November 23, 2023 • 42 mins
Living in sharehouses in our 20s are like their own weird, social experiment. We put together a group of people with different upbringings, personalities, lifestyles and standards under one roof and expect it to work out. Sometimes it does, other times it doesn't and we see social harmony break down. In today's episode we discuss:
- The four styles of roommates
- The Cinderella Roommate
- The psychology of freeloading
- The influence of personality
- Living with friends
- The role of communication
- Conflict, stonewalling and the silent treatment
- When its time to move out!
Listen now as we break down the psychology of roommates and sharehouses. And don't forget to share your horror roommate stories!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we break
down the psychology of our twenties. Today, we're talking about
something that we've actually never spoken about on the podcast before,
which is honestly shocking, because when it comes to our twenties,
(00:49):
one of the universal, relatable, joint experiences of people during
this decade is living with other people, is the share house,
communal living, flatting, whatever you want to call it, and
a lot about that experience is deeply psychological. How we
learn to live with others, how we communicate our relationships,
(01:11):
the conflict, the tension, the psychology is really everywhere in
that dynamic. I think our twenties are often that time
for many of us when we take the leap to
move out of our childhood home, our family home, and
really forge kind of our own independent lives. It's a
huge hallmark of this decade. I guess we just outgrow
(01:31):
the family environment. We don't feel like a child anymore.
We want our own space, and often the most kind
of economically viable option is to move in with a
group of other people our own age. I think not
only is that sometimes the only thing we can afford,
let's be real, but a lot of this is that
(01:51):
these are people that we share the same lifestyle with,
and it's kind of like a ride of passage, such
a valuable social experience to see how we live with others,
to maybe make lifelong friends, to build our own community
that is separate from the family unit. But it's also
not that straightforward. I've been living in sharehouses or dorms
(02:13):
with roommates since I was seventeen, so for the last
seven years that is way too long. And of course
I think, like anyone who has done their time, I
have some stories. We might romanticize this way of living
and the chaos and the group dinners and the movie nights,
whatever it may be, but the people we choose to
(02:34):
live with are sometimes the most important people in our lives,
and so it's kind of make or break, depending on
how well we actually get along. We are sharing a
home together, which, if you think about it, is like
the most sacred space that a human can have. It
is our place of comfort, of safety, of security. We
(02:56):
sleep under the same roof as these people. We see
the constantly and their choices impact our quality of life.
There was actually one piece of research published on this
in twenty sixteen, and it indicates that the people who
we live with impact everything from our eating habits, our
exercise habits, our sleeping habits in both a positive and
(03:20):
a negative direction, particularly through things like peer pressure or
observational learning and the adoption of communal values. And depending
on your experience, that can actually be really great. We
can become really thick and fast friends. For example, in Korea,
they surveyed nearly a thousand young single adults living in
(03:42):
share housing and they found that people who were living
with a roommate reported feeling less lonely and more socially supported.
So there are definitely a lot of benefits. But when
that turns sour, when we're met with conflict, different personalities,
different standards for cleanliness. Yes, when we move in with
(04:02):
friends and we begin to see a different side of
someone now that we share a bathroom or a kitchen
with them. That is when I think the sharehouse truly
becomes a real psychological peatrie. Dish conflict or tension in
a home has a massive effect on our mental well being,
and there have been so many studies, articles, research projects
(04:25):
on this, particularly amongst young adults, because if you think
about it, you're basically putting two, three, four, sometimes more
people together in a small environment, all of whom have
different backgrounds, expectations, lifestyles, and we're just kind of praying
that it works. And so a sharehouse is kind of
(04:48):
its own social experiment on how relationships are formed, how
we communicate, how we interact, how relationships break down, and
that is really what I want to explore today. We
are going to discuss what makes a good roommate, different
types of roommates, the four different types of roommates and
(05:09):
living styles, the dilemma of kind of moving in with friends,
and also what causes social harmony to break down when
you are in a sharehouse. I also want to talk
about what psychology has to say about creating a positive space,
being a good roommate, dealing with conflict in the home,
(05:29):
and also being able to recognize that moment when it
is time to move out, when it is time to
live alone. I think I'm getting to that point. Now.
I've done my time, I've done my hours, I've had
the sharehouse experience, and I really just want to come
home and not talk to anyone. At this point, I
kind of want to watch whatever I want to watch
(05:49):
on TV and not have to like time my showers
around other people. So I think I might only have
like a few more months to actually be able to
talk about this, probably from like a lived experience, and
that's what we're going to do today. So without further ado,
I think it's about time we break down all of
the psychology to do with communal living, share houses and roommates.
(06:13):
So let's get into it. The move to share housing
from the family home, whether you're living with complete strangers
or friends whoever, it's really exciting, Like we can't overstate
(06:33):
the anticipation and like fun of getting to buy your
own bowls and picking out your bed sheets and being
able to have a space that is your own and
separate from your parents and your siblings whoever else is
in your house. It honestly just feels like super adult.
It's like one of those experiences, I think we look
at and we're like, oh, yeah, this is the point
(06:55):
where I felt like I was actually mature enough to
call myself an adult human being. And then I think
the social element of it is also super appealing, especially
when you live with friends. It's like summer camp or
a sleepover every night of the week. And it's the
freedom that many of us, I think have been aspiring
towards since we were children. You know. It's kind of
(07:16):
similar to having your own money. You get a space
where you can live your life exactly how you would
like it. So I have this theory that the first
six months of communal living are like the honeymoon period.
It is the buzz of new things, of new relationships,
or at least a new dimension to a relationship if
you're living with friends and this really new environment. But
(07:38):
I think after that six months period is when the
reality of like constantly having to share your space with
someone who is not related to you sinks in. The
biggest thing we have to adapt to is different living styles,
because each of us has grown up in a certain
unique environment, expecting certain levels of cleanliness, different rules, times
(07:59):
that we want to rest, times that we want to
socialize people just to use their spaces differently. They treat
them differently based on the home environment of their childhood.
It's really interesting because there's been research on this and
it's shown that how your parents organized a home is
going to be one of the biggest determinants for how
you choose to treat your future living spaces. And it
(08:23):
is natural normal for those there to big kind of
differences across people. The biggest one for me is the
level of mess that we are willing to tolerate. I
have noticed this in my own sharehouses and with my roommates,
where there is a distinction between wanting things tidy and
(08:43):
wanting things clean. Some people just don't care if the
floors aren't vacuumed or the couches are a little bit dirty,
as long as there are like no personal items in
a communal space. But others are totally fine with like
a certain level of untidiness as long as the house
is sanate tized. And then there are the housemates, the
unique housemates who just don't care, who are happy to
(09:06):
live in absolute squalor. I often see this as a
reaction to three things. Firstly, for these individuals who really
don't care about mess or cleanliness. That was the standard
that their parents set, whereby they also didn't really care
about living amongst I'm not going to say filth, but
(09:27):
just like living amongst mess. Maybe it's because yeah, they
just really they were completely apathetic to it, or be
they were too busy to deal with it. And so
because that person has never known any differently, because they
have adjusted to this lifestyle, they bring that to the sharehouse,
they bring that to the environment. I had a roommate
(09:49):
once who was so revolting. He would use like all
of the glasses in our house for coffee and wine
and beer whatever, and then he would refuse to clean them,
and so we stopped cleaning them as well. We were like,
I don't want to be your servant anymore, almost in
like protest, until every kid, you not, every single glass
(10:12):
in our house had like a layer of mold at
the bottom. We couldn't even use them. Eventually, I actually
I took all of the glasses over to my friend's house.
