If you ever lived with me and have a vagina then I’m sorry to tell you, you weren’t my favorite roommate. My favorite roommate was my guy roommate. I’m all for solidarity and sisterhood, but there are benefits to living with a platonic male roommate that even the best girl roommates didn’t give me. Full disclosure, of all my roommates I only shared a bathroom with one (and she was a slob who constantly locked me out of it), so issues of not putting the seat down were nonexistent.
The truth of the matter was I had no intention of living with a guy roommate. My last year in college I was living with someone I considered a good friend. About two months after resigning our lease, my roommate tells me she was moving in with her boyfriend! She told me she would wait until I find a roommate, but that lasted about 2 weeks…. I asked everyone in my social, professional and academic network if they knew anyone looking for a sublease. The next month she decided that she didn’t need to pay her half of any of the bills besides rent… meaning she was leaving me with cable (which at the time I told her I didn’t want), internet, power and water! So I got desperate and placed an ad on Craigslist. After a few emails back and forth to someone with a gender ambiguous email address, my new potential roommate and I set up a time for me to show the apartment.
We planned to meet at the front office (in case a killer had answered my ad) and then walk over to the apartment from there. I had my friend Daniel positioned outside my apartment in his car with all my window blinds open (again for my protection). I saw a thin figure with relatively long hair get out of a white truck and I approached. That’s when I discovered my new potential roommate was a he!
Like Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls word vomit exploded out of my mouth, “You are not a girl!”
As someone who couldn’t be picky and was almost out of options (and cash) I went ahead and showed him my apartment. He moved in about 2 weeks later. (Yay no more crappie former roommate!)
Guy roommates are super chill.
Very few things will cause friction between you and them and they tend to avoid drama and promote fun. My favorite roommate moment was one Saturday night when he had friends in town. One of them knocked on my door, when I opened it, there he stood bottle in hand, “Wanna take a shot with us?” Hell yeah!
If you do anger them you will hear about it.
It won’t be passive aggressive or bitchy. It won’t be from him whispering to his friends in the room next to you that you did ____. It will be probably be something along the lines of, “Hey your cranberry juice spilled all in the fridge can you clean that up?” It may still be semi annoying to be told what to do, but it will be handled and forgotten a lot sooner.
You get a big brother (Unless you have some hanky panky with your roommate, then that’s a totally different benefit).
A few weeks after he moved in, the guy I was dating at the time had to go back to Kabul for 6 months. The week he left I was a wreck. I casually mentioned to my roommate, “….If you hear me crying uncontrollably that’s why.” His eyes got big and he offered his sympathy, “I’m so sorry. If you need anything…a hug or anything let me know.” It felt so reassuring to hear him care and be in the next room. All my girlfriends had been great, but they all wanted to talk about it and reassure me he’d be fine. I didn’t want to hear what they thought I just wanted comfort (preferably in the form of hugs and alcohol).
They teach you things
Some men are notoriously lazy (I love you guys! But I have a lot of male friends and have seen astounding levels of lazy). This isn’t a problem for a smart man. Any smart person in general will find the most hassle free way to do what has to be done. To avoid having to scrape food off of his George Foreman grill (we both had the same mini one) he cooked everything in-between foil when he used it. This has made my life so much easier!
They notice/appreciate the little things
Now, I’ve never lived with a man (I have had the boyfriend who thought he lived at my place… but that’s another story for another time) other than my Dad and my guy roommate, so there isn’t much to compare it to. I clean when I am stressed (Like bring out the bleach and rubber gloves, full on Monica-from-Friends-style purification… by the way I’m a Monica). So anytime I would go on a deep crazy clean he’d say something appreciative like, “Thanks for cleaning up,” or “Wow it looks great. You didn’t have to clean.” Most of my girl roommates either would have trashed it in an hour or thought it was some passive aggressive way of calling them messy.
Looking over this list I know I may have just hit the ‘guy roommate’ jackpot… Letting a random stranger from Craigslist move into your apartment may not go as smoothly. What are your best and worse roommate experiences? Share below. 🙂
Do it for love,
Dia
Edited by M.L. Scarbrough
*Karen*
I’ve only had one roommate so if she sees this blog she is going to know I have bashed her to the world but who cares. I was in college and it took place in a dorm room!! Not a fancy one though so we had the same room..ya know beds seeming five feet apart! Worst thing about her was she would use my stuff while I was gone without asking … and would hide it from me! However, I always found out when random pictures would show up on Facebook and she would get tagged. Oh look there’s my favorite shirt and oh look there’s my computer, TV and AND BED that you are all over.. okay great. Let’s not forget the use of my hair straightener that became stained with the hair product she used… thanks for ruining my $175 straightener!! I’ll just go buy another one because yeah I have that kind of money just laying around… not! The food that went “missing”, the shoes that “disappeared”, the “joking” of taking my cute art, picture frames and accessories.. and then somehow they “disappeared” just like my shoes… oh oh and the constant changing on the thermostat to 95 degrees.. WE LIVE IN TEXAS AND IT’S AUGUST! STOP IT!!!
BUT WAIT.. let’s not forget the BEST PART!!!! All the random men that would come over in the middle of the night… Listen I’m all for good looking men coming over and hanging out and whatever. Who isn’t? But they never were good looking, funny or entertaining. They were more annoying and awkward and it was like ummm excuse me why are you here again? Plus, it never stopped at just hanging out.. she always had to take it to the next level.. and let’s be honest.. with beds merely five feet apart… I don’t care if I was sleeping.. by the end of it I was awake.. who can sleep through that? I guess it was better than the times she would bolt the door and lock me out altogether and put beads on the door….. at least I was in the room and could get to my things if need be.. sigh. ..but beads seriously? Oh yeah did I mention THEY WERE MY BEADS!!!! .. UGHHHH
Needless to say I haven’t had a roommate since.. even with separate rooms I refuse to do it.. I just can’t. I feel as though my patience was stripped away with the first one and the next roommate would land me on a roommate version of “snapped”. Just sayin.
The positives of having her as a roommate… ………………. … … zilch.
Dia
I don’t think its fair to make young adults share a bedroom with a stranger especially the sizes dorms are. I think sharing a common area is good, maybe even a bathroom but not sleeping space. Maybe that’s how they try to lower freshman sexual activity lol.
The temperature thing drives me crazy too. That is probably my favorite thing about living alone, Karen. Control of the thermostat.