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After writing about forging ahead with my own identity, I am sitting down to write about a merging of lives. Sort of, anyway.

As a society, we have ways of doing things that have been carved into our way of living by generations before us doing it. So, we are supposed to have some wild university life, meet a partner, get married, buy a shoddy first home, have a baby, move onto nicer second home, send kids out into the world, and retire to Mangawhai.

Even at the beginning, I didn't quite manage to follow the script. Well, I started to. Right up to 'buy a shoddy first home.' Then it all kind of collapsed, and that part of the script was scrawled out.

Now I've thrown the script out, I can focus on what matters to me and not what matters according to the rule books. I know that in the 21st century, the 'rules' are somewhat looser, but I think their foundations are still there.

I can focus on how I feel, not what tick box I can fill next.

Two years ago, Nyah's and my first home was a caravan. It was precious and difficult time. I started working through a very difficult transition away from my family home. There were tears and guilt and food and love and it was our haven. We created routines and found we fitted very well together in a small space.

It was the strange combination of the depths of despair while I navigated massive change along with the relief of being freed from my old life and the bliss of being in love.

Of great urgency was finding a home that the children could come and live in some of the time. I was a student and Nyah was running a small business. Everything was expensive. And grotty. And in the end, we found an inexpensive and grotty flat a suburb away from the children's school.

We met the doddery landlord to sign up. The lease was in Nyah's name. "Are you sisters or flatmates?" asked the doddery landlord's wife. We looked at each other and said "Flatmates."

We hoped upon hope that this would work...but we couldn't really to say it to the world.

We combined our furniture and knick-knacks and stories and made a home. The children came and made it their home, too. I have stashed away the little door labels that my daughter made with our names on them. One for everyone. They are part of our story. My littlest son drew a picture of the house complete with its rainbow sticker on the door and the purple drapes. When we moved in Nyah and I staged an apple crumble competition with the children as judges. I won. We did this on the one year anniversary of the great 'Crumble Off' and Nyah's crumble was declared just as good. We adopted Molly the cat who shuns the adults when the children are here. We walk across the road to the Sunday market, where the children have gone from sheer terror at the pressing throngs of people, to confident in navigating it without adults in order to spend their $2 'market money' on homemade biscuits from the stall under the big tree, and the cheapest softdrink they can find.

We've had our share of problems, too. The doddery landlord is also cheap and unethical. The children sometimes struggle with having two homes, with figuring out where Nyah fits in their lives, with not having space to hang their clothes up in their tiny rooms.

Now its time to move on, and we have found a new house. Its a house this time. It stands alone on a full section and it faces a lovely park. Nyah found it on Facebook and we went to meet the landlord. She introduced me as her partner. I filled out the Bond form with my name on it. We put photos of it on Facebook announcing we were moving, and received 89 likes and positive comments about how much we deserve to be happy.

Two years ago we slunk into our grotty flat, our lives and others' turned upside down, unsure of how this would all turn out. We made a life and made a home built on love and faith and lots of hard work.

I am sure my feelings about our humble, new little house must be like those of a young couple who's first declaration to the world about the earnestness of their relationship is to buy a grotty flat. I feel like after two years we can celebrate our new life. We welcome people to celebrate with us, but it seems they don't need an invitation because they have been with us all along.

Our new life has begun. It is filled with love and it is good.