How quick is too quick? Moving in and moving on…

A friend of mine recently told me how her and her boyfriend were moving in together after dating for barely more than a few months….I thought she was joking. But she was dead serious.

Had I missed something - was it a life or death situation? Or had I side-stepped that trend where couples decided to share bathrooms before they had even had their first kiss?

So how quick is too quick? ‘You just know when it’s right,’ my sister said, who has just happily started to co-habit with her boyfriend of a year and a half. ‘Whether it’s a right after a year or just a month after you first started dating, it’s different for everyone.’

But personally I don’t see what the rush is, unless you’re about to become homeless or you have your eyes on marriage in the foreseeable months then why the hell would you want to put up with a man in your space?

Maybe that’s a typical single girls reaction, but will a man ever let you fall asleep watching Sex and the City, appreciate your shoe/magazine/bag (delete as appropriate) collection or understand why you eat cold pizza, a handful of haribo or a mars bar for breakfast?

I suppose for a girl who was lucky to even get a share of her exes bed I may be slightly sceptical, but usually in my experience anything that is going too fast usually comes to a grinding halt before it reaches its destination.

And it’s not like I haven’t been there. When I was a naive 22-year-old I couldn’t wait to move in with my boyfriend – I was imagining sex on tap, romantic evening meals and cosying up in front of the telly. Instead I got ‘wait a minute, I’m just going to finish this level on the playstation’, arguments about the washing up and my two pet hates – cold tea bags in the sink (why couldn’t he put them in the bin??) and WET towels on the bed!

I quickly tired of his behaviour, which was frankly nothing like I had seen in the movies and moved out sharpish, and it left me with a bitter feeling that moving in with a boyfriend would mean goodbye to the happy, spontaneous relationship you once had and hello to being their mother, cook and cleaner all rolled into one.

And is moving on as easy to do as moving in with someone? My ex seems to think so. Two weeks after our break up he had declared his single status on facebook and deleted all existence of me, after a month he was happily flirting with members of the opposite sex, and two months later he was claiming, ever so loudly (are you sure New York heard you?) via his facebook status that he was in a new relationship.

Yes I know, it means I’m facebook stalking him (doesn’t everyone do it?) and I’m probably a hypocrite – after breaking up with my ex before my ex I was happily flirting with men just weeks after we broke up and my online dating profile wasn’t far behind that – but of course it’s different when its you.

So for how long should we be holding on to the past? I suppose if we’re still dreaming up scenarios of them begging for us back – 6 months, or even a year after they dumped us it’s maybe going to be a problem, and our friends will probably commit us to some sort of insane asylum if we keep dropping their name into ‘every’ conversation months after he’s said goodbye.

But when they’ve got rid of you it’s always harder, it’s that personal rejection. And when you see them happily skipping along with someone else the seething fangs, bulging eyes and feelings of jealousy, which you thought were safely hidden away, find their way back to the surface again – and there we are right back to square one.

I’m getting there. The ‘him wanting me back’ daydreams are closing in on less than one a week. His number has nearly vanished from my memory. And the facebook stalking…yeh that’s probably not going to stop - isn’t that what is was invented for?! But date number four is underway – he’s cute, not too tall and seems to have a good sense of humour and so…I can’t still be that hung up on Mr Perfect.