Dopers who prefer living with friends/relatives to living single or married?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Shagnasty’s recent thread on (un)happy marriages, and the shocking lack of freedom some spouses grant each other, got me thinking about the advantages non-romantic households: people living together, non-romantically. Not because they have to live this way, but because they prefer to.
For example, in my thread, on how couples divide household finances, **Roland Orzabal ** described how he and his father lived together. To me, their practical and respectful way of living together under the same roof sounded like sheer heaven, compared to some of the marriages described in Shagnasty’s thread.

I’d like to hear from Dopers who have chosen to live that way, in a culture where such a way of living is, currently, unusual.

I’m not talking about situations where people can’t move out of their parents house due to lack of money, or because a kid or parent needs physical care.
I’m also not talking about roommates. Living with a roommate is, to many people, just a temporary arrangement, something you do before you can do the “real thing” (meaning: get married).

So, which Dopers live together, by choice, and without plans to move out soon, with friends and/or relatives? What are the pro’s and cons? Is it possible to live that way with children?

Other thoughts?

2

My brother lives with me, and my 4 year old niece lives there 4 days out of the week. He moved in after some legal problems and a divorce knocked him on his ass. Except for the fact that it’s been two years now , and he has never paid a dime for bills, rent , or groceries ( but thats another story), we get along great.
I adore my niece and I really miss her on the three days she goes to her Mom’s. As much as I REALLY liked living alone, it’s nice to have them there. And as soon as he starts giving me some money, it’ll be great!

3

Hey, thanks, Maastricht; it’s always nice to be noticed.

Yeah, my current arrangement with my dad (which I detailed in that other thread) works out quite well. I actually lived on my own for a while before my dad moved in with me – it was a pragmatic move; it’s cheaper for both of us – and there really isn’t that much I miss about it. He isn’t even here half the time; he’s the type to go out and shoot pool with the boys after work, whereas I usually just sit around and Dope unless my friends are in town. We’re a good match in that neither of us is what you’d call a “neat freak”; the place can get pretty messy from time to time, but we do a Level 5 PowerClean[super]TM[/super] every couple weeks, so it never gets too bad. If one of us is particularly bothered by something, he takes care of it himself (I hate overflowing trashcans, so I take out the trash; he hates piles of dirty clothes, so he does the laundry, etc).

Really, living on my own vs. living with my dad is a 50/50 proposition. The pros and cons of each pretty much cancel each other out: alone, I have more privacy, I don’t have to worry about my dad bringing six drunken idiots home with him at 4:00 in the morning (though I’ve talked to him about that, and it has gotten better), and all the food is mine :smiley: . With my dad, it’s cheaper, I have more free time (since I don’t have to work as much to pay the higher bills), and I have someone around to talk to and do stuff with.

I was going to rehash my philosophy here on why the system we have in place works, and why most married couples/SOs reject it out of hand, but I went over all that in the other thread. I may revel in being long-winded, but damned if I’m also going to be redundant. So, for those that haven’t read the other thread and have no Earthly notion what I’m talking about in this post, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to scroll back up to the OP and click. Don’t worry, the exercise will be beneficial to your health. :slight_smile:

4

…and the superscript code worked in Preview. Really. It did.

Or not. But I did preview. Honest. Dammit…

5

I live with my SO, her daughter, Her two little girls and Fiancee. In a Two bedroom condo. Crowded, yeah, but we get along pretty well. And now that we’re all working, it’s even better.

I’ve also lived in a large house where a four way marriage was raising two teenage boys, semi-communally. I worked for the two husbands who were business partners. Actually I was working for the one when this all came about. Interesting years. There was also the ex-GF of the absent oldest son, raising their Grandson.

I’ve also been married, twice. Lived with roomates. I’ve seen all kinds of situations work, and not. It’s best when you’re not expecting one person to be your everything. It’s handy to know there’s people around when you might need em. Tonight was my turn to run rescue, and bring tools to a roomie with a busted car. Everyone else was at the Nutcracker, so If we weren’t such a motely Crue, he might still be in that Circle K parking lot.

I haven’t seen any negative effects from kids living in non-nuclear situations, It works rather well, in a ‘It takes a village’ sort of way. Multiple generations and extended family living together used to be the norm. I think with modern mobility and more fractured families, some cope by building artificial families.

Stone Soup, my friends. Stone Soup.

6

Thanks for the stories, people.

Still, these are not really examples of what I was looking for. Sassafras’s situation seems like an temporary arrangement that just worked out well; **The Sonoran Lizard King ** is part of a muli-way romantic relationship.

Is there maybe some modern cultural taboo to living this way?

