Are you paying rent, heat, hot water, electric, cable and wireless Internet ... only to sleep at your boyfriend's house six nights a week?
Congratulations. It sounds like you're in a "stayover" relationship.
You might not have heard anyone refer to your relationship that way — or any way, for that matter. That's because stayover relationships, while nothing new, haven't really been defined or studied until recently.
"I knew it was happening, but it wasn't being named anywhere else," says Tyler Jamison of the University of Missouri, who published "We're Not Living Together" this summer in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
The crux of her research: While those interviewed spent three to seven nights per week together and hoped to live with a partner or marry someday, they weren't ready for that level of emotional, logistical or financial commitment. They instead cherished the mix of intimacy and independence afforded by their current arrangement.
New step in dating
Josh Keaton, 27, who works at PAETEC, and Cate Lape, 25, a registered nurse at Strong Memorial Hospital, met on Lape's first day living in Rochester. Neither wanted to rush the relationship, so they kept sleepovers to a minimum. "Your lives are connected to a certain extent (when you're dating), but you haven't made that next level of commitment where your home lives will be completely wrapped around each other," Keaton says. "You want to take it one step at a time. You don't want to go from hanging out once or twice a week to waking up together every morning and doing each other's laundry."
It's also healthy for a new couple to spend time apart so that each partner can experience that feeling of missing the other, Lape says, while at the same time reflecting on how the relationship is going.
As it got to summer and their schedules started coinciding more, they spent more and more time — and nights — as a couple. But they didn't rush to move in together.
Keaton preferred Lape's place in Corn Hill to his own and began spending more and more nights there. Before long, once or twice a week had turned into every night. They didn't feel the need to have a conversation about the frequency of their stayovers until the prospect of living together came up. Their conversation was about both emotions — neither had any qualms — and practical matters. They were both transitioning into their lives as young professionals, and they wanted to combine their buying power so they could live in a nicer apartment.
What would you do if your first love suddenly walked back into your life? This is a question Alexa Moore finds herself asking the moment she comes face to face with her childhood sweetheart, nearly fifteen years after his mysterious disappearance.
In this coming of age novel, it is the summer of 1992. Carter Storm is a precocious thirteen-year-old child actor awaiting his big break in the entertainment industry. Alexa Moore is just a regular teenager, seeking acceptance from her peers. With heartbreak and humor, these two friends expose a world of secrets and learn to survive in the face of life’s contradictions and tragedies. When Carter’s dark life suddenly unveils before Alexa’s eyes, she witnesses her best friend beaten down mercilessly by his stage mother’s antics, but Alexa’s strong will and determination helps Carter pull through his darkest hours. The two are bonded by a love that only deepens as they grow. However, Carter’s mother will do everything she can to keep them apart, so that her prodigy is not distracted. As a result, the two are forced to keep their childhood romance hidden from prying eyes. When Alex discovers Carter’s family packed up and gone without so much as a chance for goodbyes, her world shatters.
Over a decade later, Carter Storm resurfaces as a Grammy award winner, with a new name, a new life, and an entourage of screaming girls and paparazzi following him everywhere he goes. When Alexa randomly comes face to face with Carter Storm, the encounter sets off a string of events that will have her torn between the man she loves and the man she once loved. How far will she go when the man from her past suddenly walks into her future?
Purchase for ebook at Amazon or Barnes and Noble:
Or paperback at Amazon or Barnes and Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/forever-blue-jennifer-edlund/1030036015?ean=9781463727536&itm=7&usri=forever%2bblue
Buy the sequel-Forever Blue: New Tears to Cry, Old Songs to Kind on Kindle at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Forever-Blue-Tears-Songs-ebook/dp/B007R54N5O/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1333478776&sr=8-3
Buy the sequel-Forever Blue: New Tears to Cry, Old Songs to Kind on Kindle at Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Forever-Blue-Tears-Songs-ebook/dp/B007R54N5O/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1333478776&sr=8-3
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