I had a roommate for the first time again in my early 30s after getting divorced. Looking back now I enjoyed it. I felt that I had to grow up and get my own place again after our lease was up. I think this was true, at the time I did have a two year old daughter and we were living illegally in a warehouse. Not the best way to raise a small child. However, if I could go back, I think I would have found another communal living space. My roommate on the other hand may have more mixed feeling about it given the screaming two year old and my constant cooking of monkfish… which was later barred from the menu.
The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
51–60 of 119 posts
Re: The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
#52The case for normalising poverty.
One could argue that for many people, isolation is a form of poverty.
Living alone is not living in isolation.
My three daughters are grown and have moved out and now I live alone in a four bedroom house.
Between work (in office mon-thurs, wfh fridays), my volunteer (fire department and watershed steward), fitness (yoga and lifting), and social club (amateur radio, astronomy, and makerspace) commitments, and my girlfriend (smart and beautiful)-- the 1-3 nights per week I get to come home and sit alone, in the dark, in my underwear, listening to the worst 90s techno ever produced at full volume are the only times I have to relax.
As an added bonus when you live alone you can accomplish many things that would be difficult and/or very costly with roommates. Very few people want to live in chaos for months as you methodically open up each wall in your 70-year-old house to run CAT6/HDMI/speaker wires in every room by working an hour or so during your precious few free nights and weekends.
(in my underwear, while listening to the worst 90s techno ever at full volume)
Re: The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you expand on that a bit? You’re the second comment to say this is about ‘women’ and I don’t get it - what’s different? Whatever you think is ‘painfully obvious’ here is obviously not landing for me, can you spell it out?
>I missed coming home to postgame my bad dates with my roommates over a cup of tea. For whatever reason, I think men are a lot less likely to engage in this kind of social behavior, even if they are roommates. They're also a lot less likely to engage in spontaneous dance parties or enjoy group hip hop twerking exercises. Basically, a lot of the benefits of having roommates that the author describes are experienced fa…
We just do it differently... "postgame work over several beers" is the norm in every house I've lived in, even when we didn't know each other well.
Re: The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
#54I have lived in “intentional communities” and attest that mature and self capable men and women of all ages can and do live excellently in compact (from [augmented] single home suburban dwellings of a dozen *or more) to ranch style configurations. It is truly a new level of human excellence. The Epicurean garden of our age. This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular…
The closest that I've gotten to this sort of arrangement was in a large cabin in the woods without electricity or running water where, signified by two shot glasses with rounded bottoms and a jug of moonshine passed around, there was always someone awake and tending to the property.
My task was to carry water so that it could later be heated for drinking/bathing (sponge-bathing really).
The location and (lack of) amenities served as a filter, so it's not something I think could be easily reproducible.
Re: The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
#55In the US, is it concerning when a "grown man" in his 30s or 40s and beyond still lives with roommates, when dating and trying to attract a mate? Is there an expectation that you should be displaying a certain lifestyle that will attract a partner, and if you're living with a bunch of roommates, you're failing to do that? I believe that's not the case in many other countries in the world, but what about the US?
In the cities I've lived, this is standard yes. For better or for worse, a man that isn't displaying capability to provide for himself is typically less attractive than one who is. Again, this is my experience. I'm not making an argument for or against.
Re: The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I missed coming home to postgame my bad dates with my roommates over a cup of tea. For whatever reason, I think men are a lot less likely to engage in this kind of social behavior, even if they are roommates. They're also a lot less likely to engage in spontaneous dance parties or enjoy group hip hop twerking exercises. Basically, a lot of the benefits of having roommates that the author describes are experienced fa…
We just do it differently... "postgame work over several beers" is the norm in every house I've lived in, even when we didn't know each other well.