I’m asking because it seemed such living arrangements were quite common in Limburg (Netherlands) just two generations ago. My MIL (age 80) living in a rural part of Limburg, remembers it was quite common for unromantic couples to share a house.
One or two children would stay at home, partly to care for the older parent, partly because not all people married. It may seem to us now that a daughter cariing for her parents would be sacrificing her youth and life. But depending on the health of the parent, and how everybody got along, my MIL gave me quite a few stories of arrangements like that working out quite well.

My MIL also told me about the phenonmenon of the live-in paid “companion”. We know that phenomenon from Agatha Christie novels, where the paid companion gets bossed around and eventually strikes back by killing her employer. But many people lived that way, pooling money, talents and resources. Even back then people weren’t so poor they would accept living arrangements that weren’t satisfactory. Maybe such practical living arrangements were even better then the average marriage, because if they didn’t work out people tried something else, whereas breaking an unsatisfactory marriage was a heavy taboo in the fifties.

So, I find that only two generations ago, there was far less of an emphasis on romance. People just lived together as an alternative to marriage, in two’s or in three’s, and no-one thought worse of them for it. I can’t help but feeling that while people may have lived differently, it may have been not necessarily worse.

7

I’m 29, and still live with my parents. I get a lot of grief from it from people who don’t know me or my folks, but the arrangement works well for all of us. I get along really well with my parents. They’re respectful of my privacy and personal space, and there’s very little friction between us. I pay my share of the bills, although I don’t have to pay rent, which is a BIG plus in the hyper-expensive Bay Area. They get to see their only child regularly, and have an extra pair of strong arms to help with the various gardening and home improvement projects that they’re always starting (and seldom finishing).

I’ve thought about getting my own place, except that it wouldn’t be my own place, as I’d almost certainly have to get roommates to make ends meet. Which means that, instead of living in a nice house, rent free, with two people I love and respect and get along with, I’d be living in a much worse house, spending most of my paycheck on rent, and living with one or more total strangers whom I may very well end up detesting.

Fuck that. I’m staying where I am until I’m either earning enough money to live alone without crippling my lifestyle, or I move in with someone with whom I’m romantically engaged.

8

This is my ideal for how I’d like to live. I don’t want to be married. And I can do without dating (or, at least dating the way 99% of people seem to think it should be done). I’d really love to live with a friend or a family member.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work because:

  1. All my friends are married, and seem to think this means they should live with their husbands. I don’t expect (or even wish) that any of them will divorce, so they’re out.

  2. That one friend of mine who isn’t married is an artist who has giant dogs. I am afraid my furniture would be coated in clay and dog slobber. It’s also likely that she’d never have the cash to pay the rent.

  3. Only one of my three sisters is a person I could stand to live with, but she does not want to live with me because the other two have poisoned her against me and my living habits (lies, all lies!).

  4. I’d live with my mom, but she’s not yet divorced from my dad. (I remain ever hopeful, though.)

  5. A paid companion sounds cool, because then I could have everything my own way AND have company, but alas, I’m too poor for this.

Oh well, I do just fine when it’s just me and my cats.

9

So there ***is ** * a USA- cultural taboo on this lifestyle? Why is that?
Being Dutch, I have -of course- a theory. :slight_smile: I think there is a huge fear of being socially labeled a “loser” in the USA. Poverty and being sexually/romantically “unsuccesful” are most culturally agreed on hallmarks of loserdom. For a casual observer, eager to assing loser labels to others, living with your parents means almost automatic loserhood.
IMO, sex and wealth are totally randomly chosen. For instance, enjoying to be with your family, having time to yourself because the work gets divided are universally nice things, and maybe overstressed in some cultures, (try living in a suffocating family when you are a private person!) but currently understressed, IMO, in American culture.

An modern American saying “My whole family gets along great and we love getting together ever chance we get” doesn’t nearly sound as cool as “I’ve got a new fiancee and a new car”.

Personally, I’m currently living with my SO, but I would certainly consider some sort of living arrangement with people I like, such as my own father or MIL, if it would be convenient.
What can I say? I was raised by hippies. :slight_smile:

Wasn’t the kind of living together I described in Limburg in the 1950’s common in rural America at the time, as well?

10

I’m technically single, but have lived with my SO for 9 years (we’ve been together for 11). I know that isn’t too weird. We don’t plan on getting married, or having kids. I’m happy this way, and he seems to be, too.

I could never live with anyone from my family. I love my family, but they are all so different from me I could not see an arrangement like that working out. I moved out of my parent’s house shortly after I turned 18 and have been on my own (or with a roomate) since. They like their loud, chaoitic lives and I crave peace and quiet. I must have alone time very single day. I am also somewhat of a hermit.

I really liked living alone, but I love living with my SO. We like the same things and get on pretty well.

