I’ll agree that the chances of your friendship surviving increase exponentially if you’re both laid-back about conflict and “rules.” Don’t assume that because your friend seems like a laid-back guy (gal, whatever) in public that they’re laid back at home, though. If your friend has very particular requirements about noise levels or air temperature or cleanliness, you are unlikely to get along in the long term unless your preferences and schedules line up EXACTLY (which, speaking practically, never happens).
I’ve been in many rooming relationships for financial reasons. My worst rooming situations have been with people who cared too much about what I was or was not doing. My best rooming relationship (the current one, actually) works because for the most part, neither of us gives a fuck. And when one of us does get a little peeved about something (it’s always her, I’m so laid-back I have to lift my head to see horizontally), we dash off a few emails and work it out quickly before it can fester into a passive-aggressive dogfight. I can count the number of real conflicts we’ve actually had in the last 6 months on one hand, though, and we’re both collaborative negotiators, so working things out isn’t painful.
Unfortunately, a lot of–most, even–people advertise themselves as laid-back roommates–because it sounds cool to not care, and it’s easier to attract potential roomies if you are laid-back–when really, most are not laid-back. **At all. **For instance, every single roommate I’ve ever been with has advertised being laid-back, when they’re way closer to “anal” on the care-spectrum. But there’s no way to evaluate a stranger’s laid-backness without actually living with them, so live and learn and develop your laid-back-dar.
And it doesn’t hurt to have opposite work schedules, because then you only see each other on the weekends.
It depends on your personalities and expectations. I roomed with my best friend in college, which worked out really well until our senior year. Then I roomed with another close friend out of college until I was 25, which worked out really well period. I’m still friends with both women, though closer to the latter than the former, mostly because of physical distance and because my roomate/friend in college did a few things her last year at college that were questionable.
She got very into the gay/lesbian/bisexual community, which I thought was awesome because she had just come out and needed support that I wasn’t able to give her because I wasn’t in the same situation. But she began to refer to straight people as “breeders,” cheated on her boyfriend and would disappear with random women for days at a time without telling anyone where she was or that she was leaving in the first place. I was kind of glad when our last year ended and we parted because I was done with the emotional rollercoaster.
With my other friend, we had some bad days and ticked each other off occasionally, but we got along well all the years that we lived together. By the time we moved out, we were ready not to live together, but it wasn’t because of any bad feelings. She was moving on to a different stage (had a boyfriend she wanted to live with who she later married), so it made sense for me to be out of the picture.
I’m lucky in that my roommate is a friend that I get along with well. Also, we have a 2-bed, 2 full bath apartment, so there’s no friction there. AND our work schedules rarely conflict with regards to using up the hot water.
This is the 2nd time he’s been my roomie. The first time, I had issues with many of his habits. But after he lived with some other, filthy, friends for a while, he became much neater. And after his stint in the intensive care unit, his gluttony and amazingly loud snoring disappeared.
I still wish on occassion that I was living alone again. But, of all the friends I have in this area, he’s possibly the best option.
I had no idea people had such bad experiences living with friends. All of my roommates have been friends, and my relationships with them are as strong ever.
I’ve probably had 20 roommates over the years. I can think of three that I didn’t want to kill within a month or two. One was my roommate roulette roomie from college. I lucked out, walked into the room, instantly liked my assigned roommate, and we were good friends for the rest of college, after which we lost touch. Another was a dear BFF with whom I’d been friends about three years prior to rooming. We lived together for almost two years and are still BFFs 20 some years later. We had one fight during that time and I had it comin’. The issue was resolved right then, there was no drawn out drama. Another was a chosen college roomie: we’d made friends and both didn’t like our roommates, so at first chance we moved into another dorm together. Also still very close friends after 20+ years.
I roomed with a good friend of mine for years (though the first couple of years may not count, since we were both traveling separately on business most of the time). We’d known each other since high school, but never roomed together until after college. It lasted until he got married and bought a house.
The way it worked for us is that we operated as a team on pretty much everything. We worked together, carpooled, went to the same dojo, grocery shopped together, cooked together, and worked on projects together. We only operated separately for solo tasks (with each of us taking the chores the other hated most) and for entertainment (he mostly watched TV and I mostly played computer games). In retrospect, it seems a rather odd way to live for a couple of people with loner tendencies. Each of us having our own space when we needed to be alone helped, no doubt.
I’ve had friends-as-roommates situations that ended in disaster and I’ve had them where they were awesome.
I had one friend who lived with me that we just seemed to be perfect as roommates. One of us would say, “I’m going to run out to the store and buy more garbage bags” and the other would respond, “No need! I just bought more garbage bags on the way home from work!” One of us would say, “I’m going to make tacos for dinner” and the other would respond, “That’s perfect! I made homemade salsa this morning while you were out.” We never fought about anything. It was scarily excellent.
I had another friend who I ended up hating that destroyed my stuff, had sex in my bed, had pretty severe trouble paying her half of the bills, etc. It was bad. I even once overheard her talking to her friend about how much easier her life would be if I were dead and making comments about needing to find somewhere she could buy rat poison in the city. She moved out shortly after that.
I’m with you on this one. I lived with my best friend all the way through college and we spent two years post college sharing one bedroom apartments after living alone. We are still best friends and our only conflict had to do with awful ex’s we had. Neither one of us liked the other’s girlfriend at the time. It was still nicer than discussions I have had with strangers.
