Sam and I have been together since 2007 and playing house since 2008. We’ve shared two apartments in the Washington, DC metro area and in 2011, we bought out first house!
What do you mean, you're playing house?
Playing house is one those universal games that people seem to play at two distinct times in their lives—childhood and pre-adulthood/adulthood. The difference between the two is that playing house as a child is a game, or mimicry of the households surrounding us. The second go-round is a little squishier as we test the boundaries of pre-adulthood and the transition into full-on adults in the wonderful world of cohabitation and, in a lot of cases, marriage.
I’ve never thought that playing house was just the merging of stuff and learning to accept piles of clothes on the floor (Rach) and how picking up glasses around the apartment makes the other partner happy (Sam). It’s also learning to be accountable to someone else when we spent the majority of our pre-adult years being accountable only to ourselves. It means defining our “we” and discovering who we are as a family, while also maintaining our individual autonomy.
Of course, the day to day stuff of splitting chores, merging/non-merging finances, and dealing with each other’s idiosyncrasies are important, too. Actually, once you figure out the whole "we" vs. "me" and the accountability to one another deals, you get to focus more on the day to day stuff. This can feel mundane, of course, but that's why we need to remind ourselves that playing house is a game. The rules are a lot harder as we enter adulthood, but the results are by far more rewarding.