I put them through their dishwasher, brought them home and
hid them from him, and I told my other roommates
like where they were, and for like weeks we would
have like a glass of water or whatever we would finish,
(10:33):
we would wash our glass and just like put it
back in its hiding place until he kind of had
to like come back to us with his tail between
his legs. There's just people like that who like do
not care about filth. The second reaction is whereby we
have these people who have grown up in a really
strict household where the level of cleanliness was like almost
(10:55):
hospital like, and they move out of home and experience
like a complete reversal in habits. They finally have like
the freedom to treat their space as they would like it,
and so they unconsciously counteract what was previously expected of
them by going in the complete entire opposite direction. It's
(11:17):
almost like a delayed childhood rebellion against the rules that
were upheld by their parents. And also there's the other
element of you know, no one's asking them to be
clean anymore, no one's asking them to keep their space tidy,
and so they no longer have the motivation to self
enforce those levels of cleanliness. It's really interesting because this
(11:41):
is actually a concept in psychology. It's known as the
rebellion of the over criticized child. But in these instances
often what we see as people who skip their childhood
and teenage rebellion stage because the family environment was so strict.
But then that emerges in adulthood when they start living
with others, almost as a of like emotional catharsis or
(12:02):
release from the pressure they experienced as a child. And finally,
there are situations in which one roommate has such a
high standard for cleanliness that they are just willing to
do all the work to keep their environment as they
would like it, and that results in what we would
call freeloading by the other members of the house. So
freeloading is actually an economics term whereby we see people
(12:26):
take advantage of other people's generosity or efforts. Sometimes unconsciously,
they've just come to expect this from the other person.
Sometimes they like engage in the delusion that oh, yeah,
my roommate cleans because it makes them happy, or they
don't even notice yet they still benefit from this person's
like additional labor in the house. I like to call
(12:48):
this type of roommate the Cinderella roommate. Obviously, in the
fairy tale Cinderella, Cinderella is the one who keeps everything clean.
In the background, she does all the washing, all the sweeping,
the dishes for her stefe sisters without any appreciation. I
would say that most houses have a Cinderella, and often
(13:09):
these people are also very deep people pleases, so they
won't say anything until it kind of like boils over
and explodes, or they just become so resigned to the
mess that they let everything get disgusting and then even
more frustrated when nobody does anything, whilst the other roommates
don't really like pick up on that, and they're just
(13:31):
waiting expecting this person to eventually get to a point
of like such deep frustration that they'll just go back
to cleaning everything all over again. It's super unfair. It
is super unfair, and I think the existence of a
Cinderella points to a very important psychological truth about sharehouses.
Each roommate is going to take on a certain social
(13:54):
role in the house, the same way that each of
us takes on a role in the family home, and
those roles sometimes are going to come into conflict. So
the best way to understand this, I think is through
this theory called the styles of life theory. This was
originally introduced by the psychiatrist Alfred Adler. You might know
(14:17):
him because he coined the term inferiority complex, but he
also came up with this theory that each of us
has a unique, unconscious and repetitive way of responding to
or avoiding the main tasks of life. That includes friendships, love, work, behavior,
(14:37):
or relationships in the home. Obviously, he wasn't applying this
theory to the relationship between roommates in the twenty first century,
but when we take his core ideas, they have a
lot of applicability. So there are four styles or roles
that we can take on in the share home. So
(14:57):
there's the ruling type. This per and is the leader.
They might take care of the bills. Maybe they were
like the og housemate or renter. They feel more of
a sense of like possessiveness or control over the home.
They are more liberal with using communal spaces, They host parties.
It kind of feels like it's their home. Then we
(15:18):
have the getting type, the ones who don't really do anything.
They take rather than give. They take advantage of the
other members in the house. We have the avoiding type,
the one who is kind of like never there, who
like very much, doesn't take part in share house activities,
kind of stays out of conflict, stays out of the way.
(15:40):
It's a bit of a ghost. And finally, we have
the socially useful type. This is very similar to the
Cinderella archetype. They kind of contribute more than all the others,
but they're also more likely to have like a social
interest in keeping the peace and they really like like
a certain level of social activity. Each of us in
(16:03):
a sharehouse takes on one of these roles. It's really
interesting because I know which one I am, and I'm
pretty sure I could easily assign every single roommate I've
ever had to one of these roles, like easily. And
you don't have to be a house of four, like
you can be a house of two or three, or
five or six, because some people can take on the
(16:24):
same role, but also there can be people who only
take on one role and there is one left out.
So I think that this theory is one of the
best psychological explanations for why we have different sharehouse or
roommate like personalities and archetypes. Beyond these kinds of prototypes,
I've already mentioned it, but we have the kind of
(16:47):
added nuance of personality. Each of us is going to
come to the table not just with a different background
and a different set of standards, but a different set
of attributes and personality traits which kind of influence how
easy it really is the people to get along with you.
I often think about this according to the Big five
(17:09):
personality traits in psychology, So these are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,
and neuroticism. Out of those five kind of big five
personality traits, each of us sits somewhere along the spectrum
of each of them. And if you've ever done the
Maya Briggs personality test, you can kind of based on
(17:30):
this combination determine what kind of person you are and
also what kind of person you're going to be in
a communal environment, Like maybe you are the entertainer or
the executive, or the mediator, the debate and the commander.
I don't know which one you are, but that individual
personality profile is going to contribute to the dynamic Personally,
(17:53):
I believe that the best combination for a roommate is
someone who is conscientious, honest, open to experience, agreeable, and
hopefully low on euroticism, which means that they are emotionally
stable and they deal with stress well. And one of
the worst combinations is someone who we would call high conflict.
(18:16):
I think we all have an idea of what a
high conflict individual looks like. We've probably all met one.
This is someone who loves drama and they have this
pattern of increasing tension, increasing like the melo drama of
an environment, rather than reducing it or resolving it. This
pattern usually happens over and over again in many different
(18:40):
situations with many different people. They blame others, they don't
care about boundaries, they never feel like they've done anything wrong.
They are extreme, and they always prefer to prioritize themselves
over like the collective well being and comfort of the home.
(19:01):
For example, I had a roommate like this who would
throw parties all the time, and I honestly got to
the point where I think he just enjoyed us getting
angry at him, like he liked being the villain in
the house. For some weird neurological psychological reason, I think
(19:22):
some people are just more conflict prone compared to others.
Those of us who are conflict averse running away from
disagreements or frustration, but Honestly, either end of that spectrum
is equally harmful. When we're talking about living in a
shared home. Obviously it's extremely difficult to live with someone
(19:43):
who has no respect for other people and is always
wanting to argue. But then we also have that roommate
who is mad about something, is annoyed at doing all
the cleaning or people not paying bills on time, and
they say nothing about it. They keep it to themselves,
but it shows up in other ways, like they stonewall
you or they ic you out. I think it's hard
(20:06):
because the people we live with don't have the same
conflict style as us. But also sometimes when you know,
we don't have the same comfort as we would with
a family member, so we feel really awkward bringing things up.
You know, perhaps if it's a stranger and you just
feel like it would be really inappropriate to have those
kinds of conversations. Or even worse is when they are
(20:31):
a friend and we worry that a small disagreement to
do with like house upkeep or lifestyles or whatever is
going to impact our relationship as friends beyond our relationship
as roommates. This brings me to I think one of
my biggest points moving in with friends this is such
(20:55):
a big risk. Let me just tell you that now.
I also think that it is a mistake that I've
made in the past. But I've also had really great
success stories. I lived with two of my closest friends
for almost two years. We never had a single problem
because our lifestyles, our expectations for each other, our communication styles,
they all lined up. But I think sometimes we want
(21:19):
to live with friends more than strangers because of that familiarity. Right,
it feels like less of a risk because we already
know that you know, we at least like this person.
