On Living Alone

I just read this fantastic article from the New York Times about living alone. I have lived alone for almost 3 and half years now, and I love it. I firmly believe that everyone should live alone for some amount of time before you get married. It teaches you so much about yourself. I honestly find myself feeling almost bad for any of my friends who have already gotten married who never gave it a try.

The article talks about so many things I can identify with--specifically this:

"For people who are comfortable and even good at living alone, there is often another concern: a fear that the concrete has set, so to speak, on their domestic habits and that it will be difficult to go back to living with someone else. “It’s definitely something that worries me,” Ms. Kennedy said. “I can’t take the quirks back.”

The longer she lives alone, she said, the less flexible she becomes — and the less considerate of others’ needs. “If I go on vacation with a group of friends, I feel a little overwhelmed,” she said. “I’ve got to share this room with other people? We have to organize showers?”

Mr. Zimmer, the computer programmer, said he is also conscious of becoming too set in his ways, especially where sleeping is concerned. “I just do not sleep as well with someone else,” he said. “A lot of homes have double master bedrooms. I can really see the value of that.”

I've told a lot of my friends recently that while I definitely hope to get married one day, I worry about living with my spouse one day. John and I have discussed this issue a little bit (our biggest long term potential-living-together issue is location of where we live--either where in Atlanta or where in the world), but I think we would both have a huge adjustment to living together. I live in a 2 bedroom condo in the city, he lives in the 3 bedroom house in the suburbs. What the heck would we do living together? Neither of us knows the answers at this point. Its a scary (but good) problem to have I guess!

Have any of you lived alone? Are you against living alone? I'm curious!