Perhaps experience varies, but I've never talked about specific dates in any detail with even my close male friends (let alone roommates)
Re: The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
#57I have lived in “intentional communities” and attest that mature and self capable men and women of all ages can and do live excellently in compact (from [augmented] single home suburban dwellings of a dozen *or more) to ranch style configurations. It is truly a new level of human excellence. The Epicurean garden of our age. This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular…
The closest that I've gotten to this sort of arrangement was in a large cabin in the woods without electricity or running water where, signified by two shot glasses with rounded bottoms and a jug of moonshine passed around, there was always someone awake and tending to the property. My task was to carry water so that it could later be heated for drinking/bathing (sponge-bathing really). The location and (lack of) ame…
Once I lived in a desert commune that was like this. Frown on boozing (or over boozing) otherwise everyone was as wildlander as one can imagine.
Location for this was everything. Live like a well stocked savage in a pristine removed wonder of the world.
Community was around for so long there were prepper’s stocks spanning decades.
Btw, MREs do die. And they’re nothing worth living on.
Re: The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is truly a new level of human excellence. The Epicurean garden of our age. > This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular discussion, people have responsibilities, and people come and go. > If you want a better life sometimes you have to game up with a better self. I think it’s funny to hear the concept of teaming up with other people, putting in the work, sharin…
> Because this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household. Actually, not at all. A co-living arrangement of adults (or WG for Wohngemeinschaft, as we call it in Germany) is not well advised to work like a family household. A family has someone being the father, someone else being the mother and then there are children. While some WGs might stabilize into such a pattern for a while, it is certa…
I was talking about the virtues described in the parent comment, not a specific German Wohngemeinschaft
Re: The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
#59In the US, is it concerning when a "grown man" in his 30s or 40s and beyond still lives with roommates, when dating and trying to attract a mate? Is there an expectation that you should be displaying a certain lifestyle that will attract a partner, and if you're living with a bunch of roommates, you're failing to do that? I believe that's not the case in many other countries in the world, but what about the US?
It depends on what you want to do with your life, and what kind of partner you want. Most people want to date someone with their own place, because most people want their own place. If you want to live in a communal living situation, you're not going to be very happy if you partner up with someone who wants their own place. Will you sacrifice communal living in order to gain a partner? Or will you look for a partner who is interested in communal living, even if that takes longer?
These conversations about how men have to change themselves in order to find a partner are funny to me, because the subtext is that partnering up is the most important thing you can achieve, and you should sacrifice your other interests in order to make yourself marketable to the largest pool of people, so you can find a partner as soon as possible. People mock the phrase "just be yourself" because there are some things (money, physical beauty) that most people are looking for, and if you achieve them it's easier to find a partner. But the flip side is, unless you enjoy putting in all the work to be rich and beautiful, having a partner won't make you happy. The phrase "just be yourself" is really saying that you shouldn't change yourself just to find a partner, because it will be a phyrric victory. Instead, you should be yourself, do the things that make you happy, and let that filter out all the people who would only be interested in your money or your beauty. (and to be clear, this is not an argument against self improvement - you should still seek to better yourself)
Re: The case for having roommates even when you can afford to live alone
#60In the US, is it concerning when a "grown man" in his 30s or 40s and beyond still lives with roommates, when dating and trying to attract a mate? Is there an expectation that you should be displaying a certain lifestyle that will attract a partner, and if you're living with a bunch of roommates, you're failing to do that? I believe that's not the case in many other countries in the world, but what about the US?
If "displaying a certain lifestyle" means the person gets to visit a much larger home (as there's more incomes), get surrounded with lots of friends (since it's a vibrant community in the house), who all have stock portfolios to retire early on because of it (since they're saving an extra $1k+ a month by sharing the better living situation), then you'll probably be be able to find someone who finds that more appealing than the alternative (a loner who's spare money gets burned up going to a landlord or mortgage bank interest payments). Alternatively, if you look at folks attracted to the "drowning in credit card debt, but leasing a brand new BMW, and downtown apartment" version of "displaying a certain lifestyle" then no, those people probably will be repelled. The dating pool is full of unique people of varying philosophy, intelligence, and wisdom.