I found a note dissing me and my roommate... what should I do?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I just found a piece of paper that had fallen behind the couch that my roommate had written on (I only picked it up because I thought it might be my trash). It’s dated October 14th, when she was having problems with her boyfriend, and it’s written as a letter to him. She talks about self-esteem problems and then, at the end, there’s:

“Liisa, Em, and Kendra are NOT people that I want to be like and therefore are not people I want to regularly hang around.”

I’m Kendra, and Em is our other roommate.

I’m flabbergasted. That was two weeks after Em and I made cookies and ordered pizza for her birthday that her boyfriend forgot. I’ve never been anything but nice and generous with her, letting her borrow my bike, clothes, etc. We’ve had a great time being roommates and I love her to death. I’ve probably been annoying at times, but so have the other two.

I’d like to tell her when Em’s not around, “I found this, and you’re entitled to your own opinions and I’m not mad, but you should have more sense than to leave something like this out in the open.” Or should I just pull a Miss Manners and drop the note in the trash and not mention anything to anyone?

2

Your hands are going to get dirty carrying this to the trash. But if you show it to your other roommate, you’re just going to get her hands dirty with it, too.

It’s crap. Flush it and be done with it.

If that’s not the kind of person your roommate wants to be like, all the better for you.

3

Tough call. Personally, I wouldn’t be able to let it go. But a face-to-face confrontation may be a bad thing - as it just asks for an explosion of emotion. I suggest a note. I would first mention that you were cleaning, and saw your name on the paper, which prompted you to read the context of what your name was used in - an innocent action.

Then I would mention, as you said, that she certainly has her right to decide who she gets along with and wants to hang out with, but your feelings were certainly unintentionally hurt because this letter came days after being the only people that remembered her birthday and did something special for it. Tell her that everything you’ve done with her has been completely heartfelt, and feel that you are being deceived with a false friendship. Mention that sometimes communication lines get somewhat clogged in such close quarters, and you’d like an opportunity to clarify or apologize for any actions that you may have unintentionally caused.

Or you could just get in a catfight, under which circumstances I have a webcam that you can set up beforehand.

4

I think there’s an angle you may not have considered here. Perhaps the boyfriend is jealous of the relationship you all enjoy as room-mates and is putting pressure on her to distance herself from you, or he could be trying to change her and pressuring her to be more like you.

I’d definitely make her aware that you’ve found the note, if only because it’s the kind of thing almost certain to fester a resentment which has the potential to disrupt your living arrangements. Try expressing yourself in the same way you have here; point out that you thought things we fine, and your surprised (and a little hurt) to find out they are not. There may be a specific way in which she doesn’t want to be like you (you might be ambitious and her not or something similar) which is not a personal reflection on any of you, just indicative of having different outlooks on what’s important.

You can try to let it drop, but unless you’re made of sterner stuff than most of us, it will be difficult to carry on as if you’d never seen the note; if there are personal issues, then it’s better to sort them out now than to let them become magnified by time.

Good luck. :slight_smile:

5

Damn. Is it too late to change my answer? :wink:

6

I also would not be able to let this go. What I would do (in instances of EXTREME self-control for me) is write on the note ‘wish I’d known that before your birthday.’ - V and leave the note on the lovely girl’s pillow.

In instances of lack of self-control, I’d ball it up, toss it in her face, and tell her that if she doesn’t like the people she lives with, she’s welcome to get the f*** out.

7

Sometimes people just dislike each other for no good reason.

Take the roommate I’m about to move out on. We have all the same interests and more or less the same sleep pattern. We can’t stand being around each other. There’s something about our two personalities that just causes conflict. (that, and we can’t stand each others’ friends either.) The longer we try to put up with it and just be civil to each other, the worse it gets.

I’m glad I’m moving out of there. I know moving from a 2-room double to a single seems kind of frivolous, but I’m sure if we’d continued living together, it would have turned very volatile by the end of the year.

8

So? A note like that wouldn’t get to me much. All they said was 'are NOT people that I want to be like" Big deal…I wouldn’t want people to be like me either. How would I ever get an interpreter if everyone was deaf?

Plus, it’s been taken out of context so you really don’t know what the point was when it was written, right?

9

handy, I think the “are not people I want to regularly hang around.” part is what she’s upset about. Certainly not a crime to feel that way, but also not good form to let people do nice things for you when you do feel that way.

10

I can’t see where the conversation would get past “I found this note and noticed your comments about me” "you found my fuckin’ note that was addressed to some one else and you read it?!?!?!" and go downhill real fast from there.

I can understand why you’d think less of her now than before, why you’d be hurt, etc. but the bottom line is you read her note.

Yea, I know ‘I was just…’. It was in her handwriting. As soon as you recognize that, you stop and give it to that person.

So, that’s how I’d handle it now. “here, I found this behind the couch, it was in your handwriting”. “did you read it?” “No, it’s not mine, why would I read it?”

If you’re rooming with several other females, I’m guessing college age, right? late teens, early twenties? My recollection (back in the dark ages when I was that age) was that we would write all sorts of stuff to boyfriend that we wouldn’t necessarily mean the same way the next hour. just MHO.

11

<<How would I ever get an interpreter if everyone was deaf?>>

<hijack> handy, if everyone was deaf, why would you NEED one? </hijack>

Seriously…if you didn’t want to confront your roommate with the note, but you’re curious as to whether she actually feels the way she wrote down, you could just sit down and talk with her and ask her if there’s anything wrong or if she’s happy living there…basically the same things you’d want answered if you confronted her with the note, without bringing up the issue of HOW you knew to ask.

Corr

12

I’d wipe my butt with it, and stick it to her door with a big screw.

