I've lived with the Russian lover for almost two years. When I first moved in I felt like an awkward and temporary house guest. It was hard to settle, and nothing really felt quite like mine.
But slowly, I started to feel at home. He will tell you that he knew I started to feel at home when I started to move his things in order to "put them away" in "someplace logical." That place being logical only to me, apparently. Because logical to him is "wherever I put it in the first place."
So you see, if he leaves his pants on the desk and throws a map on the floor, he will know exactly where his pants and the map are. But if I come in while he's occupied and put the pants on a hanger, and the map in a drawer with the rest of the maps, it causes immediate confusion. Where are the pants? Where is the map?
And then he all but needs a map to find the pants because why on earth, woman, would you put my pants on a hanger next to my other pants when it is so easy for me to find the pants thrown across the desk?
And maybe it's the impulse to nest, because it's not like I stop there. No, I'll move the dishes in the cupboards around to make them "more accessible in terms of how often we use the various items." And then I'll completely reorganize the closet in the name of making it organized. This was probably the real moment of becoming a couple, living together, when we had the following conversation:
"Where is the flashlight?"
"In the closet."
"I can't find it."
"What do you mean you can't find it? I just organized the whole thing."
"Well, I can't find it. Maybe I would be able to find it if you didn't keep 'organizing' everything!"
"It was just a huge messy pile before! You wouldn't have been able to find it in there before anyway!"
"Yes, but it was MY huge messy pile and I knew where everything in that pile was!"
And at this point we realize we sound just like every other man and woman trying to live together and share the same space. He makes meticulously disordered piles and she comes in and tries to make order out of his piles and put them away. And men can't understand why women do this, and women say we do it just because we want to have a clean and ordered house. And I think that's part of it. But maybe there is some subconcious part of us that does this because we know that if we're the only one who knows how to find the flashlight, they're not letting us get away.
We love them. And they need someone who knows where the flashlight is.