“What Is The Most Surprising Thing You Learned When You Started Living With A Man?”: 30 Women Share What Shocked Them
When I first moved in with my partner, he had never owned (or even considered purchasing) a hand towel, an oven mitt, trivets, a spatula, kitchen scissors, more than 2 pieces of silverware, a laundry basket, a chef’s knife that’s actually sharp, or a cutting board big enough to cut anything larger than a lemon. Technically, yes you can survive just fine without any of those things. But my woman brain could not wrap my mind around why you wouldn’t have them when you easily could.
Moving in with someone for the first time teaches you many things about them: their eating habits, their sleeping habits, their cleaning routines (or lack thereof), what they consider to be loud, etc. But if that person is also of the opposite sex, you might be fascinated enough to do a case study in how the other half lives.
Below, we’ve gathered some of the most illuminating (and some slightly disturbing) things women learned from living with men for the first time that they've revealed on Reddit, and I have to say, men never cease to amaze me. From their quirks in the bathroom to the adorably charming ways they surprise their partners, this list is certainly a roller coaster. Be sure to upvote all of the responses that shock you, or that you also only knew from living with a man, and let us know in the comments if you have anything else to add to this list. Then, if you’re interested in hearing from the opposite side after finishing this piece, you can find a Bored Panda article highlighting what men learned from living with women right here!
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Well the first surprise was moving in with my Dad and I was shocked that he never cleaned or cooked. Had a maid for cleaning and ate out for every single one of his meals. And my goodness, men are good at painting the wall with their p**s.
The second surprise was moving in with my SO. Shocked to learn he is incredibly clean, able and willing to cook, and never gets p**s on the wall.
So I guess the thing I learned that would have been surprising to me as a teen is that all men are just as variable as women are. I blame my delay in realizing this on being raised in an all female home and not really having any male role models.
We've been living together for over a year now, and I think my girlfriend is still shocked at how often I have an erection.
"We just had sex! Why are you hard again??"
"You were bending over..."
I learned that sometimes when a man is very very hungover he will take a sad sitting down shower. Discovered my fiancé sitting on the shower floor like a drowned snuffleupagus
Besides my boyfriend, I've lived with plenty of men and what I've learned is that they're all different. Some are slobs, some are fastidious and clean, some are fussy and some have odd habits. It's almost like they're individual people with their own personalities. It's truly bizarre.
My BF is way fussier than I am though, I've noticed. I think I'm kind of a slob though, so it makes sense.
"It's almost like they're individual people with their own personalities". Yay, you noticed!
Men don't like to just talk, they like to fix problems.
Men don't pay attention to details, they like to condense to essence. This is why a "how did your day go?" convo lasts twelve seconds.
A lot of men would prefer their women bottomless in a man's shirt than in some fancy lingerie that takes ten minutes to figure out how to dismantle.
Men do not need a lot of space for stuff, but the space they have is sacred and should not be encroached upon. Leave him his closet and his garage workshelf, and he'll be happy. If he insists on a mancave, best to let him have one and do not mock it.
Men are literally mystified by why it would take more than four minutes to get ready to go out. They are even more mystified why women would bother to go through that ritual if you're not going to see anyone you know when you go out.
For many, many, many men, words of praise, acknowledging accomplishment and stature, are the most generous acts of love you can provide.
Men literally become uncomfortable in their bodies without a sexual release after a couple days. It's not like they just don't think about it if it doesn't happen. If it doesn't happen, then that's all they can think about.
This one is actually a good example of what guys are like in general. Some other posts seem like concerning a particular person only
How often men seem like they have something wrong, but they don't. For the first couple of months that we were living together I was convinced that he already hated living with me because there were so many times that he would zone out and not speak and give short answers.
Turns out that he would just have something on his mind completely unrelated to our relationship.
this is the most important thing to understand. If we want to complain we will do so. If we are quiet it means all is well.
