apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Yay for using I on AT!!

I had a roommate with an out-of-town boyfriend and they would fight on the phone all the time. One time she got so mad that she threw his laptop on the ground (which he had forgotten after the last visit) and stomped on it.

I just tried to go out in the hall and talk to my boyfriend on the phone to avoid it being awkward.

Needless to say I told my friends some pretty funny stories over lunch at the dorm cafeteria.

Do you really think those two were roommates or f__k buddies? And even worse... can you imagine Big Bird trying to mack on ANYONE from Sesame Street?

My first two roommates were nightmares. #1 had sex with her boyfriend nearly every night whether I was in the bed next to them or not and #2 had recently been diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. Part of her therapy was to write down what she was always thinking (in whichever personality she was in) and the day I found a journal entry from one of those other personalities talking about how she wanted to kill her roommate ... well let's just say that was the day I moved out! ;-)

I had an awesome roommate the rest of my college years (both in the dorm and then in an off-campus apartment) who completely made up for the crappiness of the first two. We had a total blast! We often joked that had it not been for crazy roommate #2, we never would've ended up living together.

p.s. love the choice of Bert & Ernie pic ;-)

I had my share of weird roommates and experiences, and the best situations ended up when we established clear boundaries, tried to communicate well, and gave each other plenty of personal space. Though I have come to believe that living with another person in such a small space is going to have issues no matter what, just have some where to get away from it and move on.

Oh the memories of my crazy freshmen year roommate. She was not adjusted well to college and clearly did not appreciate my presence, but luckily there was a spare room across the hallway, so I moved out. My advice: stay on good terms with your RA. Sure, they might not be too sympathetic to your shenanigans, but with roommate conflicts, they can be really valuable.

Also, another vote for "I"!

Yes, AT, please hear us! We love the "I" and not the royal "we"!!!

I'm so glad my college dorm/early independence roommate years are (hopefully for good) OVER!

You can always try to diplomatically bring up problems with your own solutions or ways to compromise but it's never enough.

You just have to wait it out until you can finally get your own place!

I once shared a one-bedroom basement flat with three roommates. Amazingly, it wasn't nearly as bad as one might assume, despite the occasional drama. It ended up being a lot of fun.

Although nothing beats my first college roommate. Emotionally unstable, pathological liar, and affiliated with the Klan.

I learned that "My boyfriend lives out of town and visits maybe once a month" actually means "My boyfriend will be here every weekend, and every holiday and between school semesters, in the apartment 24/7. Also, we will be having loud, coke-fueled sex every night, and sometimes during the day. And in every room of the house other than your bedroom, but including our shared washroom."

This was after college, and I finally realized I needed a place of my own, even if it would cost me an arm and a leg.

I actually became best friends with my dorm roommates over the course of a few years. Though second year roommates were a diff. story...

I had a few bad roommates, but also met great people who had bad roommates and moved in with them!

If you have someone you have NOTHING in common with, the best thing you can do is set up some kind of room divider and pretend he or she does not exist.

Oh, roommates. Blessed and cursed creatures!

My sophomore year, I moved into a four-bedroom on-campus apartment with my best friend, so we had two other roommates we weren't going to know. My friend and I engaged in many passive-aggressive note-writing campaigns (none of which we started, and all of which we eventually dealt with like adults) and dish-washing standoffs. It got pretty grody, but it's tons of fun to tell people about the roommate who got uppity when we used a pad of her butter to make breakfast... for all four of us.

HOORAY FOR "I"!
pretty please consider it, AT! saying "I" sounds so much more relatable than saying "we". please?

I am at the point where I just HAVE to live alone. I can't live with strangers and I've finally figured out that it's just way too hard to live with friends.

I lived with my best friend in my first apartment. I had to work double shifts nearly every day to afford it, while she was on her parent's payroll...She'd adopted 2 large dogs nad hardly ever took them out. She chain-smoked inside and also started smoking pot constantly. She was recently diagnosed as bipolar and didnt take her meds, or wasn't taking the right ones, or something...

