I’d like to ask you all, what experiences do you have with a roommate of the opposite gender and what do you think are the pros and cons?
Now I have not been in a roommate situation for over 18 years since before I was married. Back then I owned a 3 BR, 2 Bath house and rented out a private room and bath which paid for 3/4 my mortgage.
So I advertised the room and was surprised so many women showed interest. I asked them why they would want a man for a roommate and often they would say they grew up with lots of brothers or they just felt more comfortable around men. Some actually said flat out they kept having problems with other women getting to personal or wanting to share clothes and such.
I turned down several, not because I was sexist, but because I knew I would have trouble not becoming emotionally attached and would have trouble asking for rent or potentially asking them to leave.
I ended up posting ads specifically requesting men yet I still had women wanting the room.
I (male) shared an apartment with 3 women (sort of a 4’s Company) back at university. No problems ever arose other than me being chided for using too much talcum powder and leaving footprints on the wood floors. It all boils down to the individual personalities, not their gender alone. You can live with people of the same sex and if they’re assholes, or if you have conflicting values, there will be trouble.
If you’re sufficiently self aware to ‘know’ you’re likely to get emotionally attached and face problems, then do yourself a great big favour and stick to male roommates.
Don’t know why you’d even consider otherwise, based on what you shared. How much drama do you want/need in your life, after all?
Yes, I agree with this, we all work with in mixed gender workplaces and most of us manage to contain ourselves. I’m not a big fan of treating opposite genders as ‘other’ and putting up a wall between us.
I rented a room in a mixed shared-house. It wasn’t any more complicated than having a male next-door neighbor. Literally a non-issue. Thinking back, I also loved in mixed gender dorms on college as well.
I also shared a small apartment with a platonic male friend. It was fine outside of the problems with sharing any space, we knew each other well and had good boundaries.
But I agree-- we all have different experiences and outlooks, and if this is something you’d be uncomfortable with, don’t do it. You’ll just end up making her uncomfortable as well.
Had female roommates at three different times in my life. Never got attached, never had any problem collecting rent. Two ended up being great and a lot of fun, the other not so much. I actually preferred females to males as roommates. Perhaps, the opposite sex dynamic prompted them to keep their personal stuff out of sight better than the dudes I lived with.
I am a 47 year-old woman and have a roommate that is a 65 year-old man. I entered this living arrangement because my teenaged son, at the time, was becoming aggressive towards me due to autism-related meltdowns and such, and he (my roommate) was looking for a roommate anyway, and we got along well despite being completely different. We have been living together for 3 years. For the most part, it has gone fairly well. He provides me with extra security (not so much for the son anymore, he has moved past that problem), and he’s a good handyman and a mechanic by trade, so that’s nice… and I do most of the cleaning and I buy all of the groceries and do all of the cooking in exchange for reduced rent. It works out.
Except-- a few months ago he told me that he was in love with me. :smack: At first I was kind of freaked out. I am not physically or in any other way attracted to him whatsoever. I would NEVER be with him like that. But after I thought about it, it’s kind of understandable that he would feel that way. Not that I’m the greatest or anything, but it just seems like that’s the nature of a man- if he spends a lot of time with a woman that’s not completely repulsive, he might fall in love with her. We don’t really talk about it, and I don’t take advantage of it, but I know that pretty soon the living situation will have to end because it’s just ever so slightly uncomfortable to know that he has those feelings and I don’t.
So, if you do end up getting a female roommate, make sure she’s repulsive, is what I’m saying.
I lived in a co-ed (by corridors) dorm in college (which was a very radical innovation in the early 1970s). I’ve lived in mixed-sex group houses without any problems. In one of them I had a cute female roommate who I was attracted to, but since she never showed any signs of any interest I just ignored it (and avoided giving her any indication of it). It wasn’t a big deal.
