I’ve been married for almost twenty years now, and my husband and I have had several roommates, of various categories, over the course of our marriage. Some have been bad — some have been, in fact, awful — while others were just neutral, and some have been actually quite nice to have around. Most of the neutral experiences have been with the normal sort of roommate, the bill-splitting type that most young people end up with at one time or another. The rest were all people who needed help at the time.

The worst, though, was one person who was a friend to both of us, who did, in fact, need help… the problem was, he didn’t actually want help; he wanted to be supported in luxury without having to make any changes to himself, or attempting to better his own circumstances, pretty much forever. At a time when we were working hard just to ensure we could afford food for our kids and my medication (I am permanently disabled, and while I won’t die without my medication, I would be in a great deal of pain, and my husband has always been adamant that this made it a necessity, even when I didn’t consider it such), our ‘friend’ was insisting on having at least a pound of meat at three meals a day (cooked for him, of course), and insisting that asking him to eat margarine instead of real butter was psychological abuse, and that he’d be happy to just fix himself a peanut butter sandwich, but the last time he tried, the dishes hadn’t been done and he was so traumatized by the though of having to use a spoon rather than a butterknife to do so that he just couldn’t face that idea again. I really _wish_ that I was making this up, but unfortunately I am not. However, even during that truly horrific experience, at no point did I feel that it was a threat to my relationship with my husband. To my sanity, yes. My marriage? Not so much.

We eventually made it out of that situation (how is a long and sordid story, but if you find yourself morbidly fascinated, drop me an email, heh), and it would have been easy to say that we’d never, ever, do that sort of thing again, right?

Right…. right up until a pair of very good friends of ours… friends who had basically saved my life and my son’s life, in fact, ended up facing imminent eviction because she’d been injured at work (she was an ICU heart-ward nurse, and generally worked 16-18hr days before that) and, though he’d been trying, her husband was also seriously ill (ended up needing about six surgeries before he was able to work again), and they had no place to go.

It wasn’t even a debate. I’m not sure either of us even _asked_ the other. We just went and got them, because we _could_, and we had the room.

We’ve since moved out of that house, and into another, larger one, and they are still with us. He’s working, now, and they buy their own food, and he helps out when he can, but his income is, frankly, negligible compared to my husband’s, and her medication costs rival my own (with insurance, mine are about $400 a month… without… well, their cost would exceed all of our bills, including our mortgage and food costs), so I rarely ask them to even chip out on the bills.

On the other hand, they help watch my kids when I’m curled up in pain and whimpering too much to do so. She keeps my kitchen in a usable state, and stays awake after she sees him off to work at four in the morning just in case I end up sleeping through my alarm and don’t manage to get my kids up for school. He does pretty much _all_ of my shopping, with nary a complaint, and given how much pain that task causes me, that’s no small favor, I promise. I also am unable to drive, and one or the other of them ferries me around to dr.’s appointments, lab tests, or anywhere else I need. She made me go to the ER when I passed out in the shower, and while I grumble about the hospital stay it earned me, I can, when I’m being honest, admit it was necessary. She goes with me to my dr’s appointments and does my talking when I have a severe phobic attack (of doctors, hospitals, and anything medical related — another long story, and depressing as hell, I promise) and makes sure that when I need something, the doctor knows about it. As I write this, I’d be alone in the house with my kids, and no way to get any of us to a hospital in an emergency or even go get food if we ran out, for the next week that my husband is away on business, if they weren’t here, and the comfort of knowing that I’m not alone should there be an emergency is _huge_.

Yeah, we have the occasional disagreement. People do. But we work it out, and neither I nor my husband feel that they are taking advantage of us. They have been with us for several years, and while they may one day manage to get her the surgery she’d need to be able to work again and move out, it’s not urgent, or particularly necessary. Frankly, I think the only reason my husband was at all willing to go on his work-required trip is because he knew I _wouldn’t_ be alone; he worries. And that’s all totally aside from the benefits to someone like me of having other adults around just to talk to, given that I can’t exactly go out and socialize. So, again, our roommates haven’t threatened our marriage in the least. If anything, they’ve decreased both of our stress levels enough that the rather slight cost of housing six people instead of four is well worth it.

I love my husband dearly, but if he was the only person I saw or spoke to from day to day, I think I’d go crazy. That sort of relationship isn’t healthy, it’s a destructive sort of dependence. I’ve never been good with clingy, jealous friends or significant others (my previous relationship record, before my marriage, was three months, because of this), and no matter how much I love him, if such were expected of me, I would kill him, myself, or both of us in under a year, I’m sure.

Anyway, I’m glad you had such a nice experience with your friend staying with you, and that your husband was supportive of your decision, regardless of your friends’ expectations, and it’s nice to know that there are still other people out there to who are willing to help a friend out when they need it without feeling threatened by it. The world needs people like that.

Best wishes to you,

Velvet

I’m not married, but most of my friends are. I’ve spent so long being worried about intruding or being a third wheel. Even when they offer — having me over for dinner on family nights sometimes, or whatever. I like it, it’s nice because sometimes being single is lonely even if it’s not always. But it’s hard to shake the societal idea that it’s weird, that I”m putting them out somehow.

Our engaged housemates have no immediate plans to move out after their wedding this fall, which is really cool, and really confusing/counterintuitive/weird to a lot of people, I think. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about relationships simply from being around another couple in their everyday lives that much. You learn a lot about relationships in general living with four other people, I guess!

It works well for us — much better than I would have imagined if you had said to me four or five years ago, “Can you picture living in a household of five adults?” We play a lot of games together, cook good food, go dancing, talk about life — and also do a lot of things very much separately. We like to dream about living in/starting a cohousing community some day (which is different than a commune: separate, small living spaces, but shared, larger common space)!

My younger brother moved in with us. He left his wet towels everywhere. He ate most of the food in the fridge and didn’t help around the house. He lasted 3 months, then my husband asked him to either pick up his wet towels or move out. He moved out; I haven’t heard from him in 10 years but I still send emails and Christmas cards. I miss him.

My husband’s brother moved in with us when I went overseas on student exchange for 3 months. Our cat loved him. He was helpful; paid rent; cooked meals. I returned and thought we needed our “space” and asked him to move out. It probably would have worked out well for all of us if I had been brave enough to try the arrangement, but there was that weird factor of him being the third wheel and how would we handle that?

So good to read things worked out for you; I still have hope the situation will present itself to me again and I’ll respond in a better and different way next time.

And yes! 10/10/10! I wanted that date! I don’t think it was available at our venue. I was like, “Damn….missed it by a week! Now I’ll have such a harder time remembering my anniversary…”