But there's also an equal risk that moving in together
is going to cost you the relationship because it will
change the dynamic, either by increasing like the intensity of
(21:40):
your closeness, sometimes causing codependency, or making it such that
small conflicts in the home begin to affect your bigger
relationship as friends. Living together in a shared environment that
you have mutual responsibility towards changes the dynamic. When the
quarters are that close, there is more room for tension,
(22:04):
like just a small spark of anger or frustration if
it's not taken care of, is gonna spiral. And I
have friends who I understand I just couldn't live with
It doesn't mean that I don't love them, It's just
that we acknowledge that our living styles, how much downtime
we need, our levels of cleanliness, they're different, and putting
(22:27):
our relationship in like the absolute pressure cooker that is
living together would be I think, disastrous and destructive. Some
of us obviously don't realize that until it's way too late,
and that's what leads to conflict. Conflict in a sharehouse
is inevitable the same way that it's inevitable in a
workplace or a family home in a romantic relationship. But
(22:51):
I think the biggest sources in this specific situation are
obviously mess roommates who are disrespectful as well when we
speak to them about mess, people not really doing their part,
borrowing things without asking first, people not paying their bills
on time or not paying a fair share for commonly
(23:12):
used items, people who are really noisy, and then people
who are really really controlling of the environment. Once again,
a lot of this comes down to not just personality differences,
of course, but differences in how we were raised. And
when that bubbles up, it becomes really unpleasant and it
(23:34):
can actually have really serious consequences for our mental health.
There have been countless studies on this because we understand
that there is an important relationship between our living environment
and our mental state or our emotional wellbeing. Like it
is our place of rest, it's our home. It's where
we should feel most calm and safe. But when that
(23:56):
environment is disturbed or not to our life liking, we
see massive consequences. People who are fighting with their roommates
no longer feel the sense of security that they need
from their home environment. We don't feel like we are
allowed to relax or be ourselves in the home. And
if we can't do those things in our house, where
are we going to do that? We never have like
(24:19):
a time or a place to turn off, to switch off.
The worst case of this is when it's not just
that it gets to the point of like full on blowouts,
but when it gets to the point where people are
completely avoiding each other in common spaces. It's like they're
playing like an unspoken game of hide and seek with
each other. It feels like you're a stranger in your
(24:41):
own home. You're constantly locked in your room, your anxiety
is spiked, you feel hypervigilant, or stressed whenever you perceive
that there is like a threat in the environment, right,
like you're cooking dinner and then like suddenly this person
walks in and you don't say anything to each other,
and it's awkward and it's painful. Another story for you
(25:01):
guys once again about Dirty Dishes man, because he is
obviously infamous when it comes to my sharehouse experiences. But
by the end of like living together, we would go
entire weeks without speaking a word to the other person.
And at that point, we lived in a three bedroom
house with five people in it, and it was during COVID,
(25:24):
so it wasn't like we didn't see each other. But
it got to the point where he had just overstepped
so many boundaries, He had caused so much pain and
obviously didn't respect the other people living in the house
that there was no point trying to repair what was
broken or even be civil about it. And in those situations,
you kind of have three options, right either you move out,
(25:46):
they move out, or you swallow your pride and you
get to the bottom of it. The last option is
obviously the hardest, because sometimes it feels like, once again,
we have to be the bigger person, and we're sick
of doing that. We don't want to be the peacemaker
all the time or carry the mental load, so we
(26:09):
just become resigned to how things are, and that's when
the house starts to crumble because there is no longer
that not just positive, but transparent communication. And I think
if you don't set that up at the beginning, if
you don't build that routine of talking about your problems,
if you don't set those ground rules, when the time
does come that frustration, tension, conflict does emerge, you're kind
(26:35):
of going into it with no rule book or really
no understanding of the other person's expectations or perspective. So
what I really want to discuss next is how we
can actually make it so we never get to that point,
How we can have a positive share house experience, the
dreams share house experience, all of that and more after
(26:55):
this shortbreak. So let's talk about what it means to
be a good roommate and the ways we can hopefully
avoid that kind of all too common experience of the
sharehouse going up in flames, like not literal flames, emotional flames.
(27:16):
We want to be on speaking terms with the people
who live in our home. We want to avoid the
silent treatment or breaking the lease or a million other
lesson ideal ways that this can end. So the first
step really begins before you even sign the lease, right, Like,
the biggest error people make is not actually asserting their
standards beforehand, their standards for cleanliness for a long time,
(27:41):
for noise, for bills, for splitting expenses, for even minor
things like when are you going to turn the air
con on during the year or the heating. Every point
of ambiguity is a potential point of conflict. My dad
actually gave me this incredible tip when I first moved
into a sharehouse. He told me that we need to
sit down, all of us write out our house rules,
(28:04):
and everyone had to agree. Everyone had to sign off
on the rules, and then they went on the fridge
and they were basically never discussed again unless someone quote
unquote broke the rules. Then it was never a discussion
of like, oh I didn't know, oh I was confused.
They had agreed to the rules, they'd broken them consciously,
they'd broken the roommate contract, and obviously it was then
(28:27):
up to them to apologize and make up for it.
There Although sometimes some people who believe that rules are
made to be broken. I think in those instances when
you have a roommate like that, instead of just like
pushing again and again and reminding them again and again
and just becoming exhausted when they don't listen, the trick
(28:48):
is to find out what this person actually cares about,
what causes them to act in a certain way. There
is something that matters to them, and if you can
link the behavior that you need from them with what
matters to them, then you have a chance to actually
make something happen. For example, if they are someone who
really likes or needs the approval of others, make it
(29:10):
known that when they keep things tidy, it makes you
really happy and appreciative. Maybe it's that they have a
real sense of duty or fairness, really reinforce them, like
the duty of being a good roommate. Maybe it's guilt, whatever,
Find what motivates them and leverage that. But as this therapist,
doctor Fitzpatrick said in her incredible article about this, I'll
(29:32):
link it below, sometimes there are people who just like
are not really caught up in the rules of engagement here.
They kind of need to be gently reminded that to
be human is to sometimes have to be cooperative and
to compromise. We often really like to believe in the
goodness of others, but sometimes it just encounter people who
(29:53):
have a different agenda. When we're talking about that level
of inconsideration, often what's behind and that is some sort
of resentment, her anger. It could just be pure laziness
because they've been babied all of their life, and what
you need to do as a house is kind of unfortunately.
I know it sounds unfair, but you're the one who
(30:15):
now has to help them realize that this is where
it stops. I think it's very rare that you end
up living with like a total psychopath. I don't know.
Maybe you have a story for me and that has
been your experience, But the majority of people still respond
to human emotion. So if you tell them how their
actions have impacted you, how they've left you feeling disrespected,
(30:38):
if they've left you feeling upset, most people don't want
to be that person. They don't want to be the
household villain. That is the wake up call that they
need honesty and vulnerability. And I know it's really hard
to put yourself in a position where you have to
be vulnerable with someone, especially if you don't know them,
especially if it's a little bit awkward. But I think
vulnerability always has a lot of rewards that come with it,
(31:01):
and you know what, you might not feel like best
friends now, but keeping open those kind of lines of
communication when you're living under the same roof is really essential.
If you are the one, though, who is the source
of frustration. You have been told that you are not
pulling your fair share, you're not contributing, you're not keeping
(31:22):
things clean. Remember this is not them expressing unconditional anger
at you. They are speaking to you about this in
order to give you an opportunity to improve and adjust.
