When you aren’t a messy person, it gets complicated when you choose to date someone who is messy or has a messy house.

As you get used to each other, you end up picking up after the person.

At first, you don’t mind it.

But after a while, it gets old.

You have a long day at work and you come back to his place to hang out for the night and it is messy.

Instead of sinking into a couch in exhaustion and getting a leg massage, you are clearing out a bunch of stuff from his couch to find a space to sit down.

You go to his fridge and have to clear out a bunch of old food to get to something that isn’t expired.

On top of this, he left a bunch of dirty dishes in the sink overnight and you are scraping the contents into a trash bag and putting the dishes into a dishwasher machine.

This wasn’t what you were looking forward to doing after an exhausting day at work.

A little irritated, you make a comment about the mess.

He doesn’t care about it.

This is who he is.

Your comment falls on deaf ears as he gets back to playing his video game.

If you aren’t a messy person, dating someone who is messy or who has a messy house is eventually affecting you no matter how much you try to ignore it.

A short-term relationship is doable.

A neat person with tolerance can handle a short-term relationship with a messy person.

But it gets more challenging the longer the relationship lasts.

Are you looking to be in a long-term relationship or not?

When you don’t intend to be with this messy person for long, it is easier to ignore the mess.

The mess is not that much of a factor, as long as you are getting what you want from the messy person.

Whether that has to do with how good he is in bed, how much fun he is to be around, or something else, you are primarily concerned with getting what you want out of him as opposed to worrying about the mess.

A long-term relationship is a different story.

When you are in a long-term relationship with a messy partner, you are picking up after him like he is a child.

You are bound to get irritated after a while.

Could a long-term relationship work out with a messy partner?

There is a circumstance where it can.

This is when there is an agreement between the pair that he gets to have his own personal space where he has carte blanche to be as messy as he wants.

Designating a space where he is permitted to be messy keeps that area away from your line of sight and physical space.

This is his man cave so to speak.

In the form of a separate garage, woodshed, toolshed, office, basement, etc.

A relationship with a messy partner can work when he knows that he has a specific space where he gets to be as messy as he wants.

This is how you two get to negotiate a feasible path to making the relationship work over the long term.

Without this mutual agreement, a long-term relationship is bound to be fraught with friction and conflict, which portends doom for the longevity of the relationship.