I was the only woman sharing a house with three other men. No issues, aside from the one guy using all our internet bandwidth and the other guy throwing out the peanut butter jar with three sandwiches worth of peanut butter still inside. Being housemates with me essentially makes me like a person less, to the point of ruining a friendship, because I have to deal with all of a person’s sloppy and petty stuff I wouldn’t normally see if I wasn’t living with them.
Overall, after my experience of an all-female dorm for one year, I far prefer a mixed-gender housing situation. And there’s something to be said about mixed-gender households being a bit less messy because the “ah shit, hide the underwear” mentality is in effect 24/7.
[back-when-I-was-a-kid tangent]
When I entered a small private college in 1969, freshmen women had hours (in by 10 p.m.), all women were required to sign out if gone overnight (such as home for the weekend), and intervisitation (opposite sex person in your room) was only allowed from 2-4 p.m. Sunday, doors open and feet on floor. Within a few years all those rules were gone. There were co-ed dorms and 24-hour intervisitation. The effects of the sexual revolution and related 60’s social upheaval had arrived.
[/back-when-I-was-a-kid tangent]
There is a very real danger of unrequited emotional attachments developing over time or potentially stuff happening when people are drunk or high with mixed sex household arrangements , but it’s a roll of the dice. Most of the time it will be fine if everyone is an adult and engaged with their work and career.
I’d say it shows more maturity to recognize the issue and take steps to avoid it than to just say “I’m gonna man up!” and risk making some woman’s life uncomfortable down the line just to prove how manly you are.
If it was going to be a problem that solely affected him then sure, he can take the gamble if he wants. The issue he’s worried about won’t just affect him so he’s taking a level approach to say “Better I just avoid that pitfall altogether”.
Back in college lived for several years in a house with two other guys and two gals. The arrangement seemed to work pretty well, although there was a roommate-chemistry problem with one of the gals living there senior year. The gals that seemed to get along best were the ones that were “one of the guys” - you know, would watch football games drink beer, and tell crude jokes along side you. It was evident almost immediately, though, that we were going to have problems when “princess” moved in :dubious:
I’m a single woman who owns a house, and I’ve had two male tennants over the last 10 years. One was a friend of my recently-ex boyfriend (at the time) who was homeless, but had a job, so I took him in and collected rent. Once I kicked him out, my long-time friend from school moved in.
Both guys lived in the basement and I hardly saw them. The friend from school guy got a girlfriend shortly after moving in, and then she was here all the time and that started to drive me mental - not because I am in love with him, but because there were now two un-rent-paying people living in my house.
I’ve never lived with another woman, other than when one of my girl friends from home moved in to my dorm room for a few months. I could see me living with a man or a woman, no big deal.
Early one morning I was sleeping in just my underwear and my bedsheet had fallen off. (It was nearly 100 degrees inside during the summer because she didn’t like air conditioning.) I heard someone sneaking into my room, so I opened my eyes and looked over to see my roommate at the doorway. She apologized saying she was just checking the room for any dirty plates, then went back to her bedroom on the other side of the living room.
I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I kept my eyes shut pretending to be asleep. Or maybe I should have invited her to cuddle with me. Probably for the best though, she was constantly getting in fights with her boyfriend, and one day she came home in a rage and went off on me getting very personal in her insults, because I had temporarily parked in her parking spot (which she had previously authorized) as I wasn’t expecting her to arrive home for work that early. So I loaded up my car and moved out that day.
Oh, her reason for getting male roommates was she didn’t along with females.
I (female) had a male roommate for many years. He was my then-boyfriend’s best friend, and he and I remained friends after the breakup. It worked out well because he was very introverted so I didn’t have to worry about him having friends over or whatever, and we also worked opposite hours so we weren’t home together much. He was a great friend. Everything was fine until he moved out then later told me that he had been secretly in love with me the entire time. Poor guy.
If I was ever in the position of needing a roommate again I would definitely prefer a guy. I had disasterous experiences with female roommates. “Only one queen bee per hive.”
