My parents always used to tell me, "Life isn't always easy." Of course, being a teenager at the time, I would always know better than my parents and would never believe them when they told me that. So when I moved out of my parents home at the age of twenty-two, I wasn't prepared for what was about to hit me. Not only was I moving out, but I was moving from Ohio to North Carolina, some five-hundred-fifty miles away. To compound that, I was also going from living with my parents to living with my now fiancee. It's a lot to put on a young man's plate to go from living at home with no bills to pay or really any other responsibilities, to being totally self-sufficient and living with a woman. It was a change that literally happened overnight. Living with a woman for the first time was going to take some getting used to, sure. What I wasn't really prepared for was trying to find my way around a new place and getting used to people who live life in a totally different way.
When I arrived in North Carolina, my fiancee greeted me at the door of her apartment with an ear-to-ear smile and what seemed like an hour-long hug. While living with my fiancee was great, I began to notice that some of the luxuries I had of living at home were non-existent. The biggest thing I began to notice was that time to myself was at a premium, since we both worked the same hours at the same restaurant. I was at work when she was, and she was home when I was. Don't get me wrong, I love my fiancee more than anything, but everyone needs time to themselves once in a while. Rather than sit her down and talk to her about the issue, I assumed that she knew me well enough after a year to "read my mind". Later, I found this not to be true because she ended up wondering why I didn't want to be around her all the time and began to question if I actually loved her or not. While I do love to be around her, I had to tell her that I needed some time to myself every once in a while and it's nothing that she should take personally.