Honest question, I moved out of town for work a week after I graduated. How does that work when you’re dating? No sleepovers, no privacy, having to come home at a respectful time, etc? But maybe my viewpoint is skewed by knowing how my conservative (not the modern version of conservative) parents are.

I'm not OP but I dated the daughter of very conservative parents for several years before finally marrying her. We each lived at home and in fact she moved into my home after marriage because I have an elderly (I was born late) widow as a parent and leaving them behind to rot from solitude was not an option.

I think I can summarize it as: it's never been ideal, but we always made it work, and I'm the kind of guy who likes to remember there are always much worse problems elsewhere in the world. if the worst problem I had to solve was not enough privacy with my gf/wife, then I was doing pretty good on a global scale.

> I'm the kind of guy who likes to remember there are always much worse problems elsewhere in the world.

I share the same attitude and it’s served me well - you never know when life will hand you a bad card. Our 19 month old son at the time (6 years ago) got sick - he developed type 1 diabetes. It wasn’t easy to accept but then you look at the kids with more serious conditions in the waiting room at the pediatric endocrinologist’s office and realize that type 1 diabetes is manageable. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a disease that never takes a break. In 6 years we’ve probably left him in the care of someone else (my parents) maybe a handful of times because he can’t self manage yet. But we make the best of it. Yes it would be nice to be able to go on date nights once in a while, but the times we’ve tried usually ended in multiple phone calls or constant texting. In the end it just means we spend more time with our kids. Someday they’ll move out/away and we’ll have more time alone than we like.

My plan if I start dating while living with my parents (just moved back) is to go to hotels/airbnbs or camp out. I've also moved into the basement rather than a bedroom right by my parents' so if I get serious with someone I could probably just have them over. That of course requires having a large enough house for that to be feasible

I didn’t have a curfew, my parents just expected a call if I was spending the night elsewhere. Sleepovers were fine, sleeping in the same bed was not. It was never a big deal for me, I never knew any different. There were unplanned opportunities for private time (when no one was home, etc.)

I don’t think I’d change a thing in hindsight.

In less super conservative house with own room you are in your room for sex or chill. Basically it is exactly like dating when you have roommates.

For a lot of dating, you are not at home anyway, we used to go to parks, concerts and such to spend time together.