On Relationships

How do relationships fair in a tiny house?  I suppose it has a lot to do with if both parties are on board with the tiny house idea.  It doesn’t have to be for the same reason but all parties need to be vested or else things will get out of balance real fast.  When you ‘get’ to live in a tiny space you view everything a WHOLE LOT different than if you ‘have’ to live in a tiny space.  If you have to, you’re going to get a grudge.

Either way relationships are work.  If one party is not on board with tiny I have no advise to bring them over (other than visiting a real life tiny house to get a real feel for the space first hand).  If not all parties are on board I will say don’t push for tiny, find a compromise… unless you’re looking for a reason to split ;-).  Houses, tiny or not, are just things.  Things are not as important as relationships.

If single and dating… I can say, before meeting James I had a few ‘first dates’ that I knew instantly were going nowhere.  If you bring up this idea of a tiny house and get a confused or disgusted stare back then that’s actually a GOOD thing, you don’t have to spend any more time going down that path with that person.  While awkward in the moment it streamlines dating!

As a couple this is our experience (James approved this):

James and I are two wildly independent people, who are stubborn as hell. Our relationship was in the beginning stages when I was halfway done with the house, after that honeymoon phase we bickered a lot. Then, unexpectedly (right at the one year mark) we found ourselves about to be parents (talk about a HUGE stress on a relationship). We nearly didn’t make it but because we were in such close proximity we had a ‘come to Jesus’ moment, sat down and had a very blunt and open discussion if it was worth it or not to go forward together. Both of us had an ‘absolutely’ attitude. So we figured out how to make it happen.

We decided to see a counselor, we both have a list that worked out to ‘if he/she could just not be an ass then it would be fine’. It took someone else telling us that ‘he/she is not being an ass, this is how they work through ‘x’, it’s not offensive, it’s a different personality type’ Once that got through to both of us we are able to stand back and appreciate the differences in one and other and not take them as personal attacks… always.

Relationships are HARD. tiny houses will help to either make or break them. It comes down to if you want it or not and if you are willing to put in the work that they absolutely DO take. No one can decide that for you but you BUT a tiny house will exasperate things and push hard on your nerves with one and other causing you to ‘get over’ it, one way or another. You can decide to get over the rough stuff and find a way to understand/deal with it or get over dealing with the rough stuff and walk away. One of those things WILL happen though.

In our case I am SO grateful that the tiny house made things come to a head like that, without it we would have likely spent MANY years ‘dealing’ with those issues by pushing space between us, we wouldn’t be able to show our kids (because we have two now) what a healthy relationship can look like and we certainly would not have gained the appreciation we now have for each other. We do still get on each others nerves from time to time because we are both stubborn children at times (hey, it happens with newborns and the wonderful nights of ‘sleep’ that come with them) but we are learning how to work through that together, because we decided to.  The house definitely spurred that on.