Moving in together part-time, in a new city, with new telecommuting
April 28, 2017 5:51 PM Subscribe
My partner and I are going from different-timezone long-distance to different-metro-area long-distance. He is planning to spend about 1-2 weeks each month living with me. During that time, he plans to telecommute. Aside from the standard moving-in-together things to deal with, I don't want him to feel uprooted and disconnected from his company, and I also don't want the not-infrequent drive to wear too heavily on him. I'm hoping to build some semblance of a shared household.
We will both be new to Boston, where I'll be moving to for work, though I have many friends and contacts in the area. We haven't lived together long-term before this. He's telecommuted before, but definitely not to this extent. People at his very small, close-knit startup do not typically telecommute, but his boss has okayed this upcoming arrangement for him.
He imagines that he will prefer making the five-hour (one way) drive every other week to once a month so that he remains in touch with his coworkers. Though I had initially suggested doing 2 weeks with me in Boston and then 2 weeks in New York so that he could start adjusting and feeling more at home in Boston, I totally understand the value of physically being in-office and around the water cooler, especially in a software engineering start-up environment. I'm worried that he will feel like he's under house arrest, anxiously awaiting to return to work during the times that he is living with me. I'll be able to visit him in NY about once a month as well, but we aren't sharing a place there and it'd only be for brief weekends at a time due to my own job constraints.
Are there things we can do to make this transition easier? Are there things we can do to make our place feel more like a shared household? Things to minimize the negative impact on his work? Things to anticipate, or subjects we should sit down and discuss before and during our move? We've picked a centrally-located apartment so that he can experience the city on his own. We were so excited to at least be in the same time zone, but now it's sinking in that a 5-hour drive and the transition itself is still going to be challenging, even with his job flexibility and my ties to Boston factored in.
The end goal is to have him live with me full-time, but that won't happen for another 2 years. Changing jobs for either of us is not an option.
We will both be new to Boston, where I'll be moving to for work, though I have many friends and contacts in the area. We haven't lived together long-term before this. He's telecommuted before, but definitely not to this extent. People at his very small, close-knit startup do not typically telecommute, but his boss has okayed this upcoming arrangement for him.
He imagines that he will prefer making the five-hour (one way) drive every other week to once a month so that he remains in touch with his coworkers. Though I had initially suggested doing 2 weeks with me in Boston and then 2 weeks in New York so that he could start adjusting and feeling more at home in Boston, I totally understand the value of physically being in-office and around the water cooler, especially in a software engineering start-up environment. I'm worried that he will feel like he's under house arrest, anxiously awaiting to return to work during the times that he is living with me. I'll be able to visit him in NY about once a month as well, but we aren't sharing a place there and it'd only be for brief weekends at a time due to my own job constraints.
Are there things we can do to make this transition easier? Are there things we can do to make our place feel more like a shared household? Things to minimize the negative impact on his work? Things to anticipate, or subjects we should sit down and discuss before and during our move? We've picked a centrally-located apartment so that he can experience the city on his own. We were so excited to at least be in the same time zone, but now it's sinking in that a 5-hour drive and the transition itself is still going to be challenging, even with his job flexibility and my ties to Boston factored in.
The end goal is to have him live with me full-time, but that won't happen for another 2 years. Changing jobs for either of us is not an option.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's request -- taz
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