They have different "rules" about things. A shirt is not dirty unless it's smelly, wet, or has fresh stains on it. They'll wear it again before choosing to wash it. Making the bed every morning is not required, it's a waste of time. "But what if we have company?" "Why would they go look at our bed? If they did, what's wrong with it being unmade? They might *gasp!* know that we sleep there?" It's a lot of practicality and efficiency vs making things look nice and "wasting" time.
They don't need 3 meals a day. They just need a giant meal once or twice.
Or they just eat all day and you wonder why they're not getting overweight. Life is unfair.
This might be just specific to my boyfriend, but I was surprised at how much he was willing to compromise. He stopped leaving the toilet seat up, he hates vacuuming but he'll mop, and if I cook he cleans. I was honestly expecting cohabitating to be a real struggle, but it has strengthened our relationship tenfold.
Pooping time is sacred and a great time to catch up on the news and browse some reddit.
Can be slightly inconvenient when I need the bathroom and he's been in there for 1/2 an hour though.
Despite his balding hair, he insists on buying voluminizing shampoo.
Babe, that's not going to fix it.
Most men don't have a garbage can in their bathroom.
Hey guys, if you want to impress your lady friends, put a god damn garbage can in the bathroom! We have stuff we need to put in there sometimes!
Totally true! And once there is one, he will use it most and never change the bag lol
He can wiggle his penis.
You know how some people can wiggle their ears, or just the tip of their nose? If we're laying around in bed, he sometimes 'waves' at me.
I didn't know it could move that much on its own.
That when men have a cold, the world is ending. They can have a stuffy nose and sore throat and I would think they had cancer. One day I will go through the very intense and painful process of childbirth, and then maybe I will understand how a man feels when they're sick for a day.
Edit: I get it. All of you guys are superman and never complain about being sick unless you're super, dying sick.
My Ex husband said that women are built for pain and if someone can bleed like a sacrificial goat for 5 days solid once a month and still live then let him die with his man flu in peace :D
If all of your socks are the same color and the same style, you don't have to mate them. You can just stick them in a drawer and pull out two random socks without even looking at what you're grabbing.
That when taking a dump their penis can accidentally touch the rim of the toilet bowl.
I had lived with a couple other dudes before my husband and never knew this was an issue. Then we bought a house and both of the toilets needed to be replaced. He spent a stupid amount of money at Home Depot on these toilets with elongated bowls and I was perplexed and irritated...until he explained why.
My wife learned that I cannot poop and hold a conversation at the same time. If I'm on the porcelain throne, then I demand solitude. I will not answer inanities like whether my blue shirt needs a wash or the kitchen is on fire.
Something I've noticed since moving in with my SO is how much I enjoy having someone to help me out with stuff.
I've always had kind of bad roommates who tend to not do their fair share of the work (to be fair, I'm a neat freak, so my standards are definitely set higher than the average person's). My SO, though, is always willing to help me out with anything I ask.
I also love having a perpetually available adventure buddy. Even if I just want to go to the grocery store, he's always willing to come with me.
Men are always hungry. They can check the fridge many times during evening to check if there is something tasty and ready to be grabbed. Also, if recipe says that it serves 4, it actually means that it serves 4 women or 1 man.
That's true about the portions: I do the shopping - when it says serves 4 I halve it (uh-oh, better get two) and family size if it's lasagna....
I can roll over, wake my boyfriend out of a deep sleep, wiggles my eyebrows and say " you horny?" We do the sexy times, He is happy, I am happy, he goes back to sleep, I take shower and do whatever.
Edit: we actually talked about it. I got horny one night and didnt wanna wake him up so I just ignored it and went back to sleep. Told him about it the next morning and he said I should have woke him up, he is always ready. Every time I have done this he has never said no. As we are still youngish, both of us around 30ish, I guess as we get older it'll start to diminish.
Edit again: clarified some things. He is the type that usually can fall back to sleep, he really doesn't mind. I wouldn't blue ball him.
Also this is my highest comment.
How fun it would be to be able to make spontaneous plans.
How wonderful to have someone to snuggle with before you fall asleep.