It was horrible. We stopped talking and one day I came home to find all of her stuff gone. Apparently she'd decided to move out while I was working a double. I had to stick out the month and move out in the dark, because she had the bills in her name and didn't pay them after she left.

Long story short, we're both older and wiser and will always be best friends. But I don't think we'd ever live together again :)

I don't get the big deal about "I".

I am so glad not to have roommates. No point in living with someone you can't tell what to do.

Another vote here fore "I" instead of "we". "We" always reads awkwardly without seeming any less subjective.

ugh, first year college roommate. she had one of those collapsible nordic tracks in our dorm room that she would set up and forget to close... and i'd run into it in the middle of the night and get a bruise on my forehead. she was a slut, a pathological liar, and a cheater. she borrowed my cashmere sweater and left it crumpled in a pool of beer on the floor. she was, and probably still is, a bully. and now she is a doctor! Man i hated her. here is my advice: stand up to people like this. its not ok for them to treat you so poorly. i was too young to realize that unless i stood up for myself she would continue to behave like this. perhaps if i'd told her i hated her to her face i wouldn't be saying it here on a blog! in short, stick up for yourself but have a sense of humor- living in the room the size of some people's closets is bound to bring up some issues.

I had a HORRIBLE roommate freshman year. She was a Bible-thumping Jesus freak (on an urban college campus?), which wouldn't have bothered me except that she kept pushing her religion on me. And did I mention the crosses and anti-abortion propaganda all over the walls? She was the kind of holier-than-thou snob who always acted completely superior to everyone else. She also only talked to her boyfriend using a baby voice and started to copy the way I dressed, which freaked me out.
In the beginning, I tried to be polite, but over time I started completely ignoring her. By second semester, we were no longer even on speaking terms.
I got through it by not spending much time in my room. And she went home most weekends, so that helped.
Luckily, the last 3 years in college I had a wonderful roommate and I still laugh about my nightmare of a freshman roommate!!

I had some bad roommates but by god if it didn't make for some great stories. To this day my college friends and I still reminisce about how wacky they were. I would gladly endure them all over again with the reassurance that the stories would be just as good!

One night roommate agreed to let my boyfriend stay over. She'd met him many times.

It's 3 AM. BF and I are sound asleep. Roommate comes home, drunk off her ample patootie. She climbs up to my top bunk to bother me (an all too common occurrence), and sees BF.

She falls off the bed with a loud crash and a high pitched shriek. Then, she turns on all the lights, and runs up and down the hall, banging on everyone's doors, shouting, "There's a MAN in my room! A STRANGE MAN!"

She was not too popular in the hallway after that incident.

My first three college roommates were:

a thief

a Bon Jovi fanatic

a racist, former private school debutante with a severe eating disorder.

Luckily things could only go uphill from there, and they did.

First year, first day. I opened the door to see a huge swastika on the wall. I left and changed rooms, even though I never had the pleasure to meet this neo nazi.
Second room mate was a manic depressive. Luckily, fell in love in a week and moved out.
I never let anyone know I had the room to myself. I bought a full sized mattress, getting rid of the twin beds. I was in heaven.

We like the royal We as much as we like passive voice, and one loves passive voice.

Reading these comments, I feel ridiculously lucky with my first and only roommate, even though she and I didn't work out more than about a month and a half. I am like the world's lightest sleeper, neat, and admittedly concerned about the security of my belongings; she is a noisy insomniac, ridiculously messy, and would NEVER lock (or sometimes even shut) our door. We actually got along on the basis of personality, but I could not, could not live with her.

Anyway, if anyone is actually scrolling through these comments looking for tips, be assertive and sit down with your roommate upon move-in and figure out what your expectations are for each other. We didn't, and I definitely ended up regretting that.

* There was the roommate who became anorexic thru the stress of college and decided she'd only eat carrots. She turned orange (it can happen!) and shortly after moved out to get psychological help.

* There was the bi-polar who announced she no longer needed her meds (boy, don't you LOVE waiting for the other shoe to fall), decided she was in love with a man from Bolivia she'd only spoken to a few times on the phone, up and moved there when we others were gone taking half our clothes with her (I lost my gorgeous lopi wool sweater hand-knit in Scotland!). I wonder if the jungle got her...

