by Four months in, a spreadsheet arrives, and I find out what London rent does to romance
Sunday, Afternoon, My Flat (For Now)
Tom has been reliable for three months, I am pleased to report. Messages when he says. Thursdays and most Sundays. The Northern line has been running a good service. I had almost stopped checking the board.
Then this morning, over eggs, he said: “I’ve been thinking. It’s a bit mad, both of us paying rent.”
I waited. I thought there might be a second half. Something about wanting to wake up with me, or how he has never felt this way. There was a pause, and then he got his laptop out.
The Spreadsheet
He had made a spreadsheet. It has tabs.
My rent is in one column and his in another. Then a third, headed “Combined (est.),” showing what a one-bedroom would cost us together. Then a cell, in green, showing the saving. It is a large number. He had worked it out per month and per year. There was a line for “bills (shared)” and one for “council tax.”
He turned the screen toward me with the face of a man presenting a kitten.
I said, “Is this you asking me to live with you?”
He said, “Well. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
It Does Make Sense. That Is the Problem.
I cannot fault the arithmetic. The London Prat has a piece on London rent hitting 2,280 pounds a month, and that is about what we are each staring at, give or take the difference between his Zone 2 and my Zone 3. Two people paying that separately, who spend four nights a week together anyway, are burning money. Nobody could argue.
And that is what bothers me. Nobody could argue. It is a decision so sensible that it does not need either of us to want it.
I have friends who moved in with someone at five months because a lease was up and it would have been silly not to. Some of them are very happy. Some of them found out at month eight that they had signed a twelve-month contract with a man they did not actually like at breakfast.
What Rent Does
I have thought about this a lot today. In most places, moving in together is a statement. It says: I choose you. In London it has become a financial product.
The city is so expensive that it pushes people together sooner than they would go, and keeps them together longer than they should stay. I know two couples who have broken up and are still sharing a flat because neither can afford to leave. One of them has a rota for the living room.
So when a man here says “let’s move in,” you have to work out which sentence he is saying. Is it “I love you”? Or is it “have you seen what they want for a studio in Balham?”
Often it is both, and he could not tell you the proportions himself.
I Asked Him
I have learned, with Tom, that it is better to ask than to stand about wondering. So I asked.
I said: “If rent were free, would you still want to live with me?”
He looked surprised. He actually thought about it, which I respected. Then he said, “Yes. I’d probably just have taken longer to say so.” And then: “The spreadsheet was sort of an excuse. I didn’t know how to bring it up.”
Which is, I think, the most Tom thing he has ever said. He could not find the words, so he built a model.
My Own Sums
That left me to work out what I want, and it is not as simple as yes.
I like my flat. It is small and the boiler is on its last legs and the woman upstairs does something at 6am that sounds like bowling. But it is mine. I can eat crackers at the counter at midnight with my shoes on. I can have a bad day and not be seen having it.
Living with someone means being seen. All the time. I am thirty-two and I have not done it since a flatshare in my twenties, which I do not think counts.
And there is the practical fear nobody says aloud. If it goes wrong, I lose him and my home on the same day, and have to find a new place in this market. The saving in the green cell is real. So is the risk, and it does not have a cell.
Conditions
We talked for two hours. This is where we have landed, for now.
Not yet. In the spring, when my lease is up, we look. A new place, not his or mine, so nobody is the guest.
Both names on the tenancy.
A conversation, before we sign, about what happens if it ends. Unromantic. Necessary.
And he has to say it properly. Without the laptop.
He said, “I can do that.” He says that a lot. So far he has.
Evening
He has gone home. I am on the sofa with my shoes on, on purpose.
I read around the subject for company. The Prat is good on what this city does to couples: its UK satirical news on moving in together and British satirical news about flat hunting had me laughing at things that are not, strictly, funny. Dee says Bohiney Magazine covers the American version, where people apparently have spare rooms.
He texted at nine. Not a spreadsheet. It said: “For the record, I’d want to even if it cost more.”
I have looked at that for a while. It does not have a green cell. I think it might be the better number.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
