Bonita,

I just recently got married in the spring, and it was an amazing experience. My husband and I had been together for two years before we got married, and we lived together for only about a month before the wedding. We both come from somewhat reserved, really conservative families.

Anyways, since getting married and living together, I haven't been feeling so great about all this. He's extremely messy, and doesn't respond well to input from me when I ask him to do a better job of cleaning up after himself. He doesn't think that it's my job to keep the house clean—he just doesn't think it matters if the house is clean or not. He also has hobbies that take up a lot of his time and are expensive—his favorite are those drones that people like to fly that have video cameras attached to them. He's always out with his friends flying his drones, and he spends so much money on them. We aren't in any sort of financial trouble, but I'm starting to worry about the future.

Additionally, our sex life isn't that great. Before, when we didn't live together, we'd have sex all the time, because we didn't see each other every day. Now that we see each other every day, it's almost like he's bored with me. Advice?

It must have been quite a shock to go from such a dreamboat dating and engagement experience to find yourself living with someone you barely recognize. That might be overstating it, but the husband you describe is clearly very different from the person you were dating. I’d be put off and a little worried, too, but the mistake you made is obvious, and it’s also not catastrophic by any stretch. You two did not live together long enough before getting married.

This is roommate stuff, in a way. The fact that you two are in love and married doesn’t erase the grace period that any two new roommates would need to acclimate to each other. You say you’re both conservative, so I understand why you’d choose to wait to move in together, but I think you’ve done yourself a disservice for the sake of propriety. That’s a grown man you’re living with, and it’s hard to teach a messy adult to respect a shared space.

This is gonna take real communication out of you. Don’t drop it when he flippantly claims not to care if the house is dirty. He shares that home with you, and since you care, so should he. I tend to take a hard line with dirty roommates, but that’s your husband, and you know how to best communicate your needs to him. Don’t be afraid to assert yourself as an equal in this partnership, because right now you two are setting the tone for how things will go in the future. Y’all are newlyweds, and you have the chance to hit the ground running, so be open and honest with each other about your needs and your lifestyles, and stay that way.

As far as the hobbies and fair-weather sexin’ are concerned, I think they’re more symptoms of being new roommates. You had no idea that his drone hobby was that intense, but that’s OK. You might wanna ask him if he’s upped his spending on them now that you two are combining incomes, but I don’t find this info to be alarming. It’s good that he has hobbies and friends outside of your marriage, believe me—once the honeymoon is over, so to speak, you will be glad for those quiet moments alone.

The same goes with sex. It was more exciting when it was a sneaky thing that you were hiding from your tight-laced families, but now you’re together all the time. He hasn’t given you any reason to think he’s no longer attracted to you, so just give him a minute. The same thing happened to one of my siblings when they got married, and don’t worry—it wore off. You two just need time to figure out how to live together.

Need advice? Email [email protected], use our anonymous form, or find Bonita on Twitter: @flagpolebonita.