Living With Your Spouse in <400 Sq Ft

Happy Valentine's Day from an Old Married Couple

Charlie and I have been together for almost 23 years and we’ve been married for 16 of those years. It feels like we’ve known each other our whole lives. He’s my best friend and I don’t know what I’d do without him. [Listen, it’s Valentine’s Day, this is going to be a mushy post, so just deal with it.]

A question that we always get from people outside the RV community is: “How do you deal with living together in such a small space?!” And the answer is, we just do. It’s really not all that different from living in a house. We spend time together in our bedroom, the living room, and sitting outside enjoying nature. Yes, it’s way smaller than a house, but we have our space. Think of it as a small apartment on wheels. Plus, I’m home with the kids during the day and Charlie is out working, so we’re not together every minute of every day. And we stay mindful of how the other person is feeling and whether or not they need more space than usual. It works for us.

I think if you and your partner have a good, stable relationship to begin with, then living in an RV should be a breeze, if you choose to do so. But if you look to RV life to fix everything that’s wrong with your marriage, that’s when you’ll run into some trouble. There’s no quick fix out there, folks.

Living this lifestyle has definitely brought us closer together, though. The places we’ve been and the people we’ve met and the laughs we’ve had - it’s really been a blast. We love to people watch and there’s always something interesting happening at the RV park. But we also get to spend more time together because Charlie is his own boss and he does a lot of work in the campground we’re staying at, so his commute is pretty short. He’s home to have dinner with us each night and he’s never far away if I need him.

We’re in a very peaceful, content place in our lives and I really love it. I think everything we’ve experienced and everything we’ve been working towards has led us to this stage of life and we can relax a bit and enjoy it.

Please don’t think that I’m saying we’re both perfect and we have a perfect marriage and we’ve never had a fight or anything like that. But we started dating in our teens in high school and we had a long distance relationship through college and then we moved in together pretty young. We got married after being together for 6 years and very quickly bought a house and had 2 kids after that and had stressful jobs and money issues and I could go on. We’ve been through our share of drama and ups and downs and really low points early on in life. But we grew up together and we made it and we’re that much closer for it.

So, it’s not bad living together in under 400 square feet. We actually kinda like it. And I guess we still kinda like each other, too.

Happy Valentine’s Day from an old married couple!