The worst thing we can do is interpret boundary setting
and like basic respectful discussion as an insult or a takedown,
(31:43):
as as criticism and allow ourselves to react from a
place of defensiveness. That is when we, I think, see
irrepairable conflict. When we feel threatened or confronted, often our
first primal instinct is to defend ourselves at all costs
by minimizing the other person's feelings, feeling like they are unjustified,
(32:06):
or really digging our heels in. It's very primitive and
psychologists often point to the role of our self esteem
in those moments where we don't want to feel like
we're a bad person, so to regulate that cognitive dissonance,
we put the problem back on someone else. That instinct
is not helping you. In fact, I would argue that
(32:28):
it's highly counterproductive in this situation. Instead, accept accountability in
those moments. Make a plan to be better, Make a
plan to hold yourself accountable. That doesn't disturb the peace
any further because we all have a shared goal here, right,
We have a shared goal of peace and harmony. And
I know that sounds cheesy, but honestly, that is what
(32:51):
we all want at the end of the day, to
be able to come home to our home and feel
like it's fun and feel like it's that we're meant
to be there, and feel safe. That brings me to
my next tip. Although you don't have to be best
friends with someone just because you live in the same home,
it doesn't hurt by any means to have like some
(33:11):
kind of social contact. Familiarity is such amazing bonding emotion
and experience. You don't want to be like the avoiding type.
You don't want to live in a house of like
of ghosts, where the silence is like super deafening and
it's really really lonely. So I think frequent casual contact
social contact is a really nice way to just bond
(33:33):
and stay friendly with each other. We used to do
Sunday dinners each week and everyone was responsible for like
some part of the meal, and then we would play
board games and have a whine and just chat or
go to trivia and bingo host parties together, and then
it didn't feel like we were just all these strangers
who had suddenly been placed in like a house together,
(33:54):
and how to just like find a way to get along,
like we could actually be friends, we could actually turn
to one another. So I'm not going to talk about
cleaning rosters or anything to do with bills or splitting things,
because I think we know the drill right, Like I
feel like that is something we will have a pretty
good understanding of. But I do have two final tips. Firstly,
(34:17):
don't form groups within the house. Don't gossip about one
house member solely with another member of the house. Bring
up your grievances in person, because you don't want to
create a collective enemy here. It's shit for everybody. You
don't want to exclude someone like I've had share houses
or friends in share houses where there's been like three
(34:37):
members of the house and two of them have become
super close and just excluded the third person. Don't be
that person. It's giving high school bully. It keeps people
isolated and it builds resentment. And secondly, don't and I
mean do not sleep with your roommates. We have all
heard the horror stories here. The second you cross that
(34:59):
Plato line, all rules disappear, all boundaries are gone. It's
like you've basically moved in together after your first date.
Not a great start for a healthy relationship if that's
what you want, and if it's not what you want,
then it's just really awkward because then suddenly your other
roommates feel like they're living with this couple that has
this weird like past, or not quite a couple at all.
(35:20):
There's so much that can go wrong, there's other people involved.
You never get the space you need when you've just
started out like bad idea. Please trust me on this.
So our final discussion point for the day is when
do you know it's time to leave the share house
life behind and live alone? I really believe that everyone
(35:41):
should live alone at least once, And I know it's
such a privilege to say that, but if it is
within your means, the benefits are really endless. You learn
to value your own company, you get it to you
decide like exactly how you want to live. You have
that independence and autonomy of your space. I think although
(36:02):
the solitude can sometimes be really scary, and that's a
reason why a lot of us don't do it, it's also
really important to do scary things every now and again
and to prove to yourself that you're capable of loving
your own life, loving your own company, loving your own space.
When you live alone, you have that time to really
(36:22):
focus on who you are. I think it leads to
a lot of increased self awareness because you're not just
able to distract yourself with very convenient like social interaction.
It also comes down to what you're willing to kind
of compromise. Every decision or change like this inevitably comes
with sacrifice. But do you know, but it's about really
(36:45):
what you value. It's about what you're willing to give
up for the benefits, Like do you value your alone
time more or the convenience of company. Would giving up
that built in social interaction be harder for you than
having to give up a certain level of privacy and autonomy.
That's really an equation that only you can do, a
(37:07):
decision only you can make. But I do think there
are some pretty big signs that you are you're ready
to take that leap. Firstly, a you have the financial
means to do it. That's just like a number one
point here. You have to do like a big financial overhaul.
I think bit of an audit, a bit of an investigation,
and just make sure you actually have enough leeway to
(37:29):
be able to afford a solo lifestyle because it naturally
will be more expensive. You don't want to live by
yourself for like seven months, realize you can no longer
afford it and have to go back. But you've already
gotten the taste of a sweeter fruit. You've already begun
to adapt to this kind of way of living, and
suddenly you're back in like the sharehouse with like four
(37:51):
people who don't know how to wash their dishes. Secondly,
another reason is if you are increasingly irritated by the
presence of others, you find yourself hermiting, avoiding your roommates. Thirdly,
if you have the social supports and like the social
circle to enable you to spend more time just alone
in your home without feeling disconnected. Do you need more
(38:12):
space for yourself, like just literal physical space, like storage space,
not emotional space. E If your relationship is getting serious
and you know that the next step may be to
live together, but you want to have that solo living
experience before then. And finally, if you're just ready for
(38:32):
the freedom. That's huge to me at the moment as
loong with that the reason I gave before, like my
relationship is getting serious, I'm kind of like, oh, like
we are going to end up living together. Before we
do that, I want to live alone. I think living
alone has always been a really huge goal for me
because I have a really deep fear of being alone,
and I want to challenge that at least once in
(38:53):
my life and stop letting that fear kind of control
me and keep me in a place of depending on
other people for company and comfort, even when actually what
I would rather do is just be by myself. But
I'm so like almost addicted to that validation of having
other people around me. That has just gone way too
deep there, very vulnerable, But honestly, I feel like I'm
(39:15):
not the only one who has that experience. Sharehouses as
a conclusion can be great, but they're also just inherently
a bit of like a mental labyrinth and a bit
of a hassle at times. It is like so strangely
intimate when you think about it, Like the home is
normally something reserved for like a family or people who
(39:38):
are like in love, and now it's reserved for like
people who like sometimes don't even know each other, and
suddenly you're like asleep in the next room, you know.
Like I said at the beginning, putting a bunch of
people in a house and expecting it to just work
is like so implausible. They literally have TV shows about
that very premise, Like that is what Big Brother is
about that. That's like how fascinating it is. That's how
(40:00):
interesting the dynamics get. So if you're living with roommates
now and they're just kind of getting on your nerves,
you're in the midst of some like weird tension. I
feel you we've all been there. Sometimes it is a
dream and it's super fun. Other times it's just frustrating.
But I also think It is an important experience of
our twenties to at least like have those moments, because
then you'll never take your alone time for granted. Ever again,
(40:23):
one of my friends said to me, like I she
was likeing to me, what did she say? She's like,
I want to push myself to the point of like
absolutely hating my share like sharehousing, so that I never
want to go back, and so that I'm never like
in my thirties or forties being like, oh, I shouldn't
have spent more time in my share house. Like I
think we've all been there. We've all been at that point.
So I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. Remember
(40:47):
if you're having a shit time right now, everything is temporary,
and I hope you just like learned something about how
roommates and sharehouses and communal spaces operate. It is so psychological.
It comes down to like so many strange theories about
people's personalities and ways of life and how they were raised.
So it's no wonder that I think so much drama
(41:10):
and tension, but also so many good times come from
the Shiit House. So thank you so much for listening.
I think I've already said this but I do really
hope that you've enjoyed this episode. If you have like
a roommate horror story, send it my way. Maybe we'll
do like a follow up episode just talking about roommate
horror stories. I feel like I'm also just nosy and
(41:30):
I want to I want to know what you guys
have been through. So if you enjoyed this episode and
you feel like there is someone else who might benefit
from it, please feel free to share a link with
them or leave a five star review wherever you're listening.
