Settling In
Alone time in a shared home is a logistics problem, not a rejection
One of you closes a door and the other reads a message in it. How solitude gets misfiled as withdrawal, and how to schedule it…
Arindam Bose
Contributing writer, Fresh Marriage
Arindam writes about the first year of living together and the habits it exposes.
Contact Arindam through our contact page — mark your message for their attention and it will be passed on.
15 articles
Settling In
Moving into a place one of you already lived in changes the negotiation
Somebody is at home and somebody has arrived. Why the host-and-guest dynamic outlives the boxes, and what to change deliberately…
Settling In
The first illness after the wedding shows you how care will work
One of you gets flu and both of you discover what care means in this house. Two inherited scripts, one sickbed, and the protocol…
Settling In
Desire in the first year is not a performance metric
Frequency comparisons, sudden mismatches and the silence around both. What actually changes after the wedding, which models are…
Settling In
The first thirty minutes after work decide the evening
Two people arrive home with different needs and no script for the handover. Why the transition is the highest-leverage half hour in…
Growing Together
Love languages are a useful metaphor, not a finding
The framework gave couples a vocabulary they badly needed, and then got treated as science. What it is genuinely good for, and…
Growing Together
Relocating for a partner's job costs more than the removal van
One of you arrives with a role, a team and a reason to be there. The other arrives with boxes. What the trailing partner actually…
Growing Together
The five-year plan neither of you actually wrote down
Both of you have assumptions about where this is going, and they have never been compared. What tends to be assumed, and how to…
Settling In
The paperwork nobody warns you about in the six weeks after the wedding
Marriage is a legal event, and the legal event generates administration. What actually needs changing, what genuinely does not, and…
Settling In
Thermostat, lamps and volume: the settings two people quietly fight over
Temperature, light and noise are not preferences you can argue someone out of. How physical comfort differences show up in a shared…
Settling In
Two people, four screens, and what an evening at home has become
Phones do not ruin marriages, but they do reorganise the hours a couple actually spends together. A concrete look at where the time…
Settling In
Neither of you has family in this city, and that changes the marriage
Plenty of couples begin married life somewhere both of them are new. What a marriage absorbs when there is no local support…
Growing Together
Two people, one kitchen, and habits that spread
Sleeping, eating, drinking and exercise habits converge in a shared household, sometimes usefully and sometimes not. How the…
Growing Together
Losing a parent in the first years of a marriage
A bereavement early in a marriage arrives before the couple has any practice at grief together. What the surviving partner needs…
Growing Together
Working with your spouse means the marriage has an office in it
Family businesses and couples in the same workplace share one risk that most households do not. How to keep a disagreement at work…