Now you’re about to make one of the biggest decisions of your life. You’re in love with a fantastic woman. You think she’s the one.

You want her to move in, but you’ve heard stories from so many other people about how everything changes once you move in with someone. The truth is that this is one of the most fascinating times of your life.

I remember when I first lived with somebody. I was 23 or 24 years old, and it didn’t last longer than two weeks. At that time, I really wanted to just move in with someone. I wanted to be an adult. I wanted to say that I lived with my girlfriend.

It was no longer enough for me just to have the relationship or to have sleepovers. I wanted to live with my girlfriend. I wanted to experience that. Unfortunately it didn’t work out.

Since then, I have lived with quite a number of women. I can tell you that living with someone makes the relationship take on a whole different dynamic.

You’re no longer playing sleepover games, or having those great 11:00pm phone conversations that end with you going over there late at night for incredible sex. You’re now part of their life every single day. Every day.

You wake up next to them, you have dinner with them, you share the refrigerator with them, you go to sleep with them, you learn their habits, and you learn what TV shows they like to watch. It’s not like spending the weekend together or spending the night at someone’s house three nights a week.

You are with them all the time. Their friends are in your house. Their phone calls are in your house. Their television shows are in your house.

You no longer can have that great signed football picture of you and Peyton Manning that was taken during the Indianapolis Colts’ training camp as the centerpiece of your living room decor. You are now going to become a highly domesticated man.

When you are living with someone, rules change. Sex will change. It’s not going to be as exciting as it once was.

It’s very hard to recapture those first six months of a relationship (when you’re not living together) once you are living together. You’re going to have to learn to make efforts with each other, and to be more aware of each other’s feelings, emotions, needs and desires.

You need to know when the other needs space or needs alone time. You have to understand each other’s moods.

You also have to “report in” when you live together. If you’re not going to be home until late one night, you’ve got to tell that person. You are not longer living alone, and you have to realize that you now have someone who will worry about you so you have to keep them posted.

You are now in adulthood. You are now living and breathing and wanting to be with that person every single day. You are in that adult relationship, and this is one of the biggest parts of adult adolescence.

This whole dynamic of what you thought relationships were is going to change right before your eyes. You’re going to have to become a person who not only thinks of themselves, but who thinks about somebody else (and sometimes thinks of someone else before you think of yourself).

There will be a lot of change from when you were living separately. You’re going to have women come over to your house for “girls nights.” You’re going to come home and have to listen to a bunch of women talking about things you have no desire to hear.

So what you need to do is to develop your own personal “man cave.” This is something I have determined is absolutely necessary if you are going to move in with a woman. Make sure your house is big enough so that you can have a man cave to go to when you need to just be yourself (and need to be by yourself).

You need to have a place you can watch football, read ESPN on the Internet, and talk to your friends on the phone. You need to have a place you can decorate any way you want. You need to have personal space in order to make a relationship work.

Moving in together is a big step. Moving in together is exciting. Moving in together is a part of your future. What you need to realize, though, is that moving in also means that you need to know how to coexist .

You need to understand that this woman you know now is going to change in a lot of different ways. When you are comfortable with each other, you change.

You need to realize that romance is not going to be something you not only have to think about, but you might even have to (gasp!) have to take a day or two a week and plan it. When you live together, you tend to take people for granted. So remember all the amazing things that you had together when you were courting each other — remember all the great sex and the spontaneity.

If you can remember all that — and keep that when you’re living with them — then the relationship has a great chance of success. Give each other space, make sure there is enough romance, and make sure that you continue to develop the friendship. When you do fight, make sure you have a space to which you can go back. Welcome to a real, good, fun and challenging time of your life.

“Embrace change at my own pace.”

I embrace change at my own pace.

You need to really take that statement in and listen to what it’s saying. How many times in a relationship have you talked to someone and given them your point of view, and then expected them to just react right away?

Let’s say you’re dating someone and you’ve been talking a little here and there about moving in together. Then you say to the other person that you want to move in with them and you list all the reasons why it’s a good idea. Do you then expect the other person to immediately respond with an answer? Do you get angry if they don’t immediately react and respond?

So many of us spend so much time wanting people to react the way we react. We want them to react exactly how we react and do it when we want them to do it.

Think about this from a little different perspective. When you are in a relationship and decide you’re ready to bring up a really important subject with your partner, you have almost always spent a lot of time thinking about and processing that topic before you actually bring it up.

Your partner, however, is just hearing about that topic for the first time when you raise it with them, and they haven’t had the benefit of being able to process the subject like you have. So don’t expect them to be ready to respond in that instance.

So many of us spend so much time wanting people to react the way we react. Then if and when they don’t react in that exact way, we start freaking out and playing mind games with ourselves.

I am equally guilty of that. In my relationship, sometimes I will have a conversation with my girlfriend and I’ll say something to her to which I want an answer that day. When I do this, she always says to me, “Give me time. Let me react in my own time.”

So many of us make assumptions. We hear what we want to hear. How many times do you have selective hearing?

Say you call someone on a Saturday. They don’t call you back that day . . . or the next one. Do you text them three times asking, “How come you haven’t called me back? Why aren’t you calling me back?” Perhaps they didn’t have their phone on them.

How many times to do you send an email to someone at 10:00 a.m. and, if you don’t get a response by noon, you send another email asking “How come you never responded to my email?” Allow people to respond on their own time.

When you allow people to respond on their own time you are not only going to get the response you desire (because the answer will come from their heart), but it’s going to be a real response and not a forced one.

People suffocate each other all the time, and they don’t allow each other the space they each need to reflect on these “heavy” conversation topics. When we do that, it’s a reflection of the lack of trust and faith in both the other person and in yourself. That instant gratification you want really can ruin a relationship, because you are forcing someone to answer you when they are not ready.

There is no reason to force people into answering when they’re not ready. There is no reason to make someone say something they’re not ready to say.

Have some patience in life. The more patient you are in a relationship, the greater a relationship with someone will be. So many of you ruin relationships that could potentially be great because of the way you force it.

If you give people time, then a relationship will grow and become exactly what you need it to be. You need to have trust and faith, because neurosis will just drive people crazy.

In today’s podcast, I talk more about communication and about how bringing up these heavy conversation topics can create fear and anxiety in all of us. Then I go into how to relax and feel better about talking out the tough times in your life with friends, relationship partners and business associates. This is one you don’t want to miss!

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Also, if you want to learn how to completely transform your mindset and learn how to become a master communicator in your dating and relationship life, then be sure to check out my Men’s Mastery Series and my Women’s Mastery Series.