My rooomate was from Istanbul and her mother would call our dorm room at 5AM like clockwork. As if the phone ringing was not bad enough they were always screaming into the phone at each other. When I would ask her if everything was okay she said that was how they normally spoke to each other. The phone cord was long enough so she would go out in the hallway, but that was not very popular with the others in the hall.

She also had four Turkish male classmates that went with her everywhere and would always hang out in our room. They never spoke English when I was around, so I felt like a stranger in my own room. I would try to make conversation but she always seemed very defensive if I talked to her friends. It forced me to spend more time in my boyfriend's dorm, which ended up being a blessing because I made many steadfast friendships with the girls on his hall. Ms. Istanbul moved out shortly thereafter into an off-campus apartment with her male harem and I enjoyed a single for the rest of the semester.

I heartily second the assertive communication. Use "I" statements to avoid placing the blame. I am frustrated with the mess, I have a hard time studying with this music, etc. I also second having a good relationship with your RA. One more thing: if you sublease, get something in writing.

And now for the horror stories! I've been fortunate enough never to have a terrible roommate and tried not to be one but...

A friend of mine started receiving suggestive phone calls from strange guys. She eventually found out her roommate was performing stripteases in the window for the people in the facing building.

One of my mother's roommates "borrowed" things, mainly articles of clothing. After Mom decided her requests to get them back were going nowhere, she set up a photo shoot using her roommate's sheets as a backdrop upon which she set some old rolls of film on fire. I'm not sure if she actually did this in the dorm or took them to a studio - I figure it was probably the latter - but in any case, the sheets naturally caught fire too, and we still have the slides.

Re: Burt and Ernie: Oh god, they're *kids,* get over it already. What next? Are they going to leap on Green Eggs and Ham for the characters' liking it with a goat?

P.S. Re: assertive communication: Of course, if you want to freak your roommate out a bit, you can call yourself 'we' instead of 'I.'

I vote for NO note writing. Not everyone writes well, and it is too easy to take moderately rude comments as a declaration of war.

My freshmen year, we were asked to write roommate contracts. Talk over issues like bedtime, guests, shoes, etc. Write our 'agreements' down, and sign it. It worked great for me and my 2 roommates, who were lovely, focused young ladies. But for the very strange and unable to cope kids across the hall, it started off a bad year.

Another CHEER! for the use of "I"

I was extremely fortunate in college. My 1st year 1st semester dorm roommate ended up being my roommate (dorm and apartments) all through college and we're still best of friends years later.

We were also asked to create and sign roommate contracts every year. My freshman year roommate was absolutely adamant about a "no sex in the room" clause, though I assured her it was unnecessary...I had never even had a boyfriend at that point! Needless to say, she was the one who ran out and found a boyfriend and would have sex allll the time in our room. I walked in on them dozens of times. And then once there was the time that I left my keys in the room while loading my car, only to find out that they locked me out of the room to get it on.... sigh. She also joined this reject sorority along with our two suitemates, so I was completely outnumbered. My roommate wrote all of their rushing events on my wall calendar...because then I would go?? I also learned to sleep through hairdryers and Disturbd cds thanks to her. :)

Oh! And last but not least, my suitemate from that year, moved into my room over winter break (two rooms shared a common bathroom at my college sans locks on the room side of the bathroom door due to fire code restrictions). I dropped by to pick some stuff up and found her sleeping in my bed, using my computer, and the whole room was a pigsty. Apparently there wasn't much I could do about it/her.

My first year roommate was anorexic and manic-depressive. She never left the room... EVER. She had also never been away from home (an estate) for more than a night, so college was a rude awakening. Her mother visited 2-3 times/month. Did I mention she was a total slob and obsessed with really gaudy pastel colored shit EVERYWHERE?

Ugh. I stuck it out for the year and then moved in with a friend with a similar living style. We filled our room with spider plants and got a fake oriental rug on sale from IKEA. We drank a lot of wine that year. It was fabulous.