"The rest is still unwritten..."

I find that in a relationship, at least in ours, compromise is something fairly important.

FH and I will be moving into our first apartment right between finishing finals and my college graduation. Our biggest issue with the whole moving situation is the furniture discussion. As I've previously mentioned we'll be getting a lot of my parents' furniture.
But as I found out today, even though FH and I discussed the furniture situation and he didn't mind us getting it to start out, apparently he felt that everything in the apartment was going to be "me" and there would be no sign of "him" anywhere in there... Talk about a way to start out a marriage.

As a wedding present and because his parents aren't helping out with the wedding, they bought us a washer and dryer. Which is cool, because clean clothes are awesome - especially clean clothes where you don't have to trek to the main building in 3 feet of snow just to get them.
Well today FH told me that they would also help us out with other stuff if we'd like - desk, dining set, TV stand, TV...

One of our issues in the "there's no space for me" deal is the fact that, if we're being completely honest, our apartment IS small. And we're a bit confined because it's apparently cool to stick an angled fireplace in the room.
Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely fireplace, and I'm sure we'll enjoy lots of snuggle time in front of it in the future. But when we're trying to figure out where things go, an angled fireplace in a small living room is a pain in the butt. And it ate up any maneuvering we wanted to do with having a computer desk and a dining room table.

For us, a desk is a fairly important thing. Even though I'm graduating in less than a month, I'm going back to school. FH will be working on his undergrad for at least another year. A computer's pretty important, and in addition to our laptops FH also has a desktop that he keeps EVERYTHING on (and when I say everything, I mean there is nearly 120 GB of music in his iTunes. It's pretty ridiculous, yet awesome).

But I also feel that a table is important. Yeah, I don't eat at a table all that often (the couch is comfier!), and I don't need one that's large by any means... But I want to be able to eat breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner at the table with my husband if we decide to. I don't want to be stuck to just eating on the couch, or using TV trays or something. I feel like that would take away something important - and, you know, increase the potential for the dog to come up and steal our food! (I've had the dog try to steal my chicken alfredo before. I was not pleased, as I was gone for maybe 10 seconds - and could still see him)
I guess you're saying that a table isn't a big deal, but I like being able to eat dinner at the table with my husband on our anniversaries, on our birthdays, on special days. But I also like curling up with him.
Oh, and maybe I'm weird but I don't think a dining room table belongs at the front door. I just wasn't feeling that idea too much.

We discussed putting the computer in the bedroom - which neither of us want, because inevitably someone will be up in the middle of the night working on an assignment last minute (yeah, probably me!)... And his desktop glows. A glowing CPU is cool, but lights keep me awake. They bug me. A lot.
So like I said, neither of us want that.

However, for a first time apartment we don't have all that much space. Clothing and everything, yes, there will be plenty of space. We're pushing our luck with the bookshelves, but we can do it. But when you add the rest of the furniture then space is just literally eaten up - mostly by the couch and love seat!

So we decided to go look at furniture today, and see what we liked, what we didn't like, what we love, what we hate, and what works with the space we've been allotted.

After plenty of hunting, me seeing in person what the washer and dryer we have looks like (but in a different color!), lunch and a Burger King shake that was LOADED with strawberry syrup (sad day!), and a trip resulting in me getting home an hour later than I expected to work on taxes, we've come to an agreement.
I'll be the first to tell you that I hate most of the desks in stores. Frilly and frou-frou bug me. I don't like wood too dark. I don't like it too light. Too tall, too big, too small, filing drawers, not enough desk drawers...
I'm an organizer at heart, if I have the space.

We finally found a desk we could agree on, and one that would even give me some desk space, space for my printer(s) in addition to his, and an area to put a floor lamp in.

After some hunting we also found a dining table we liked that wasn't obnoxiously large (3'x3') and came with little stools that you can push all the way under the table when you're not using them to save space.

We also drew visited the apartment complex to view the model and get complete measurements (ours will be slightly larger than the model) so we could draw in what we're working with to get a more accurate idea.

The funny thing is, this whole apartment... "event," if you will, with us trying to compromise...
It sounds a lot like us trying to find flatware.
Because even on something as "small" as flatware, we wanted more of a compromise than just to pick something out. I had a relative tell me to put flatware on our registry, despite me telling her at least twice that we were NOT going to put it on there because we wanted to pick out our own flatware. It's nice that people want to help us out, but I'd rather not have us stuck with something one of us hates and the other likes for the next 20+ years. That's just not cool. And it's small things like that, like one hating something and the other liking it, that could eventually snowball into some kind of resentment for what FH was concerned about earlier: there being *none* of one person in the place.
Because what do you do if everything is of one person and there's nothing of the other or of the couple in your life?

And if we're being real?
It takes two to have a marriage (unless you're fundamentalist LDS or something, but you know what I mean).