Anonymous asked: You and Patrick and Hamlet are too cute. I want the dirty truth. Do you get in fights? Is one of you secretly insecure? Do you get jealous? Possessive? Come on, things can't actually be as perfect as they seem.

No relationship is perfect, mind included! And when you live together, there are roommate dynamics to worry about in addition to romantic drama. Considering that we both work from home (Patrick on his dissertation, me on freelance writing) and spend the majority of the day together, we’re pretty good about sharing space and avoiding bickering. I think this is because our relationship is really egalitarian. Both of us contribute different things, but we also each pull our own weight. For example, Patrick is a total neat freak, which means that he spends way more time wiping, laundering, sweeping, etc. in a day than I do all week. On the other hand, I care a lot about eating good food while he’s happy with a burrito for dinner, so I’m always the one who cooks. This kind of division of labor seems to be, in my opinion, fair and feminist.

It’s the same approach we take outside our relationship. Patrick and I spend a ton of time together and as a result, share some of our friends, but we still have social lives outside each other. I try not to be possessive of his time, since I see him more than anyone else does anyway. He’s not at all jealous of my male acquaintances and is as friendly with my exes as I am. After being together for so long, I trust him as much as I do any of my closest friends, some of whom I definitely couldn’t live with.

And as for Hamlet, well, he’s a handful, and I wasn’t what anyone would call a “dog person” when I met my two Yalies. They’ve both grown on me since.

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