‘I'm going slowly insane but I love my flat too much to move'
Last week, I put a call out to house sharers who have a predicament they want help with. Here, I unpack one of them with the help of a psychotherapist.
“Hi Alice
I’m 38 and live in a house share in north London with two other women. I came to house sharing quite late in life after breaking up with a boyfriend at 33. At the time, it felt a little bit like an early mid-life crisis so when a friend said she had a room in her house share, it felt like it was meant to be.
It was an amazing experience. I bonded so closely with the two women I lived with in those first years. They're still close friends of mine and actually when they moved out, they chose flats close by to this house share. So we're still a group, though we don't live together anymore.
I've been here in the same flat five years now and I'm the longest serving housemate. The rent's so reasonable and it feels like my home so I really don't want to leave. Until now, everyone I've lived with has been lovely and we’ve formed friendships and socialised as a house. We used to do lots of fun things as a flat - nights out, nights in. But since this one housemate has moved in, it's really changed the vibe in the flat and we don't want to hang around as a house any more because we want to keep our distance from her.
She’s a very intense person who doesn’t seem to need solitude or respect that others need it. When I wake up to get a cup of coffee in the morning, I just want to get up, make it and come back to bed without speaking to anyone but she will often come into the kitchen when she hears me in there and start asking me loads of questions.
She sends constant texts in our house group chat. She’ll ask if we watched certain things or when we will be home. It makes me want to avoid her. Me and the other housemate get on well but she makes a big deal of us leaving her out if we want to do things together so we have to organise things in secret so as not to offend her.
Times we have socialised as a three, I’ve noticed how she just tells me stories about other people in her life, rather than about herself or her own experiences and it makes it really hard to get to know her.
Part of the issue too is that she has got some OCD-like traits. So she rearranges the dishwasher every evening after we’ve gone to bed. Then, she turns off all the light switches and everything at the socket - including the TV, toaster and coffee machine.
When I said something to her about it making me late for work because I have to go around switching it all back on again in the mornings, she got quite defensive and now I feel like I can’t bring it up.
More recently, other habits of hers have started getting under my skin. I got woken up this morning by her blowing her nose right outside my room. It sounds like a trombonist. And it’s always in communal areas. This is the kind of thing I end up paying £80 an hour to talk about in my therapy sessions.
How have I got here? I feel like I’m constantly treading on eggshells in my own home.
Lauren*
Lauren,
I know what it's like when irritation like that builds up in a house share and you reach a point of no return, when you're so saturated with irritation that anything they do is the wrong thing. I also know what it's like when, even if consciously you know you're being unreasonable being irritated by very small things, your body feels tense around a housemate and it's not something you can control. You feel annoyed with them and then annoyed with yourself for feeling that way about something so small.
On more than one occasion you mentioned to me how you couldn't believe you were saying what you were saying and that it felt 'pathetic.' I think the first thing for you to do is to accept that whatever it is that's irritating you is a big deal and stop berating yourself for being impacted by it. Living in a house share where there's tension is all consuming and I'm not surprised you feel frustrated and trapped.
The first thing that came to mind is that your experience of the house share over five years might be creating unfair expectations for your relationship with her. Of course it would be nice for you to be friends but this is a different time, a different group and a different chapter for you in that flat. It's hard sometimes to process that change when the physical space stays the same. Did you properly mark the ending of the house share group you loved? Perhaps you are carrying some of your hurt that that period is over and it's muddying your relationship with your new housemate. A bit like when people break up with romantic partners and carry certain unresolved issues into their next relationship.
If you look at this house share with fresh eyes and as a blank canvas, perhaps you can start to think about how you want it to operate, given the characters that are in the house now. Perhaps it is that it's no longer your social life and instead, a place you call home and relax in but takes up less weight in your life. Perhaps it’s OK for you to spend more time with your original house mates living round the corner and to get your connection there.
I know from previous experience that drawing a line under that sort of irritation is virtually impossible. Once you've noticed those habits, it's hard to forget how much they irritate you. Can you spend a bit of time away from the flat and plan to address the issue when you return? I think if you understood your housemate better, it might help contextualise these behaviours and they'd feel less alien to you and instead you might notice them and feel some level of compassion instead of all irritation.
When I chatted to psychotherapist Alex Iga Golabek, founder of Ego Therapy, about your predicament - she shared her perspective on what might be going on between you.
“I’m wondering what unconscious signals are being given off here. When we decided we don't like someone, we send plenty of signs to another person without realising it. They’re absorbed by our bodies and our nervous systems and it creates a tension you can feel. I wonder if you’re unknowingly giving off these signals and they’re actually making your new housemate feel unsafe. That actually could be making her obsessions and compulsions worse.
It’s interesting to me that the way the new housemate is causing irritation is by making noise. It’s the way that children make sure they’re being heard. It sounds like she wants to be noticed and that she wants to feel like she belongs. In your own ways, both of you are letting each other know that you’re important in the space.”
Alex thinks that a well-worded conversation is the way forward. “Nobody teaches you how to have these sorts of linking conversations. We get taught how to be quiet and stand in line or how to be dominant but not how to assert ourselves in a kind and honest way. Being strong doesn’t have to mean being aggressive.
Can you gently start a conversation with “I’ve noticed we have this tension and it’s not comfortable, shall we try and work out where it’s coming from?
It is on both of you to meet in the middle but as the one who has been in the flat longer, I think the safest thing is for you to open that conversation.”
*names are changed