11

I think you hit the nail on the head. I certainly have felt anxiety and social pressure about my situation, which is similar to Miller. As rational as we all our about our own academic and financial situations, peer pressure can make us think crazy things. In fact, a while ago I made a post about this very fact, “What’s so bad about living with your parents?” where I was bombarded by criticism about my living situation from other Dopers. Several of them explicitly stated that the idea of a single guy who still lives with his parents is not appealing, a homeless man has more sex appeal :rolleyes: . The whole issue bothered me a LOT, but I didn’t really know what to do about it. I was going to school full-time, the idea was that I’d get my BA degree and then look for a full-time job. once I had the full time job I could afford to move out. In the meantime, I had to finish school. I had a discussion with my mom about it, telling her my desire to move out was nothing personal- in fact I really appreciated her support and generosity. She eventually understood how I felt, but also stated that she wanted me to focus on school. Since college has had so many ups and downs for me, she really did have a point here.

Some may disagree, but I would rather move out a bit later than most other people but in a much more secure state occupationally and financially. For instance, one advantage I will have about moving out at 24/25-ish is that I will have ZERO debt- no student loans or credit card debt or car payments. I own my own car, and with the help of my mom payed my way through college. Being on my own isn’t so important that I’m weighed down by debts like these, and personally I would consider it far more humiliating if I moved out young, couldn’t hack it and had to move back with my folks. At least if I delay moving out I increase my financial security.

12

I’m 27 and I live with my parents too. I pay them some rent, but my brother (who is 21) doesn’t yet. We more or less get along with our parents, neither of whom is in the best health, so coupled with our parents wanting us there since they think you ought to live at home until you marry and the $750-900/month rental rates in the area, it’s not too bad a deal to stay home and spend some of our free time in doctor’s waiting rooms in exchange.

Being this old and living at home is not great for one’s self esteem, though… here’s to hoping I fall in love with (and vise versa) a financially -stable, marriage-minded, guy sooner than later :stuck_out_tongue:

13

I used to live in my sister’s pool house and paid her a nominal “rent.” That was pretty cool. I was living on my own, but I wasn’t completely alone. When we had the Northridge Quake (L.A., 1994) and everything in the pool house cascaded on the floor, I was able to escape to my sister’s house and sleep on her floor for a few days. She doesn’t drive so when she needed someone to drive her somewhere, I was next door. I liked that setup quite a bit.

Then, a couple of years ago, my sister, my mom and I all moved in together. I won’t say it’s just because we all love each other so much—my mom is kind of flakey (we are always worried she’ll drive into a ditch or give her fortune to a snake oil salesman), and my sister is handicapped. While they could have lived on their own for a while still, it was worrysome.

It’s working out okay for the most part. I like the comfort of a bigger house, which allows me more money to piss away on books, computer equipment, and travel (and we have five kilns. Five. You can’t have even one decent-sized kiln if you are living in an apartment). So it’s a system that works for us.

There is a stigma against grown kids “living at home,” but since it is actually my sister’s house that we all moved into, it’s more like mom is moving in with her kid(s). Also, when I tell people that our living together is partly because of health issues, that seems to dilute the stigma somewhat. But it’s there sometimes. Which irritates me a little. As others have said, people are quick to assume you’re a “loser,” which can be ironic in some cases. When you’ve got a “Never done jack” type of person (never goes anywhere, no adventuresome spirit, boring and dull, etc.) looking down on someone else because they live with family (even though may actually have lived a far more exciting and interesting life overall), well, it seems a bit silly.

14

Yes, exactly. And its sad in a way too that it is more appropriate to go into debt spending money on conspicious consumption and living with a stranger (ie roommate) than to live with your family and invest your money. Nobody said memes were rational.

I live with my brother and I enjoy it alot. We are not demanding on each other, we give each other space and we fight maybe 2-4x a year and they are mild fights. So its a good arrangement but its just temporary until he goes to graduate school in fall. After I graduate from college I may live with my parents for a year or two until I find a job.

15

This is surely part of it, but there’s definitely a lot more to it than fear of being thought uncool.

I think it’s because a sizeable number of people who do live with their parents well into early adulthood are “losers” in some way. Many of them are deliberately un- or under-employed, largely because they realize that they can sponge off of easygoing parents. Many of them are not emotionally mature enough to take care of their own basic needs (like cooking, doing laundry, etc.), or are just too lazy to be bothered. Many of them are, in other words, parasites.

I am 27 and live with my parents. I’m a lawyer, motivated, and I make more than enough money to support myself. I say this because I want to be clear that I recognize that lots of people who live with their parents are normal, well-adjusted, and self-supporting.

Unfortunately, of all the people I know, only 2 of us (me and a friend) had a normal, healthy sort of cohabitation with our parents as adults (over age 22 and/or graduated from college). But the other examples I can think of (approximately a dozen) are/were of the parasite/loser variety.

