I moved in with my partner after college. No one told me how much I'd miss living with my best friends.

• After living with my five best friends throughout college, I moved in with my boyfriend.
• Although I was excited for the next step in our relationship, I struggled to adapt to postgrad life.
• Now, I'm learning to embrace where I am and live in the present.

I still remember pulling out of the driveway of the house I'd shared with the same five girls for three years.

I sat in the passenger seat, waving goodbye as my boyfriend drove away. We both cried, unable to fathom that college was really over.

As we road-tripped from Ann Arbor, Michigan, back to the Northeast (where we're both from), we felt excited for the next chapter of our lives — starting our careers in New York City and moving in together. But we were also going through our own forms of a breakup, just not with each other.

My housemates and I weren't just housemates. We were pandemic-era housemates, meaning we ate breakfast together at our tiny kitchen table every morning and took our remote classes from the same living room couch.

My boyfriend had a similar experience, living with friends in a house around the corner from mine.

Somewhere along the way, both of our friend groups became like family, barging into each other's houses without notice and spending endless hours together.

I had no idea just how much I'd miss that.

I finally had my "dream" life, but I didn't feel fulfilled

Just one month after graduation, I had a cute, albeit tiny, apartment in Manhattan with swanky restaurants on each corner, a pickleball court nearby, and 24/7 access to pizza and bagels. And I was doing it all with my boyfriend by my side.

I had achieved the dream so many Long Island-raised kids like myself had growing up.

But as much as I tried to romanticize my compact kitchen appliances and lack of windows (and consequently, sunlight), I longed for sunny days on my front porch in Ann Arbor with my five best friends sipping lattes out of mason jars, talking about absolutely nothing.

My boyfriend missed his version of this, too, sipping bottles of beer with his five housemates, talking mostly about football.

We both longed to be somewhere else. And I, for one, felt guilty.

Struggling to adjust to our 9-to-5 schedules in a new city, we often found ourselves sitting around the apartment, lacking the energy to do all the fun things we used to love.

I did make some new friends, but I struggled to put in the effort to maintain them. I often wondered if it was even possible to find the same level of friendship I had with my college housemates.

I'd replay the highlight reel of memories in my mind — prank wars that would last for weeks, communicating with our next-door neighbors via handwritten signs taped to our windows, and nights in watching old One Direction music videos.

Although we still kept in touch via our group chat, it just wasn't the same as waking up every morning to all my favorite people in one place.

It was as if I'd been living in my very own sitcom for three years — one that could never be recreated — with the perfect mix of characters, all in the right place at the right time.

And like all sitcoms, it had to come to an end. I was holding out hope for a spinoff, but I had to let go.

It's been a major adjustment, but I finally feel like I'm where I'm supposed to be

I realized that what I really needed most was time. There wasn't one thing in particular that magically made me stop missing my friends so much. It took about a year to adapt to my new routine and start feeling like myself again.

In the meantime, I let myself be sad, and I stopped feeling guilty about it. I leaned on the one person who understood my sadness on a personal level: my boyfriend.

We talked about missing our best friends, Ann Arbor, and our life together before we moved to New York City. It felt good to have someone who was going through the same thing.

Slowly but surely, we adjusted to our new reality and started finding joy in the little things, like decorating our apartment, trying new bagel spots, and perfecting homemade vodka sauce.

As for my housemates, we continue to find unique ways to stay in touch. We partake in our own Secret Santa each year. We email each other life updates through personalized newsletters that are way too detailed. We schedule visits throughout the year and meet up around the country. Every time we do, it's like we're back home.

Of course, I still miss them. But I've learned to cherish the people that are nearby — both new friends I've met in the city and old ones I grew up with back on Long Island. I've also made more of an effort to spend time with family. Thankfully, they're only a train ride away.

Two and a half years postgrad, my boyfriend and I still live together, but now we have a new apartment with a full-sized oven and more windows to let in plenty of sunlight.

We see our best friends a few times a year and spend the remaining 300-and-something days trying to convince them all to move to New York. And in the meantime, we've built a life we're happy with.