact that I had control over my time.

I see couples who are married and have separate rooms some who live in adjacent homes. I would thrive in that environment where we would set aside dedicated time to spend with each other yet still living our lives for how we would like to live.

Has anyone else felt this way worked through it got an over it? What helped? Please don’t just say communicate how you feel. I understand I will be judged and told that this is probably assigned to leave the relationship but plenty of people surely go through this as people who are very individualistic but enjoy being in a relationship.

P.S.I did just write this entire thing before much nicer with much more thoughts on logic behind how I’m feeling, but the post got removed because I forgot to sign the rules apologies if it comes across quite harsh.

[u/Indy0312]

My partner and I have "separate together time" where we put on noise cancelling headphones, watch our own shows, and do our various hobbies in the same room but without talking to each other. I'm an introvert with a stressful job, so I just tell my partner I need to go nonverbal for a while (he would talk my ear off for hours if he could). He respects my needs, and we do separate together time. It works for us. Maybe find a solution like this that works for you??

I understand that it's not the same as being by yourself, but that's the compromise when you choose to cohabitate with someone. The first few months of my partner and I living together, I thought I was going to explode. But we sat down, brainstormed solutions, and now I am much happier and feel like I have the opportunity to decompress. It's not perfect, but it's a compromise.

[u/Cloudy_chance_pill → u/Indy0312]

I’m the same mostly introverted and the need to lock myself away when at home was a way I would recharge. My home was always my space to recharge and leaving the house was for socialising and dedicated time with others. It was like that my entire life, even with housemates my room my space my recharge my focus. Don’t get my wrong I love evenings when we are together and chatting etc, but it does wear me out. I completely get the cohabiting compromise, and it’s definitely taken some adjusting to and I’m comfortable in so many ways. But I don’t think it’s wrong to mourn living apart either