Right now, I read every single review that is left
for me, and they're really amazing. It's such a beautiful
(41:51):
point of encouragement, a beautiful part of my week to
have a little read. And yeah, it's just super lovely
that there are so many of you out there who
love this show. So thank you for supporting me so
much recently. Make sure you're following so that when we
release new episodes they are delivered right to your feed.
And as always, we will be back next week with
(42:14):
another episode.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode as we break
down the psychology of our twenties. Today, we're talking about
something that we've actually never spoken about on the podcast before,
which is honestly shocking, because when it comes to our twenties,
(00:49):
one of the universal, relatable, joint experiences of people during
this decade is living with other people, is the share house,
communal living, flatting, whatever you want to call it, and
a lot about that experience is deeply psychological. How we
learn to live with others, how we communicate our relationships,
(01:11):
the conflict, the tension, the psychology is really everywhere in
that dynamic. I think our twenties are often that time
for many of us when we take the leap to
move out of our childhood home, our family home, and
really forge kind of our own independent lives. It's a
huge hallmark of this decade. I guess we just outgrow
(01:31):
the family environment. We don't feel like a child anymore.
We want our own space, and often the most kind
of economically viable option is to move in with a
group of other people our own age. I think not
only is that sometimes the only thing we can afford,
let's be real, but a lot of this is that
(01:51):
these are people that we share the same lifestyle with,
and it's kind of like a ride of passage, such
a valuable social experience to see how we live with others,
to maybe make lifelong friends, to build our own community
that is separate from the family unit. But it's also
not that straightforward. I've been living in sharehouses or dorms
(02:13):
with roommates since I was seventeen, so for the last
seven years that is way too long. And of course
I think, like anyone who has done their time, I
have some stories. We might romanticize this way of living
and the chaos and the group dinners and the movie nights,
whatever it may be, but the people we choose to
(02:34):
live with are sometimes the most important people in our lives,
and so it's kind of make or break, depending on
how well we actually get along. We are sharing a
home together, which, if you think about it, is like
the most sacred space that a human can have. It
is our place of comfort, of safety, of security. We
(02:56):
sleep under the same roof as these people. We see
the constantly and their choices impact our quality of life.
There was actually one piece of research published on this
in twenty sixteen, and it indicates that the people who
we live with impact everything from our eating habits, our
exercise habits, our sleeping habits in both a positive and
(03:20):
a negative direction, particularly through things like peer pressure or
observational learning and the adoption of communal values. And depending
on your experience, that can actually be really great. We
can become really thick and fast friends. For example, in Korea,
they surveyed nearly a thousand young single adults living in
(03:42):
share housing and they found that people who were living
with a roommate reported feeling less lonely and more socially supported.
So there are definitely a lot of benefits. But when
that turns sour, when we're met with conflict, different personalities,
different standards for cleanliness. Yes, when we move in with
(04:02):
friends and we begin to see a different side of
someone now that we share a bathroom or a kitchen
with them. That is when I think the sharehouse truly
becomes a real psychological peatrie. Dish conflict or tension in
a home has a massive effect on our mental well being,
and there have been so many studies, articles, research projects
(04:25):
on this, particularly amongst young adults, because if you think
about it, you're basically putting two, three, four, sometimes more
people together in a small environment, all of whom have
different backgrounds, expectations, lifestyles, and we're just kind of praying
that it works. And so a sharehouse is kind of
(04:48):
its own social experiment on how relationships are formed, how
we communicate, how we interact, how relationships break down, and
that is really what I want to explore today. We
are going to discuss what makes a good roommate, different
types of roommates, the four different types of roommates and
(05:09):
living styles, the dilemma of kind of moving in with friends,
and also what causes social harmony to break down when
you are in a sharehouse. I also want to talk
about what psychology has to say about creating a positive space,
being a good roommate, dealing with conflict in the home,
(05:29):
and also being able to recognize that moment when it
is time to move out, when it is time to
live alone. I think I'm getting to that point. Now.
I've done my time, I've done my hours, I've had
the sharehouse experience, and I really just want to come
home and not talk to anyone. At this point, I
kind of want to watch whatever I want to watch
(05:49):
on TV and not have to like time my showers
around other people. So I think I might only have
like a few more months to actually be able to
talk about this, probably from like a lived experience, and
that's what we're going to do today. So without further ado,
I think it's about time we break down all of
the psychology to do with communal living, share houses and roommates.
(06:13):
So let's get into it. The move to share housing
from the family home, whether you're living with complete strangers
or friends whoever, it's really exciting, Like we can't overstate
(06:33):
the anticipation and like fun of getting to buy your
own bowls and picking out your bed sheets and being
able to have a space that is your own and
separate from your parents and your siblings whoever else is
in your house. It honestly just feels like super adult.
It's like one of those experiences, I think we look
at and we're like, oh, yeah, this is the point
(06:55):
where I felt like I was actually mature enough to
call myself an adult human being. And then I think
the social element of it is also super appealing, especially
when you live with friends. It's like summer camp or
a sleepover every night of the week. And it's the
freedom that many of us, I think have been aspiring
towards since we were children. You know. It's kind of
(07:16):
similar to having your own money. You get a space
where you can live your life exactly how you would
like it. So I have this theory that the first
six months of communal living are like the honeymoon period.
It is the buzz of new things, of new relationships,
or at least a new dimension to a relationship if
you're living with friends and this really new environment. But
(07:38):
I think after that six months period is when the
reality of like constantly having to share your space with
someone who is not related to you sinks in. The
biggest thing we have to adapt to is different living styles,
because each of us has grown up in a certain
unique environment, expecting certain levels of cleanliness, different rules, times
(07:59):
that we want to rest, times that we want to
socialize people just to use their spaces differently. They treat
them differently based on the home environment of their childhood.
It's really interesting because there's been research on this and
it's shown that how your parents organized a home is
going to be one of the biggest determinants for how
you choose to treat your future living spaces. And it
(08:23):
is natural normal for those there to big kind of
differences across people. The biggest one for me is the
level of mess that we are willing to tolerate. I
have noticed this in my own sharehouses and with my roommates,
where there is a distinction between wanting things tidy and
(08:43):
wanting things clean. Some people just don't care if the
floors aren't vacuumed or the couches are a little bit dirty,
as long as there are like no personal items in
a communal space. But others are totally fine with like
a certain level of untidiness as long as the house
is sanate tized. And then there are the housemates, the
unique housemates who just don't care, who are happy to
(09:06):
live in absolute squalor. I often see this as a
reaction to three things. Firstly, for these individuals who really
don't care about mess or cleanliness. That was the standard
that their parents set, whereby they also didn't really care
about living amongst I'm not going to say filth, but
(09:27):
just like living amongst mess. Maybe it's because yeah, they
just really they were completely apathetic to it, or be
they were too busy to deal with it. And so
because that person has never known any differently, because they
have adjusted to this lifestyle, they bring that to the sharehouse,
they bring that to the environment. I had a roommate
(09:49):
once who was so revolting. He would use like all
of the glasses in our house for coffee and wine
and beer whatever, and then he would refuse to clean them,
and so we stopped cleaning them as well. We were like,
I don't want to be your servant anymore, almost in
like protest, until every kid, you not, every single glass
(10:12):
in our house had like a layer of mold at
the bottom. We couldn't even use them. Eventually, I actually
I took all of the glasses over to my friend's house.
