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Fuck Shitty Housemates

Hell is other people – so why do we insist on living with them?

A home is meant to be a refuge. It's somewhere we're supposed to go to seek brief solace before re-entering a painful outside world of tedious conversations, obligatory tipping, bosses and buskers playing "Jerusalem". In no way do we expect our homes to make our lives more annoying and complicated.

And yet, for those of us who can't afford to live alone, this is very often what happens. We live with housemates who complicate our lives no end, with their unique sense of entitlement, ability to use every pan you own to make buttered toast and insistence on leaving all the radiators on while throwing all the windows open, literally pouring wages out the window.

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For evidence of this and greater atrocities, see ihatemyroommate.net. Here, every few hours, a different anonymous poster vents about the injustices of their living situation, often so desperately that they lose all regard for punctuation or grammar. For example: "She brings random ugly guys over and fucks them very loudly. She also stole my xbox controller batteries for her vibrator and god knows I'm not touching that disease ridden thing to get them back."

It's an entertaining website, but also kind of depressing; the sheer volume of posts suggests a real selfishness at the heart of humanity. People, it turns out, are cunts. So why do we insist on living with them?

This need to interact with the scourge of humanity is only getting greater. In 2012, a study revealed that the number of over-thirties searching for a houseshare had increased 600 percent in a six-month period. Last month, another showed that the amount of young adults living with their parents had risen a quarter since 1996. Now, more than ever, due to the economy’s dire state, people are being forced to share their homes with irritating, shameless strangers.

So what exactly is it that makes a bad housemate? Here are some cardinal sins, drawn from ihatemyroommate.net, psychological statistics and – worst of all – bitter personal experience.

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SELFISHNESS

Selfishness is a symptom of a narcissistic personality, which is found in 30 percent of young people – traditionally, those most likely to live in houseshares. For whatever reason, this percentage has doubled in the last 30 years, with empathy falling 40 percent in the same time. Clearly, the results of such a turnaround are likely to be catastrophic for society and like everything else that's wrong with society the blame lies squarely with Mum and Dad. Selfishness begins in childhood. We observe how a selfish parent gets their way and learn to copy them, or we experience a trauma that causes us to shut down. Staggeringly, when examined in therapy, a selfish person will often be found to have the same maturity level and emotional age as when their trauma occurred, regardless of their actual age.

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If a selfish person doesn’t get their way, they defend themselves against feelings of pain and helplessness by rationalising their position and subsequently nurturing grudges. Likewise when criticised: they either attack the other person with blame, or go silent and retreat from the scene. They do this to avoid feelings of shame and guilt but also to avoid taking responsibility for growing up – which means that their mistakes can’t be faced, never mind learnt from. Because of this, living with a selfish prick can be torture.

Then, at night, he’d sit in the living room with the telly off, blaring music off his laptop and Skyping people all over the world, shouting, "WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? NEARLY MIDNIGHT HERE" over and over again.

Years ago, in my early-twenties, I lived with a guy in his early-thirties who displayed classic signs of selfishness. He cared so little for my time that having a conversation with him was impossible. He would talk about a subject before suddenly changing it mid-sentence, or else pause for a long time to think about something – something, I assumed, that was more important than our conversation.

This infuriated me at first but over time I began expecting less from this part of our relationship. Less acceptable was his proclivity to noise. Every morning it’d start with him banging doors and galloping down the stairs like a coked-up racehorse. Then, at night, he’d sit in the living room with the telly off, blaring music off his laptop and skyping people all over the world, shouting, "WHAT TIME IS IT THERE? NEARLY MIDNIGHT HERE" over and over again.

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What made me most miserable was that I didn’t do a lot about it. Selfishness is such a deep-seated personality trait that it's unlikely to ever be "cured". Instead of endlessly telling him to keep it down, what I should’ve done was tell him I was moving out. My ambition was still the same – to live somewhere and be happy – yet it was easier to wallow than it was to make a change. To feel better, I would read stories online about housemates much worse than mine. On ihatemyroommate.net I read about drug addicts and drunkards, about people stealing money and ordering over prostitutes. However, though I’d feel better for a little while, to rise above it permanently seemed beyond me.

His noise and dirtiness returned me to misery every time. It's not the kind of thing that makes you value the place you live in.

Click through to read on.

DIRTINESS

Back at ihatemyroommate.net, a woman in New York City writes: "Fat hipster has left period blood all over the toilet. She has left poop on the toilet seat. Now that is just ridiculous." A man in Indiana writes: "He leaves pubic hair all over the bathroom floor and only cleans it up once every three months. I have to wear flip flops every time i use that washroom and even still track some of the hair back to my room, which gets stuck to my socks and inavoidably gets into my bed."

So, why are people dirty? Well mainly for one of two reasons: one because, like selfishness, it is learnt in childhood (when there is no parental expectation on them to clean). And two, as a symptom of anxiety or depression. They know they need to clean but lack the will and/or energy to do so. Though it’s tempting to call these people cunts, we must be aware that – like suicide – leaving dirty underwear in the kitchen is sometimes a side effect of a serious mental illness.

