Love at the Door



New York Times
By KATE MURPHY
Published: February 11, 2009

BETH DUNN, a novelist in Mays Landing, N.J., said the signal moment in her courtship with Rick, the man who would become her husband, came on Valentine?s Day 1997, when he casually handed over the key to his apartment.

He was in medical school at the time, and he told her that he didn?t want her to have to wait outside if he was ever late returning from class. ?I tried to play it cool,? said Ms. Dunn, now 37, ?but inside, I was going, ?Oh, my God! He loves me!? I ran out the next day and had keys to my apartment made for him. I felt like we got engaged, although that took another year.?

Despite his apparent nonchalance, Dr. Dunn, 43, now an ophthalmologist, said he also took the moment seriously. He had been in relationships before, one lasting six years, but he hadn?t given his key to any of his previous girlfriends. ?Subconsciously, I probably knew I hadn?t found The One,? he said. ?For me, giving a key is on the way to marriage.?

For many people, in fact, this small act is a huge step in a relationship. Even when it?s couched as a matter of convenience, giving a key often carries deep meaning for both of those involved, raising issues of trust, vulnerability and intimacy. Some people never feel comfortable doing it; Dr. Dunn said he was able to only when he felt an unshakeable trust and connection with his future wife. Until then, his bachelor pad had always been a haven, if not a hiding place, from the women he dated.

?Where we live is our private shelter from the world, the place to which we return each day and where we can be our truest selves,? said Ellen Helman, a psychoanalyst specializing in relationship and boundary issues who teaches at the Florida Psychoanalytic Institute in Coral Gables. ?Giving the key to your home says, ?You now have access to my private world.? ?

Eric Monte, a 37-year-old chemical engineer in northern New Jersey, understood this when he presented his key to his future wife, Kamini Geer, a Manhattan physician, in a gift-wrapped box, two months after they started dating in 2004. But it was not easy for him.

Mr. Monte had moved into his apartment in Jersey City ? the first place he had ever had to himself ? less than a year before and had decorated it in ?antique chic,? with Art Deco pieces inherited from relatives. When mulling whether to give Dr. Geer the key, he said, ?my brain kept telling me: ?Whoa, boy! You just got this place and now you want to give it up?? ?

?I resisted it like hell,? he said. ?But no matter how great you think it is, in reality, a bachelor pad is a lonely place.?

Dr. Geer, 33, said she was moved to tears. ?To me, it was incredibly meaningful,? she said. ?Giving your key is like showing your underbelly.?

Still, Mr. Monte said, he struggled to maintain a sense of primacy and ownership of his home.

?When we?d walk up to the door, she?d take out her key to open it, and that really bothered me,? he said. ?It sounds stupid and controlling, but it was still my place, and I wanted to open the door.? He also chafed at the rack she put in the shower and the little dish she put on a table in the entryway to hold keys. It was a while, he said, before ?I realized that I needed to stop being stubborn.?

Anxieties about control are common after keys are exchanged. Home, after all, is not just a private space, said Winifred Gallagher, the author of ?House Thinking,? which examines how homes shape attitudes and emotions: ?In many instances, home is the one place where you?re the boss,? she said, and ?the one secure place we have in what, especially now, is a very scary and uncertain world.? Giving up that sense of sovereignty can seem an unbearable risk.

For some, it?s simply not worth it. Brian Burke, the 35-year-old director of a tennis center in Charleston, S.C., said he has never given a girlfriend the key to his apartment, which is on the top floor of a building that once belonged to his grandfather, the first African-American dentist in town.

?It?s sort of an heirloom, and maybe I don?t feel right giving the key to someone outside the family,? he said. ?Or maybe it?s because I?m a guy and think of my home as like my cave ? it holds all my secrets, and once you give the key, you?re exposed.? Contributing to his reluctance, he admitted, is his aversion to housecleaning: ?Yeah, you know, I?ve got four or five loads of laundry in the middle of the floor.?

Anabel Fay, 27, who works for a family investment business in Houston, said she learned the hard way not to entrust the key to her home, a 1930s bungalow, to anyone she was dating. A now-ex-boyfriend used the key she had given him to come in and snoop on her computer while they were dating, she said; she learned of his behavior only after they broke up, when he approached another former boyfriend and started spitefully spouting details of their e-mail correspondence.

?The next key anyone gets from me will come with a ring on my finger,? Ms. Fay said.

Philip Mandel, 55, a weight control and health coach in Beaverton, Ore., said he stayed in a bad relationship ?too dang long because she had my dang key.? He gave it to his then-girlfriend several years ago, just weeks after they had met. ?It was too soon in the relationship,? he said, ?I was in love and convinced I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, but then I found out how nutty she was.?

She would let herself into his suburban ranch house and wake him at 6 a.m., he said, to scream at him. ?She?d get mad about everything, like if I didn?t clean the cat box, and then if I did, she?d get mad that I did it the wrong way,? he said. Her tirades made asking for his key back so daunting that he put it off for months. ?What was I going to do,? he asked, ?dump all her stuff at her house, grab my stuff from her house, stop by Home Depot on the way home and buy a whole new set of deadbolts??

Many would say yes ? that, or call a locksmith. Eddie Kamand, a locksmith in San Francisco, said 60 percent of his business comes from people wanting to change locks after a breakup. Common complaints include boyfriends or girlfriends who repeatedly enter without warning or who sneak in to snoop, especially on computers.

He has also heard of people using keys to come in and rearrange their ex-lovers? furniture, eat all the food in the fridge or, in one egregious instance, to light things on fire. ?Crazy, crazy stuff,? Mr. Kamand said. ?Be careful who you give your key to.?

Changing a lock can be as pivotal as giving the key. Dawn Quiett, 39, an independent film promoter in Dallas, said she knew an on-again, off-again 12-year relationship was finally over in 2007 when she changed her locks, rather than just asking for the key back as she had in the past.

The new locks marked a decisive break and the beginning of a new sense of self-sufficiency, she said. She was no longer willing to put up with this man moving her stuff around and eating her food. And she didn?t want ever again to open her door and unexpectedly find him sitting on her couch watching television.

?There are times when I come home, I just want to be alone and to watch ?Gossip Girl? without anyone there telling me how stupid it is,? she said. ?I don?t think I?ll ever give out my key again.?

There is emotional risk, of course, not only for those who give keys, but also those who take them. Joe Buono, 26, an equities operations analyst on Wall Street, said he hesitated when his girlfriend, Marisa Abdoo, 27, an account executive at a public relations firm in Manhattan, gave him the key to her Upper West Side apartment for Christmas. He wondered if accepting it meant that living together or marrying was the implied next step.

?I worried, ?Is she trying to lock me in here?? ? he said. Given his strong feelings for her, though, he said, ?I realized I?m already locked in.?

He didn?t reciprocate by giving her a key to his place because he lives with his parents in Brooklyn to save money. ?Although my mom would love it if I did,? he said. ?Maybe my parents will give her parents a key. What would that mean??