I put them through their dishwasher, brought them home and
hid them from him, and I told my other roommates
like where they were, and for like weeks we would
have like a glass of water or whatever we would finish,
(10:33):
we would wash our glass and just like put it
back in its hiding place until he kind of had
to like come back to us with his tail between
his legs. There's just people like that who like do
not care about filth. The second reaction is whereby we
have these people who have grown up in a really
strict household where the level of cleanliness was like almost
(10:55):
hospital like, and they move out of home and experience
like a complete reversal in habits. They finally have like
the freedom to treat their space as they would like it,
and so they unconsciously counteract what was previously expected of
them by going in the complete entire opposite direction. It's
(11:17):
almost like a delayed childhood rebellion against the rules that
were upheld by their parents. And also there's the other
element of you know, no one's asking them to be
clean anymore, no one's asking them to keep their space tidy,
and so they no longer have the motivation to self
enforce those levels of cleanliness. It's really interesting because this
(11:41):
is actually a concept in psychology. It's known as the
rebellion of the over criticized child. But in these instances
often what we see as people who skip their childhood
and teenage rebellion stage because the family environment was so strict.
But then that emerges in adulthood when they start living
with others, almost as a of like emotional catharsis or
(12:02):
release from the pressure they experienced as a child. And finally,
there are situations in which one roommate has such a
high standard for cleanliness that they are just willing to
do all the work to keep their environment as they
would like it, and that results in what we would
call freeloading by the other members of the house. So
freeloading is actually an economics term whereby we see people
(12:26):
take advantage of other people's generosity or efforts. Sometimes unconsciously,
they've just come to expect this from the other person.
Sometimes they like engage in the delusion that oh, yeah,
my roommate cleans because it makes them happy, or they
don't even notice yet they still benefit from this person's
like additional labor in the house. I like to call
(12:48):
this type of roommate the Cinderella roommate. Obviously, in the
fairy tale Cinderella, Cinderella is the one who keeps everything clean.
In the background, she does all the washing, all the sweeping,
the dishes for her stefe sisters without any appreciation. I
would say that most houses have a Cinderella, and often
(13:09):
these people are also very deep people pleases, so they
won't say anything until it kind of like boils over
and explodes, or they just become so resigned to the
mess that they let everything get disgusting and then even
more frustrated when nobody does anything, whilst the other roommates
don't really like pick up on that, and they're just
(13:31):
waiting expecting this person to eventually get to a point
of like such deep frustration that they'll just go back
to cleaning everything all over again. It's super unfair. It
is super unfair, and I think the existence of a
Cinderella points to a very important psychological truth about sharehouses.
Each roommate is going to take on a certain social
(13:54):
role in the house, the same way that each of
us takes on a role in the family home, and
those roles sometimes are going to come into conflict. So
the best way to understand this, I think is through
this theory called the styles of life theory. This was
originally introduced by the psychiatrist Alfred Adler. You might know
(14:17):
him because he coined the term inferiority complex, but he
also came up with this theory that each of us
has a unique, unconscious and repetitive way of responding to
or avoiding the main tasks of life. That includes friendships, love, work, behavior,
(14:37):
or relationships in the home. Obviously, he wasn't applying this
theory to the relationship between roommates in the twenty first century,
but when we take his core ideas, they have a
lot of applicability. So there are four styles or roles
that we can take on in the share home. So
(14:57):
there's the ruling type. This per and is the leader.
They might take care of the bills. Maybe they were
like the og housemate or renter. They feel more of
a sense of like possessiveness or control over the home.
They are more liberal with using communal spaces, They host parties.
It kind of feels like it's their home. Then we
(15:18):
have the getting type, the ones who don't really do anything.
They take rather than give. They take advantage of the
other members in the house. We have the avoiding type,
the one who is kind of like never there, who
like very much, doesn't take part in share house activities,
kind of stays out of conflict, stays out of the way.
(15:40):
It's a bit of a ghost. And finally, we have
the socially useful type. This is very similar to the
Cinderella archetype. They kind of contribute more than all the others,
but they're also more likely to have like a social
interest in keeping the peace and they really like like
a certain level of social activity. Each of us in
(16:03):
a sharehouse takes on one of these roles. It's really
interesting because I know which one I am, and I'm
pretty sure I could easily assign every single roommate I've
ever had to one of these roles, like easily. And
you don't have to be a house of four, like
you can be a house of two or three, or
five or six, because some people can take on the
(16:24):
same role, but also there can be people who only
take on one role and there is one left out.
So I think that this theory is one of the
best psychological explanations for why we have different sharehouse or
roommate like personalities and archetypes. Beyond these kinds of prototypes,
I've already mentioned it, but we have the kind of
(16:47):
added nuance of personality. Each of us is going to
come to the table not just with a different background
and a different set of standards, but a different set
of attributes and personality traits which kind of influence how
easy it really is the people to get along with you.
I often think about this according to the Big five
(17:09):
personality traits in psychology, So these are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,
and neuroticism. Out of those five kind of big five
personality traits, each of us sits somewhere along the spectrum
of each of them. And if you've ever done the
Maya Briggs personality test, you can kind of based on
(17:30):
this combination determine what kind of person you are and
also what kind of person you're going to be in
a communal environment, Like maybe you are the entertainer or
the executive, or the mediator, the debate and the commander.
I don't know which one you are, but that individual
personality profile is going to contribute to the dynamic Personally,
(17:53):
I believe that the best combination for a roommate is
someone who is conscientious, honest, open to experience, agreeable, and
hopefully low on euroticism, which means that they are emotionally
stable and they deal with stress well. And one of
the worst combinations is someone who we would call high conflict.
(18:16):
I think we all have an idea of what a
high conflict individual looks like. We've probably all met one.
This is someone who loves drama and they have this
pattern of increasing tension, increasing like the melo drama of
an environment, rather than reducing it or resolving it. This
pattern usually happens over and over again in many different
(18:40):
situations with many different people. They blame others, they don't
care about boundaries, they never feel like they've done anything wrong.
They are extreme, and they always prefer to prioritize themselves
over like the collective well being and comfort of the home.
(19:01):
For example, I had a roommate like this who would
throw parties all the time, and I honestly got to
the point where I think he just enjoyed us getting
angry at him, like he liked being the villain in
the house. For some weird neurological psychological reason, I think
(19:22):
some people are just more conflict prone compared to others.
Those of us who are conflict averse running away from
disagreements or frustration, but Honestly, either end of that spectrum
is equally harmful. When we're talking about living in a
shared home. Obviously it's extremely difficult to live with someone
(19:43):
who has no respect for other people and is always
wanting to argue. But then we also have that roommate
who is mad about something, is annoyed at doing all
the cleaning or people not paying bills on time, and
they say nothing about it. They keep it to themselves,
but it shows up in other ways, like they stonewall
you or they ic you out. I think it's hard
(20:06):
because the people we live with don't have the same
conflict style as us. But also sometimes when you know,
we don't have the same comfort as we would with
a family member, so we feel really awkward bringing things up.
You know, perhaps if it's a stranger and you just
feel like it would be really inappropriate to have those
kinds of conversations. Or even worse is when they are
(20:31):
a friend and we worry that a small disagreement to
do with like house upkeep or lifestyles or whatever is
going to impact our relationship as friends beyond our relationship
as roommates. This brings me to I think one of
my biggest points moving in with friends this is such
(20:55):
a big risk. Let me just tell you that now.
I also think that it is a mistake that I've
made in the past. But I've also had really great
success stories. I lived with two of my closest friends
for almost two years. We never had a single problem
because our lifestyles, our expectations for each other, our communication styles,
they all lined up. But I think sometimes we want
(21:19):
to live with friends more than strangers because of that familiarity. Right,
it feels like less of a risk because we already
know that you know, we at least like this person.