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Also, if the home is a refuge, isn't it the shitty housemate's right to fill it in with their own muck? Perhaps it's useful to examine the way they act at work. Surely much less responsibility is shirked in the workplace than it is at home, or the shitty housemate would be told to leave the workplace and never return. There is an understanding there that, regardless of illness or personality, a certain amount must be done towards the common good. The problem, then, lies in the belief that our home-lives exist inside a vacuum – that they are separate from, and protests against, our real-world lives where altruistic compromises like cleaning are necessary.

That said, am I naive in thinking that, until we can afford to live alone and insulate our shortcomings from others, we must try to overcome them and be at least as considerate to the people we live with as we are to our fucking workmates? The guy I lived with avoided cleaning, taking trips away, I began to suspect, just to miss his turn. He also hoarded books and empty jars on the kitchen counter and never, ever took out the bin. Yet, to pubic hair and period blood, he paled in comparison.

Sometimes I wondered if my expectations of him and a cleaner home were superficial, based on an insecurity I had about myself. I had to admit that they probably were. Because I'd shirked a respectable career to become a writer, letting a lot of people down, I saw that house as a kind of opportunity to be redeemed. I wanted all who doubted me to see where I lived and be impressed. I wanted that place to validate me in ways my worklife never could.

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Click through to read on.

NEGATIVITY

Despite thoughts like the above, my misery came and went. A Bruce Springsteen song or a sunny day, or a Bruce Springsteen song about a sunny day, would lift me and I’d walk home in the greatest of spirits. Then I’d get in the door. Facing me, always, his glum expression. It was startling how much his attitude had changed since our first weeks living together. It was startling, too, how much happier he seemed around other people. People on Skype, his friends, mine. Was I the cause of his unhappiness or did he just not bother hiding it from me?

If he was depressed I empathised, but it was hard to take this empathy further as, when I asked him if he was OK, he’d say yes and then go silent. I began to avoid going home, hanging out in bars and waiting until he was in from work and had settled down somewhat. Being there when he got in was horrendous. With his noise and attitude he cut through the peace of the house like a samurai sword through butter.

Was my housemate right in (presumably) thinking I was a Nazi?

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t force myself to be happy. Unlike him I couldn’t live in a vacuum. I was as connected to that house as I was my own body, as I had been all the homes I ever lived in. I moved out, eventually, not because I saw the light but because of circumstance. And I’ll be honest: the real reason I’m writing this after all these years is that, surprise surprise, I’m again involved in a similar situation with another housemate. I’m writing this to remind myself of how miserable I can get before I even try to make a change and how, if life seemed too short for this shit back then, surely it’s even shorter now.

Isn’t this a happy ending, though? Having lived in these shitty situations, I can write about them, sell this and, maybe someday soon, afford to live alone. I wonder, too, if I could live anywhere and not find fault. All this had happened with a couple of different places before: complaints of noise, dirtiness. Was my housemate right in (presumably) thinking I was a Nazi? Did my hatred of him go beyond what was justified just because he wouldn’t bend to my will? And were my housemates – the ones I’d clashed with over the years – right in thinking that it was I, not them, was the cunt?

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Fuck, I didn’t know. Even today, all I can say for sure is that, if my housemate wrote this, he’d probably list CONTROLLING among the cardinal sins of being a housemate.

So, is misery an unavoidable part of sharing a home with someone else? I can really only think of two exceptions to this fundamental life rule.

Click through to read on.

SHARING A HOME CAN WORK IF WE LIVE WITH A LOVER

In any romantic relationship, there is a need to move forwards, in the same direction. As such, compromises can be reached quicker and with less resentment. Also, if we’re selfish, we have more invested in this relationship than with a housemate because the personal benefits of settling differences are greater. Housemates won’t give us oral sex.

SHARING A HOME CAN WORK IF WE SET RULES

Agreed-upon tenets that’ll push us towards a compromise. This is the case on communes and kibbutzes, where people seem quite happy living together. Then again, with no authority to enforce them, who’s to say these rules won’t be broken?

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Otherwise, I don’t know. Maybe luck could find us a good housemate. Obviously they exist, but look around you. Look at the people on the bus, the people you work with, the people in the pub. They’re on Facebook and playing Flappy Bird simulators. They’re drinking Budweiser.

Look in the mirror, too.

If Miley Cyrus’ bony pelvis is the most searched-for thing online, how can we pretend that anything other than the barest minority of us have brains capable of sustaining peaceful living situations? We’re doomed to misery the same way we’re doomed to bad hangovers, shit diets, unfulfilling lives and whimpering deaths.

I Hate My Roommate because he came in fucking wasted at 2.30 in the morning and started trying to modify a nerf gun. He woke me up to ask if I had a screw driver. Stupid, worthless, life-wasting piece of shit.

Just and peaceful living situations exist but, unlike Miley’s pelvis, I haven’t seen them.

@0jnolan