How much more intimate it is to share the details of your day in person than over text.
How hard it would be when he moved out.
My SO and I both have full time jobs. I often work 12:00-22:00 but he works morning to early afternoon. Often when I get home from work I've got the most amazing dinner and a hot bath waiting for me. When we get random days off together we go mountain biking, or swimming, or stargazing. It's so comforting having someone like that there for you. We've been together for three years now :)
That changes over time. After half a century, sharing some of your insulin supply is romantic....
He wanted to get one of those little rugs that go around the toilet so he could "miss". Evidently he believed those rugs exist to be peed on.
Shaving is a sacred ritual. My husband closes the bathroom door, and takes his time shaving, then he comes out flawless.
My husband will turn on the bedroom a/c to its highest setting and then pile three heavy blankets on top of himself. Then complain that it's too hot. Every. Single. Summer. Night.
Aha is your husband one of our hedgehog alien troop in disguise? We all have that trait. Hedgehogs love to snuggle in big heavy blankets.
They gossip just as much as women do.
Am male, what my wife said most surprised her/baffles her is my bladder. When I go to bed, if I need to pee, I will. If I don't, I won't. And then I'll sleep the night with nary a stir. And might not pee for a few hours after I get up.
On the flip side, she pees as part of her going to bed routine, otherwise she'll have to get up in the middle of the night to pee. She doesn't understand how I can go 12+ hours without peeing.
My girlfriend made me realize how much I play with my balls during the day.
I moved in with a bunch of male roommates. Friends with penises... Please get a garbage can WITH A LID. I can smell what you do in your personal time.
Edit needed, it seems: I can smell that you just played whack-a-mole. It's...zesty.
That he can sit in front the computer/video games from morning 'til it's dark out without once getting up to pee, make food or turn on the bloody lights.
Yea, i got a mental timer formyself, 2h in front of the PC in the morning 2 in the afternoon, i avoid spending more.
Cleaning and disciplining the kids, religious views, political views.... They all come out seemingly unexpected. Boyfriends taking a s**t and suddenly announces they think they might vote for Trump and your just doing the dishes wondering where you went wrong in life.
When he takes dirty dishes off the table, he carries them to the sink one by one. However, if we go to the supermarket and bring home 3 boxes of baby diapers and 5 bags of groceries, he will carry them all at once even if he breaks his back.
There is a *lot* of shedding of body hair. I thought my head shed a lot but apparently his legs and chest and wherever else all these small dark hairs are coming from shed at least as much.
I learned that my husband's guts are very talkative, to the point where it actually seems like they wait for the best moment to put their two cents in. This was completely new to me, because, if my guts are being loud, I'm already on the toilet praying for my guts to just vacate themselves and stop with the twisty-innards pain. For him, it's just normal, and he doesn't even feel what I've heard 25% of the time. Although, they do increase their talkativeness and volume according to their desire to vacate. I actually have to tell him to go use the bathroom sometimes, because of how insistent they're getting with their "Oooourrrrgghhhhuuugggooooob" noises and he wants to finish watching a video on his computer first.
My digestive tract has its own orchestra and plays most loudly after a visit to the bathroom.
Guys don't care about shampoo/conditioner most of the time, they buy 2-1s or use soap in their hair :(
Dude, if they made a body wash / rim cleaner / car shampoo / window cleaner all in One i would buy it and use it.
That they can be really clean and a**l about keeping the place tidy and in certain order. They're not all slobs like my father and brothers.
Lived with a guy roommate once (just a roommate) who like to burp and actually say the words "burp", "belch", or "ralph" *while* burping. I dunno...maybe I'm a weird woman, but it always made me giggle.
That you don't really know someone until you live with them.
My ex used to turn up the heating way too high, get too hot, open the window and keep the heating on.
When I asked him why he would do this, he shrugged and said "I got hot."
He also used to wipe his boogers on the side of our bed and the side of our sofa. I'm not normally someone to see red, but that was f*****g gross. He was 23 for god sakes!