But there's also an equal risk that moving in together
is going to cost you the relationship because it will
change the dynamic, either by increasing like the intensity of
(21:40):
your closeness, sometimes causing codependency, or making it such that
small conflicts in the home begin to affect your bigger
relationship as friends. Living together in a shared environment that
you have mutual responsibility towards changes the dynamic. When the
quarters are that close, there is more room for tension,
(22:04):
like just a small spark of anger or frustration if
it's not taken care of, is gonna spiral. And I
have friends who I understand I just couldn't live with
It doesn't mean that I don't love them, It's just
that we acknowledge that our living styles, how much downtime
we need, our levels of cleanliness, they're different, and putting
(22:27):
our relationship in like the absolute pressure cooker that is
living together would be I think, disastrous and destructive. Some
of us obviously don't realize that until it's way too late,
and that's what leads to conflict. Conflict in a sharehouse
is inevitable the same way that it's inevitable in a
workplace or a family home in a romantic relationship. But
(22:51):
I think the biggest sources in this specific situation are
obviously mess roommates who are disrespectful as well when we
speak to them about mess, people not really doing their part,
borrowing things without asking first, people not paying their bills
on time or not paying a fair share for commonly
(23:12):
used items, people who are really noisy, and then people
who are really really controlling of the environment. Once again,
a lot of this comes down to not just personality differences,
of course, but differences in how we were raised. And
when that bubbles up, it becomes really unpleasant and it
(23:34):
can actually have really serious consequences for our mental health.
There have been countless studies on this because we understand
that there is an important relationship between our living environment
and our mental state or our emotional wellbeing. Like it
is our place of rest, it's our home. It's where
we should feel most calm and safe. But when that
(23:56):
environment is disturbed or not to our life liking, we
see massive consequences. People who are fighting with their roommates
no longer feel the sense of security that they need
from their home environment. We don't feel like we are
allowed to relax or be ourselves in the home. And
if we can't do those things in our house, where
are we going to do that? We never have like
(24:19):
a time or a place to turn off, to switch off.
The worst case of this is when it's not just
that it gets to the point of like full on blowouts,
but when it gets to the point where people are
completely avoiding each other in common spaces. It's like they're
playing like an unspoken game of hide and seek with
each other. It feels like you're a stranger in your
(24:41):
own home. You're constantly locked in your room, your anxiety
is spiked, you feel hypervigilant, or stressed whenever you perceive
that there is like a threat in the environment, right,
like you're cooking dinner and then like suddenly this person
walks in and you don't say anything to each other,
and it's awkward and it's painful. Another story for you
(25:01):
guys once again about Dirty Dishes man, because he is
obviously infamous when it comes to my sharehouse experiences. But
by the end of like living together, we would go
entire weeks without speaking a word to the other person.
And at that point, we lived in a three bedroom
house with five people in it, and it was during COVID,
(25:24):
so it wasn't like we didn't see each other. But
it got to the point where he had just overstepped
so many boundaries, He had caused so much pain and
obviously didn't respect the other people living in the house
that there was no point trying to repair what was
broken or even be civil about it. And in those situations,
you kind of have three options, right either you move out,
(25:46):
they move out, or you swallow your pride and you
get to the bottom of it. The last option is
obviously the hardest, because sometimes it feels like, once again,
we have to be the bigger person, and we're sick
of doing that. We don't want to be the peacemaker
all the time or carry the mental load, so we
(26:09):
just become resigned to how things are, and that's when
the house starts to crumble because there is no longer
that not just positive, but transparent communication. And I think
if you don't set that up at the beginning, if
you don't build that routine of talking about your problems,
if you don't set those ground rules, when the time
does come that frustration, tension, conflict does emerge, you're kind
(26:35):
of going into it with no rule book or really
no understanding of the other person's expectations or perspective. So
what I really want to discuss next is how we
can actually make it so we never get to that point,
How we can have a positive share house experience, the
dreams share house experience, all of that and more after
(26:55):
this shortbreak. So let's talk about what it means to
be a good roommate and the ways we can hopefully
avoid that kind of all too common experience of the
sharehouse going up in flames, like not literal flames, emotional flames.
(27:16):
We want to be on speaking terms with the people
who live in our home. We want to avoid the
silent treatment or breaking the lease or a million other
lesson ideal ways that this can end. So the first
step really begins before you even sign the lease, right, Like,
the biggest error people make is not actually asserting their
standards beforehand, their standards for cleanliness for a long time,
(27:41):
for noise, for bills, for splitting expenses, for even minor
things like when are you going to turn the air
con on during the year or the heating. Every point
of ambiguity is a potential point of conflict. My dad
actually gave me this incredible tip when I first moved
into a sharehouse. He told me that we need to
sit down, all of us write out our house rules,
(28:04):
and everyone had to agree. Everyone had to sign off
on the rules, and then they went on the fridge
and they were basically never discussed again unless someone quote
unquote broke the rules. Then it was never a discussion
of like, oh I didn't know, oh I was confused.
They had agreed to the rules, they'd broken them consciously,
they'd broken the roommate contract, and obviously it was then
(28:27):
up to them to apologize and make up for it.
There Although sometimes some people who believe that rules are
made to be broken. I think in those instances when
you have a roommate like that, instead of just like
pushing again and again and reminding them again and again
and just becoming exhausted when they don't listen, the trick
(28:48):
is to find out what this person actually cares about,
what causes them to act in a certain way. There
is something that matters to them, and if you can
link the behavior that you need from them with what
matters to them, then you have a chance to actually
make something happen. For example, if they are someone who
really likes or needs the approval of others, make it
(29:10):
known that when they keep things tidy, it makes you
really happy and appreciative. Maybe it's that they have a
real sense of duty or fairness, really reinforce them, like
the duty of being a good roommate. Maybe it's guilt, whatever,
Find what motivates them and leverage that. But as this therapist,
doctor Fitzpatrick said in her incredible article about this, I'll
(29:32):
link it below, sometimes there are people who just like
are not really caught up in the rules of engagement here.
They kind of need to be gently reminded that to
be human is to sometimes have to be cooperative and
to compromise. We often really like to believe in the
goodness of others, but sometimes it just encounter people who
(29:53):
have a different agenda. When we're talking about that level
of inconsideration, often what's behind and that is some sort
of resentment, her anger. It could just be pure laziness
because they've been babied all of their life, and what
you need to do as a house is kind of unfortunately.
I know it sounds unfair, but you're the one who
(30:15):
now has to help them realize that this is where
it stops. I think it's very rare that you end
up living with like a total psychopath. I don't know.
Maybe you have a story for me and that has
been your experience, But the majority of people still respond
to human emotion. So if you tell them how their
actions have impacted you, how they've left you feeling disrespected,
(30:38):
if they've left you feeling upset, most people don't want
to be that person. They don't want to be the
household villain. That is the wake up call that they
need honesty and vulnerability. And I know it's really hard
to put yourself in a position where you have to
be vulnerable with someone, especially if you don't know them,
especially if it's a little bit awkward. But I think
vulnerability always has a lot of rewards that come with it,
(31:01):
and you know what, you might not feel like best
friends now, but keeping open those kind of lines of
communication when you're living under the same roof is really essential.
If you are the one, though, who is the source
of frustration. You have been told that you are not
pulling your fair share, you're not contributing, you're not keeping
(31:22):
things clean. Remember this is not them expressing unconditional anger
at you. They are speaking to you about this in
order to give you an opportunity to improve and adjust.
The worst thing we can do is interpret boundary setting
and like basic respectful discussion as an insult or a takedown,
(31:43):
as as criticism and allow ourselves to react from a
place of defensiveness. That is when we, I think, see
irrepairable conflict. When we feel threatened or confronted, often our
first primal instinct is to defend ourselves at all costs
by minimizing the other person's feelings, feeling like they are unjustified,
(32:06):
or really digging our heels in. It's very primitive and
psychologists often point to the role of our self esteem
in those moments where we don't want to feel like
we're a bad person, so to regulate that cognitive dissonance,
we put the problem back on someone else. That instinct
is not helping you. In fact, I would argue that
(32:28):
it's highly counterproductive in this situation. Instead, accept accountability in
those moments. Make a plan to be better, Make a
plan to hold yourself accountable. That doesn't disturb the peace
any further because we all have a shared goal here, right,
We have a shared goal of peace and harmony. And
I know that sounds cheesy, but honestly, that is what
(32:51):
we all want at the end of the day, to
be able to come home to our home and feel
like it's fun and feel like it's that we're meant
to be there, and feel safe. That brings me to
my next tip. Although you don't have to be best
friends with someone just because you live in the same home,
it doesn't hurt by any means to have like some
(33:11):
kind of social contact. Familiarity is such amazing bonding emotion
and experience. You don't want to be like the avoiding type.