13

Save it as ammo for a future fight. If she ever tries to cop a “I’m your friend, you have to be nice to me” sort of attitude, WHAM! “I thought you didn’t even want to hang around us.”

14

Be an adult. Throw it away and forget you ever saw it. She’s a roommate, not your spouse. As long as she is paying the bills on time and doing a sufficient job of being civil why worry about it?

15

Leave it on the end of her bed. If she asks if you put it there, deny it. Don’t tell Em about it, so she’ll deny it too.

Your roommate will know one of you saw it, but she won’t know which one. She’ll be more careful in future.

The paragraph you provided doesn’t say what she thinks of you, just that she doesn’t want to be like you. I don’t know if the letter makes it clearer, but I can see that it could be possible that she doesn’t mean it in a bad way. Something along the lines of “Kendra and Em are great students, and spend much of their free time studying, but I don’t want to be like them. I’d rather party and have fun while I’m young”. Or “Kendra and Em are frugal with their money, and will do without luxuries to make sure they have some put away for a rainy day, but I don’t want to be like them - I want luxuries now! What if the rainy day never comes?”. It could even be a mild complaint against you that doesn’t mean she likes you any less - “Kendra and Em prefer to party instead of study, but I don’t want to be like them” would mean she doesn’t approve of your lifestyle, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like you.

16

This happened to me with my former roomie.

the story:

R was the kind of girl that was perpetually engaged. she was sooooooo in love with who ever her current boyfriend was. even if it was 2 dates into the relationship. There she was, 20 and had been “engaged” 4 times already. no lie.
They would break up, inevitably, and I was the one who was there to pick up the pieces.

We moved in together and R took up with some new guy. He was 17.

R was also the kind of person that if she saw something of mine laying about, instead of putting it in my room, she’d put it “somewhere”. This would occur all the time. Our purse would be on the hall table. mine would be “put away”. Hers would remain. :rolleyes:

One day I was looking for my pen that I needed for class.
I called her and she said it was in her room somewhere and to go ahead and look. So I did. I found it above an old note her boyfriend left for her.

Honest to God, I couldn’t help but read it because at the bottom it said:

Please tell Baboon that the maintenance man came in and wanted to buy one of her paintings. (she never told me this). underneath it said: your loving fiance.

this is all I read. I couldn’t help it, I saw my name.
so then later that day, I was talking to her, I said:

you know R, best friends that we are, I hope we can talk about this. You constantly seem to have a ring around your finger. (I was speaking figuratively). I saw this note he wrote you, of which I am HONESTLY really sorry I read…C, your Boyfriend is awfully young and he’s only a freshman…

HAHA.

the joke was on me: they had already purchased wedding rings and were planning to elope.

(I had NO idea of this).

She accused me of searching through her stuff…etc.

in short, the situation got ugly VERY fast. To the point that our 5 year friendship was permanently ruined.

Last I heard they got married and had a kid later on and they both had to drop out of college. :frowning:

so, my advice:
only bring it up if you are willing to lose your friendship.
the joke was on me. apparently,

17

I think the key phrase here is ‘regularly hang around’. And the most important word is ‘regularly’.

You’re going to have to learn that not everyone you meet in life is going to want to be your best friend. Your flat mate doesn’t say she hates you, she doesn’t say you are a horrible person. Just that she doesn’t want to be like you or spend all her time with you. That doesn’t make either of you nasty people and it doesn’t make her a bad roommate. It doesn’t stop you getting along with each other either.

Besides, the note could be old news. She could have changed her mind. She could just have been in a bad mood at the time. She could have been lying to her boyfriend for one reason or another. You, however, read something not addressed to you which you really shouldn’t have. That doesn’t make you a bad person, in the circumstances I don’t know if I’d have resisted the temptation either. But making a confrontation out of it would be even worse a mistake.

Dispose of the note. Forget it.

18

I have a sister-in-law who is wonderful. She’d give you the shirt off her back. She is a wonderful friend. She sucks as a parent, however. She simply cannot stand up to her kids. Her 3 kids under 5 have no bedtime, for instance. Her house is a disaster because they eat popsicles (they eat 10 popsicles a day!) all over the house. Her 1 year old doesn’t take naps because it breaks SIL’s heart to hear her crying.

In order to be a good mom, you need to be part bitch.

No, I’m not in the wrong thread. I’m making a point. I was giving my honest assessment about my SIL. However, I would never say things like that if I thought she would read them. In fact, I would be MORTIFIED if she read it. It might very well ruin a wonderful friendship.

We all say things about people in private that we would NEVER say to that person face to face.

tsarina, think about things you’ve said about your mother, your friends, your family to other people in private. Look at what you’ve written in this thread about the roommate that you are complaining about. Would you say these things to her face? I doubt it. Face it, most of us are guilty of gossiping. I’m sure your roommate would be mortified to know that you read her private thoughts. She’d undoubtedly also be mortifed to know that she hurt you.

My advice is this: Use her words to remind you how hurtful gossip can be. But I wouldn’t use her private letter against her. Or, don’t go casting stones unless you are without sin.

19

Forget it. Really. It will only cause problems if you hang on to it. You say she wrote in when she was having trouble with her boyfriend, so she was proably in a very higly charged emotional state.

Judge her by actions from now on - is she friendly? If so great if shes a real bitch then do somtihng about it. But until then don’t worry about it.

As other people have mentioned it will only cause an aurgument proably not even about what she wrote, but about the fact you read it at all.
IMHO. Gartog.

20

Correction: you didn’t say anything negative about your roommate in this thread. That was someone else. But my advice remains the same.

Good luck!