EDIT: Spelling! & Thanks for all the upvotes :D Nice to know that relationship was good for something (heheh)...
From my few experiences living with guys, they have a WAY higher tolerance of the house being a total disaster. No food in the fridge? They'll just order take out every night. Dishes piled up in the sink? Just use a napkin as a plate. Garbage overflowing? Start a garbage pile next to the garbage can. They just don't care.
They just don't seem to have any idea about when something in the house needs doing without being told. I hate having to ask my other half to do very basic stuff like empty the bin or put their dishes in the dishwasher (I thought plates littering the kitchen work tops would be a thing of the past when we got a dishwasher...how wrong I was). When I ask, I get huffy sighs, or a very teenage-like 'fiiiiine'. If the bin is spilling over on to the floor, you have got to realise it needs emptying right? .... right?
They hate spiders too.
I feel a bit uncomfortable when the bigger ones are around. But I still move them carefully outside if needed. And I love jumping spiders. Cute little bastards.
That they're generally less messy than I am. Clothes can't be left on the floor for longer than 12 hours, dishes cant be dirty in the sink for longer than 24. And laundry gets done every day, every day!!!
My clothes don't touch the floor, they go in the hamper and dishes go straight in the dishwasher, sink is always empty.
My boyfriend used BLANKETS as curtains before living with me. I had to proclaim that we would be using actual curtains upon moving in together. He tried to get out of that by grumbling that curtains were an unnecessary expense 😐
I've seen this with some people...men and women...living very badly. They will tack sheets up to the windows as curtains. They sometimes don't even try to make it look nice. I mean, hey if you're broke you do what you can. But that doesn't excuse living like a scumbag. A girl I worked with literally had a bedsheet haphazardly tacked to the window pane, it was falling on one side. It looked so ghetto. Her whole house was a mess so I think there was depression going on there. You can fold sheets and pin them up in a nice way. I mean they aren't that different from some curtains. But you can get blackout curtains, lots of colors, for like 10 dollars on amazon.
I go to bed and, when I wake up and head to my desk to work (I work from home), his jeans/pants, socks and shoes are on the floor. Why?! For reasons unbeknownst to me, after I go to bed, he strips down and leaves his clothes in the living room. If I don't pick up after him each morning, by the end of the week we have a small mountain of clothes in the corner.
That's not a stain from glue, lotion, or a hair product: that's semen.
Pockets must be emptied of all spare change and small pieces of garbage immediately after coming in the door, and deposited in random caches around the house.
This was also when I found out how awesome it is to wear his shirts, and have someone to tell me my cooking is good.
Some men prefer having the seat and lid down. I'd always been a lid up kind of slob, and I was the one that had to change.
I learned that my ex was not the man for me. lol... The first time I lived with a guy he immediately stopped working, even though I was supposed to be his room mate (as in help him afford a place because he was temporarily homeless and I was willing to change my living situation to help out because that's what a supportive girlfriend does). He never cleaned the bathroom, or really anything, intentionally left dishes filthy enough they couldn't be cleaned by the dishwasher, never cleaned the coffee pot, felt that my regular sized wastebasket in the kitchen was too bothersome because it required the effort to empty it every 2-3 days (which I did myself, not him) he got rid of my trash can and put in a full sized garbage can (like the kind people keep outside, that you could fit a person or 2 in) and then refused to empty it. I couldn't see over it to carry it down the stairs from my condo as I'm only 5 ft 1. He never cleaned the bathroom, would use all the toilet paper, and never buy any or tell me when he used my last square of it (even though I let him use my car and would be stranded several miles from the nearest town/store and have none for an entire evening). Couldn't be bothered to cook anything outside of a microwave and required me to buy him copious amounts of c**p. Had a trash can next to the couch (15ft from his giant garbage can in the kitchen) because throwing away the 2 liter of mountain dew he laid down with was too much of a hassle. I also learned that I could loath more passionately than I ever realized... Glad he's no longer a thorn in my side.