For example:

  1. My 34 year old cousin who lives in one of my aunt’s rental properties (rent-free of course) and carries her credit card in his pocket for his expenses. Educated at one of the premier private liberal arts schools in the country and quite smart, he is marginally employed. He spends most of his time partying. He also uses my aunt’s credit card to support a much older girlfriend and her three children (unbeknownst to my aunt).

  2. My sister’s ex-best friend. 26, and once an honors student, she got into drugs and partying and flunked out of college in her first semester and moved home again at age 18. Has lived there ever since. She bounces from marginal job to job (her exploits include roadie for N Sync and body piercing apprentice). She never makes much money and is rarely employed longer than 3 weeks. All her money goes for tattoos; she has never paid rent. Also flits fromcollege to college, rarely staying long anywhere–just long enough to rack up more student loans for mom & dad to pay.

Her brother’s story is quite similar, except he was forcibly removed from his parents’ house at age 28 when he was sent to prison (multiple drunk driving charges).

  1. Friend’s brother. Lived at home from age 18 to 24. In that time, he got kicked out of the National Guard and never held a job for more than a few months. Never contributed to rent. Spent his free time making lots of dirty dishes. Spent all his earnings on video games, action figures, and comic books. Finally got kicked out when there was so much of his junk in parents’ house that it was knee deep and pathways were carved out from kitchen to living room to bedroom.

The other stories are equally horrendous.

So there’s definitely some truth behind the “living with parents” = “probable loser” equation. (At least in the US; can’t speak for other cultures.)

16

QN-Jones, I understand the distinction you’re making.

Many people who can support themselves financially, emotionally and practically nevertheless choose to live with family or friends, and in the USA that shows a considerable independent mindset, as the - still very few- examples in this thread have shown. Kudos to you.

The “parasites” QN-Jones describes, in the Netherlands, would not be living off familymembers, but on welfare, a monthly government grant of maybe 600 US-dollars, to spend freely (The Netherlands doesn’t have the food-stamp-system over here. OTOH, it’s much harder to get a quick job.)
That’s why a Dutch person living off welfare (without an “obvious” reason) looks to many people, as unattractive as someone living with his/her parents would in the USA. The stigma isn’t as big though. Partly because the source of an income isn’t as visible as where you live. Furthermore, there are so many valid reasons for people to be on welfare, and finally because there are many people who, while on welfare, contribute just as much or more to society as people with a job.

I think that’s why the USA stigma on living with your parents struck me, at first glance, as odd. Just a cultural difference.

Incubus said:

That is another cultural difference. In the Netherlands, someone has to have a LOT of problems before becoming homeless. A strike of bad luck (ilness, accidents, lost jobs) will be taken care of by society, by Social Security. If an adult ends up homeless, despite the social jumping net, they are either mentally disturbed, aggressive, addicted, or probably a combination there of.

One last remark that might be of interest. In the early nineties, Dutch law was not yet ready to legalize gay marriage yet, but did want to offer gay people living together the same tax-benefits as married couples. The result was “licensed partnership” which might be similar (I don’t know) to the Massachusets common-law marriage. Interestingly, since fullfledged gay marriage came through and made it obsolete as a gay marriage-substitute, the “licensed parnership” now seems a favourite among non-romantic couples living together.

17

hehe some great stories…

I was wondering about few mentioning “privacy” problems when you bring a girlfriend or a one night stand to the home…

Well my story used to be better… after my parents got divorced my nagging dad left the house. The big apartment is his though…but we stayed in it. 3 brothers and my mom. Years later my mom bought her own apartment and moved in with her new boyfriend. Leaving 3 brothers (2 adults) living in the big nice apartment ! It was great… like living at home… but without the parents being constantly present. Mom and Dad would always be around for lunch and visits… but never overly so. This meant a “united” family without the hassles of co-habitation ! Wierd…

I’m the oldest… the middle brother moved out when he married. The youngest one has a 4 year old daughter that stays over regularly. In a big apartment its easy to live toghether only 2 brothers and the maid. (yep these are affordable in Brazil). Having a small kid around is a lot of fun… especially since we don’t mind the mess she does!

Now my father is moving back in after years... and it totally sucks ! He basically hijacked the big living room, kitchen and 2 rooms. From a spacious living we are now living more in our own rooms. My youngest brother is still studying and has no income... I'm a "old" 32 year old who doesn't care for paying rent. So I'll just suck it up for now. Living with my father means spending almost nothing... and still having cable TV, high speed internet and cooked meals. Living by myself would mean a 1 room apartment in a lousy place and no eletronic amenities... :)

Now back to the sex part… lack of privacy and being able to be noisy is the big negative of living with other non-romantic partners. Running around naked, etc… The pluses are having more cars to share and splitting the chores.