Me: “Make sure you let me know when ‘Cara’ is coming by so I can give you guys some privacy”
Him: “Sure thing. Man you two really don’t get along at all”
Currently I am living with my best friend and we have zero issues. Whoever cooks dinner, buys groceries and we split everything else down the middle. We have similar standards for cleanliness and the chores just get done. Not sharing a bathroom is pretty awesome cause girls just seem to have a ton of stuff but the kitchen is always clean and our living space never gets dirty or cluttered. We actually just renewed our lease again the other week. I will admit that our situation is slightly different because we both live in Austin but nearly everyone we know is still in NYC/NJ (Pittsburgh too for me). As a result, we have a lot of visitors (at least once a month) but they generally come to see both of us.
I find it easier to live with close friends because there is no need to tiptoe around issues. Everything just comes out whenever there is a problem and it gets resolved quickly with no drama.
I have lived with many different sets of friends in university. After the first three sets, I decided that for me to be happy living in a shared arrangement, I would have to do all the cleaning. I am always the one with the higher standards. After that, I was much easier to live with (since the house was clean) and others were, too (since they didn’t have to clean the house).
As for food, bills, etc. I made sure I was in charge of those so they would get paid. I would post the amounts owing to me on the fridge. If you paid, great! If not, I made sure I had enough that covering everyone’s share was not a huge problem for me.
And food is always an issue. I have never successfully shared food with a roomie. We each just got our own (usually we would go to the store together) and would give some here and there to each other.
Basically, I was a bit of a doormat but it made me happy.
I have lived with a friend who is also now my business partner. It has its tense moments but we get through it and the friendship has survived 21 years.
My current living arangement is even more exotic. I live with a woman I dated for a few months, we decided to break it off, but we still talked here and there. Then her roomie bailed and she asked if I would replace her. Been here 6 months now…all pretty cool. We are not a couple in any meaningful way, we sometimes do some mutual meals and such but nothing more.
In my experience, the most critical issue is cleaning. If you’re compatible about how neat/messy you tend to live and how messy/neat you can tolerate the other person being, you’re 90% of the way there. It’s really hard to figure this out in advance, though, unless you’ve seen their current place in its natural state.
Key questions to ask them and yourself are:
Dirty dishes: wash right away or leave in the sink? What’s the longest you’ll normally let them sit there before washing them? I’ll often let them sit there for X hours/days: does that seem too long to you?
How often do you normally clean the bathroom? How long until you start getting pissed that I haven’t cleaned it?
Common areas: keep our stuff out of them, or just leave our stuff wherever? Do you like things picked up, or do you tend toward comfort/laziness over neatness?
The hard part is getting people to answer these questions honestly. People always feel like the “right” answer is the tendency toward neatness, but in roommate relations, all that matters is that you’re on the same page, not that you’re neat.
Other issues like noise, guests and shared items need to be hashed out in advance as well, but cleanliness is the most critical one.
Roomed with two different sets of friends, two different summers, during college.
Typical roommate conflict in summer #1: “Someone here is leaving grease on the dishes when washing them. No hard feelings, but I think I’ll just use my own dishes from now on.” [In retrospect, although it doesn’t matter for the point I’m trying to get across I was probably the one leaving grease on them… I was a very clueless kid at the time.]
Typical roommate conflict in summer #2: “Hey OtherRoomie, it looks like raspberry forgot to do her cleaning duties and I am sooooo mad at her, but I won’t actually talk to her about it because that would be too much conflict and that would suck, maybe I’ll leave her a little snippy note about it, can you believe she did that??”
My Summer #1 roommates and I still talk about that summer as the one that cemented our friendship. On the other hand, I think Summer #2 destroyed what friendship I had with that group. The moral is, as others have been saying, honest communication (and not doing passive-aggressive crap) is key.
In the past, I have twice roomed with people who were good friends before house-sharing (I am not counting college/uni experiences in the far distant past.) In one instance it was another woman, in a house I owned. If anything, the friendship got better. It was fine.
In the other prior instance, it was a male friend (I am female, BTW) and we co-shared two different rented houses. Ditto, it was really fine. We became better friends as a result.
In both instances, I knew the people quite well before deciding to share accomodations. Also, all parties involved were fairly non-weird and tolerant, so we were able to work out nagging annoyances without much drama.
I found it was always much easier to become good friends with a roommate I had barely known before, than to stay friends with a good friend who later became a roommate.
Back in my youth, I used to live in New York and I was always taking people in temporarily as roommates, while they journeyed to New York, to become actors or models or authors. The less I knew about them, the better it worked out.
I did it and it worked fine. A few things helped. We were both on the exact same page as regards overnight visitors and general cleanliness. Different bathrooms. So I didn’t give a flip about how he cleaned his (but he kept it clean anyway). A dishwasher. (Eliminated a lot of the potential dishes in the sink issues). We both were kinda quiet. Also I was really laid back about money and made enough to temporarily cover any shortfalls and he was really good about paying me back quickly.
We did used the argue ab out the milk though, but only because we both though we should be buying it and not the other guy.
I roomed with a friend after grad school and it ended in tears, but the actual living part was fine. Why it ended in tears is a long story, but the moral is this: when it comes to money, make sure everything is clearly written down and agreed upon. Agree on what will happen if one person backs out of the contract before it’s over. You think you know someone, but when money gets involved, people can get a bit crazy.