The Keys to the Castle

Michael and I had been dating for three months when I gave him the keys to my apartment. It wasn't a gesture of escalating commitment - he didn't even have a toothbrush in my bathroom yet. But I was leaving the country for three weeks, and someone had to feed my fish. When I returned to find all my fish alive and well, neither of us commented on him keeping the keys. That's when it became a sign of serious involvement. But a year later, I'm starting to wonder if I should have made a bigger deal of the transaction. He still hasn't moved a toothbrush into my place. What's more, he lets himself in every time he comes to my apartment, but I have to ring up like any random visitor whenever I go to his. It's inconvenient and unequal, and I don't like it. Why can't I just have a key?

I spent months toting my electric toothbrush back and forth from my place to Michael's, and then he found a spare toothbrush in his medicine cabinet and let me claim a slot in the holder on his sink. It took several months more before I got up the guts to ask if I also could leave a contact-lens case and a little bottle of saline, which I'm always careful to hide neatly behind the mirrored panels on the wall. I still haven't screwed up the courage to leave extra doses of my prescription meds around in case I forget to pack them one night.

It's a delicate process, populating a partner's place with one's own stuff, and I'm willing to take it slowly. But surely I could be trusted with a key to Michael's door? It's not as if I've asked for the PIN to his ATM card, or even to rent videos under his name - though if I did, I would never let late fees accrue. I've never dropped by unannounced. I don't show up with strangers in tow, eat him out of house and home, or leave a mess in my wake. I'm a good girlfriend and an excellent guest. But without my own keys, I'm still just that: a guest.

Once or twice, when we've gone jogging together and taken different routes home, or when he's been cooking and sent me out for a missing ingredient, Michael has loaned me his extra set of keys. He keeps them hanging on a hook by the phone, and when I return, I've caught him glancing that way to make sure I've put them back. I've thought about "forgetting," to see if he lets me keep his keys the way I casually let him keep mine, but that could backfire.

Michael is protective of his space. The one time I hinted that it would be more convenient if I could get in on my own, he gave me an elaborate explanation of the plans to change his building's entry system: The traditional locks would soon be disabled, rendered obsolete by the newly installed magnetic ones. That I understood, but, of course, he has a spare magnetic key.

I think he's possessive of those keys because they're all that's left of his waning bachelorhood. We talk about where my couch would go if I moved in. Friday night always finds us together, and I've made space for him in my life without ever looking back. Happily ever after is on the table, but it represents the end of an era. That's why I haven't just asked Michael for the keys. I'm obviously impatient. The situation is unfair. But pressing the issue will only feel like an invasion of privacy.

I want him to gift me the keys. They will say, "Come in, I want you close." My beggarly heart wants to hear that. It's not enough that I can already feel this love like a key pressed into my palm, the same temperature as my skin, though that is what compels me to wait. It would be easier if relationships were about reciprocity - I give you my keys, you give me yours. But they're not.