They love using my beauty supplies. Body scrubs, lotions, facial masks, anti-aging cream all tend to be popular items.
Please normalize this! Stop judging and joking about men who use cosmetics, or like "girly" stuff. WTF is girly stuff anyways? And we want them to look good, smell good, have nice skin, hair, nails etc - these need cosmetics and taking care of yourself! Sheesh!
How much work it would be. Boyfriend grew up with a mother that has done just about anything and everything for him. I cook, I clean, I wash, I fold: almost everything. He doesn't realize that when he offers to do the dishes, it means everything: pots, pans, dishes, utensils. He just does his plate and cup and that's it. Also, he's very wasteful. Two sheets of paper towels to dry hands then another two sheets to make sure they're extra dry, instead of using the hand towel because "germs". Uses toilet paper to dry his mouth after brushing teeth instead of a towel. I feel that it may just be differences in our culture and how we were raised. I, being Hispanic, try to save as much as possible and was raised to not be so wasteful because we had so little. Him on the other hand, was given everything he ever wanted since he came from a well-to-do family. It's been super difficult to communicate with him because I tend to bottle things up (working on it) and then explode about WHY DO YOU USE SO MANY DAMN PAPER TOWELS?! He's gotten better and I've gotten a little better but *sigh* there's still a lot of work to be done.
My lotion runs out surprisingly faster. He must be sucking the moisture from my skin.
Exactly it's really irritating. People are people. Not their gender.
Load More Replies... I grew up with a lots of boys. Here is something I noticed. Say a baseball is hurtling towards him. The first thing he covers up is not his head on his shoulders.
Gee, you move in with someone and it's not what you expected. Shock, horror./s/ Also, BP, can we end the gender-centric posts? It's really 1. boring and 2. just clickbait. I only clicked to say that...
You know you can make your own articles about whatever you want right?
Load More Replies...
The one about using blankets as curtains isn't even in there, but I've done that when I haven't had curtains readily available, and even when I've gotten curtains I've waited a long time before bothering to use them because I'm lazy, lol.
This is Great Australian Adjective stupid. I lived all my life (before marriage) with a father! So about the only thing I learned about men was that not all of them are as selfish as my father.
The only one of these that's been consistent with all the guys I've lived with as an adult is socks and I know my dad was always fastidious about laundry and annoyed at the bras mom took off and left hanging random places. *And* half of these I fit the guy description while my partner doesn't. I call bulls hit on the whole thing.
I couldn't get through this. People are different. Other than silly stuff like "how much he plays with his balls" (and it's not like there is a universal time allotment on that either) this was mostly just ridiculous amounts of gender stereotyping. BP did a similar post about women a while back. It was just as irritating as this one.
Exactly it's really irritating. People are people. Not their gender.
Load More Replies... I grew up with a lots of boys. Here is something I noticed. Say a baseball is hurtling towards him. The first thing he covers up is not his head on his shoulders.
Gee, you move in with someone and it's not what you expected. Shock, horror./s/ Also, BP, can we end the gender-centric posts? It's really 1. boring and 2. just clickbait. I only clicked to say that...
You know you can make your own articles about whatever you want right?
Load More Replies... The one about using blankets as curtains isn't even in there, but I've done that when I haven't had curtains readily available, and even when I've gotten curtains I've waited a long time before bothering to use them because I'm lazy, lol.
This is Great Australian Adjective stupid. I lived all my life (before marriage) with a father! So about the only thing I learned about men was that not all of them are as selfish as my father.
The only one of these that's been consistent with all the guys I've lived with as an adult is socks and I know my dad was always fastidious about laundry and annoyed at the bras mom took off and left hanging random places. *And* half of these I fit the guy description while my partner doesn't. I call bulls hit on the whole thing.
I couldn't get through this. People are different. Other than silly stuff like "how much he plays with his balls" (and it's not like there is a universal time allotment on that either) this was mostly just ridiculous amounts of gender stereotyping. BP did a similar post about women a while back. It was just as irritating as this one.