You don't want to live in a house of like
of ghosts, where the silence is like super deafening and
it's really really lonely. So I think frequent casual contact
social contact is a really nice way to just bond
(33:33):
and stay friendly with each other. We used to do
Sunday dinners each week and everyone was responsible for like
some part of the meal, and then we would play
board games and have a whine and just chat or
go to trivia and bingo host parties together, and then
it didn't feel like we were just all these strangers
who had suddenly been placed in like a house together,
(33:54):
and how to just like find a way to get along,
like we could actually be friends, we could actually turn
to one another. So I'm not going to talk about
cleaning rosters or anything to do with bills or splitting things,
because I think we know the drill right, Like I
feel like that is something we will have a pretty
good understanding of. But I do have two final tips. Firstly,
(34:17):
don't form groups within the house. Don't gossip about one
house member solely with another member of the house. Bring
up your grievances in person, because you don't want to
create a collective enemy here. It's shit for everybody. You
don't want to exclude someone like I've had share houses
or friends in share houses where there's been like three
(34:37):
members of the house and two of them have become
super close and just excluded the third person. Don't be
that person. It's giving high school bully. It keeps people
isolated and it builds resentment. And secondly, don't and I
mean do not sleep with your roommates. We have all
heard the horror stories here. The second you cross that
(34:59):
Plato line, all rules disappear, all boundaries are gone. It's
like you've basically moved in together after your first date.
Not a great start for a healthy relationship if that's
what you want, and if it's not what you want,
then it's just really awkward because then suddenly your other
roommates feel like they're living with this couple that has
this weird like past, or not quite a couple at all.
(35:20):
There's so much that can go wrong, there's other people involved.
You never get the space you need when you've just
started out like bad idea. Please trust me on this.
So our final discussion point for the day is when
do you know it's time to leave the share house
life behind and live alone? I really believe that everyone
(35:41):
should live alone at least once, And I know it's
such a privilege to say that, but if it is
within your means, the benefits are really endless. You learn
to value your own company, you get it to you
decide like exactly how you want to live. You have
that independence and autonomy of your space. I think although
(36:02):
the solitude can sometimes be really scary, and that's a
reason why a lot of us don't do it, it's also
really important to do scary things every now and again
and to prove to yourself that you're capable of loving
your own life, loving your own company, loving your own space.
When you live alone, you have that time to really
(36:22):
focus on who you are. I think it leads to
a lot of increased self awareness because you're not just
able to distract yourself with very convenient like social interaction.
It also comes down to what you're willing to kind
of compromise. Every decision or change like this inevitably comes
with sacrifice. But do you know, but it's about really
(36:45):
what you value. It's about what you're willing to give
up for the benefits, Like do you value your alone
time more or the convenience of company. Would giving up
that built in social interaction be harder for you than
having to give up a certain level of privacy and autonomy.
That's really an equation that only you can do, a
(37:07):
decision only you can make. But I do think there
are some pretty big signs that you are you're ready
to take that leap. Firstly, a you have the financial
means to do it. That's just like a number one
point here. You have to do like a big financial overhaul.
I think bit of an audit, a bit of an investigation,
and just make sure you actually have enough leeway to
(37:29):
be able to afford a solo lifestyle because it naturally
will be more expensive. You don't want to live by
yourself for like seven months, realize you can no longer
afford it and have to go back. But you've already
gotten the taste of a sweeter fruit. You've already begun
to adapt to this kind of way of living, and
suddenly you're back in like the sharehouse with like four
(37:51):
people who don't know how to wash their dishes. Secondly,
another reason is if you are increasingly irritated by the
presence of others, you find yourself hermiting, avoiding your roommates. Thirdly,
if you have the social supports and like the social
circle to enable you to spend more time just alone
in your home without feeling disconnected. Do you need more
(38:12):
space for yourself, like just literal physical space, like storage space,
not emotional space. E If your relationship is getting serious
and you know that the next step may be to
live together, but you want to have that solo living
experience before then. And finally, if you're just ready for
(38:32):
the freedom. That's huge to me at the moment as
loong with that the reason I gave before, like my
relationship is getting serious, I'm kind of like, oh, like
we are going to end up living together. Before we
do that, I want to live alone. I think living
alone has always been a really huge goal for me
because I have a really deep fear of being alone,
and I want to challenge that at least once in
(38:53):
my life and stop letting that fear kind of control
me and keep me in a place of depending on
other people for company and comfort, even when actually what
I would rather do is just be by myself. But
I'm so like almost addicted to that validation of having
other people around me. That has just gone way too
deep there, very vulnerable, But honestly, I feel like I'm
(39:15):
not the only one who has that experience. Sharehouses as
a conclusion can be great, but they're also just inherently
a bit of like a mental labyrinth and a bit
of a hassle at times. It is like so strangely
intimate when you think about it, Like the home is
normally something reserved for like a family or people who
(39:38):
are like in love, and now it's reserved for like
people who like sometimes don't even know each other, and
suddenly you're like asleep in the next room, you know.
Like I said at the beginning, putting a bunch of
people in a house and expecting it to just work
is like so implausible. They literally have TV shows about
that very premise, Like that is what Big Brother is
about that. That's like how fascinating it is. That's how
(40:00):
interesting the dynamics get. So if you're living with roommates
now and they're just kind of getting on your nerves,
you're in the midst of some like weird tension. I
feel you we've all been there. Sometimes it is a
dream and it's super fun. Other times it's just frustrating.
But I also think It is an important experience of
our twenties to at least like have those moments, because
then you'll never take your alone time for granted. Ever again,
(40:23):
one of my friends said to me, like I she
was likeing to me, what did she say? She's like,
I want to push myself to the point of like
absolutely hating my share like sharehousing, so that I never
want to go back, and so that I'm never like
in my thirties or forties being like, oh, I shouldn't
have spent more time in my share house. Like I
think we've all been there. We've all been at that point.
So I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. Remember
(40:47):
if you're having a shit time right now, everything is temporary,
and I hope you just like learned something about how
roommates and sharehouses and communal spaces operate. It is so psychological.
It comes down to like so many strange theories about
people's personalities and ways of life and how they were raised.
So it's no wonder that I think so much drama
(41:10):
and tension, but also so many good times come from
the Shiit House. So thank you so much for listening.
I think I've already said this but I do really
hope that you've enjoyed this episode. If you have like
a roommate horror story, send it my way. Maybe we'll
do like a follow up episode just talking about roommate
horror stories. I feel like I'm also just nosy and
(41:30):
I want to I want to know what you guys
have been through. So if you enjoyed this episode and
you feel like there is someone else who might benefit
from it, please feel free to share a link with
them or leave a five star review wherever you're listening.
Right now, I read every single review that is left
for me, and they're really amazing. It's such a beautiful
(41:51):
point of encouragement, a beautiful part of my week to
have a little read. And yeah, it's just super lovely
that there are so many of you out there who
love this show. So thank you for supporting me so
much recently. Make sure you're following so that when we
release new episodes they are delivered right to your feed.
And as always, we will be back next week with
(42:14):
another episode.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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