Living with a roommate isn’t ideal, but after some time, you get to know each other, and things start to look up. Perhaps you even find some time to go out for a nice drink once in a while.

That’s how things were for redditor SuperNicoRobyn and Andrew. For a while, their co-living situation was pretty chill. Until one night, when they had some friends over, Andrew admitted that whenever his roommate gets on his nerves, he spits on his food. Grossed out and terrified, the original poster couldn’t move past this and decided to evict his roommate.

Living with a roommate might not be ideal

Image credits: RDNE Stock project / pexels (not the actual photo)

But this one crossed a lot of boundaries by spitting on his roommate’s food

Image credits:  Ella Olsson / pexels (not the actual photo)

Image credits: mehdi lamaaffar / unsplash (not the actual photo)

Image credits: SuperNicoRobyn

Many young adults are choosing to cohabit with others

Image credits: cottonbro studio / pexels (not the actual photo)

Sometimes, cohabitation is necessary, especially in places where rent is high and space is tight. But something interesting is happening with Millennials, who are still opting to live with other people despite being financially stable.

In the US, 31.9% of households are shared with at least one person who isn’t a spouse, romantic partner, or college student. That makes about 79 million adults living with housemates. Interestingly, they’re not feeling shame or stigma about it and instead are making a conscious choice to live this way.

Living with housemates can be an easy fix for finding and maintaining new relationships. Making friends can get harder with age, and throwing yourself into such a situation is a good opportunity to expand your social circle.

It also puts pressure on you to keep it together, as roommates will quickly call you out for leaving dishes in the sink or not taking the trash out. While alone, such responsibilities are often postponed.

Millennials are shaking up adulthood, and creating the living places they prefer is just a part of it. Delaying parenthood and marriage and opting to have roommates allows one to preserve individuality, something that’s not really possible when living with a partner or family.

Roommate relationships could be improved with a bit of empathy

Image credits: Liza Summer / pexels (not the actual photo)

However, sometimes people who share a space don’t always get along. There are tons of reasons for it, but a study carried out in 2018 suggests that a very simple one is that we aren’t as understanding of other people’s feelings as we could be.

When our cup of patience is overfilled, it can be hard to care about how your roommate feels, let alone be polite to them. It’s the point where everything falls apart. However, researchers at New York University found that if we were just a tad better at recognizing how people are feeling, we could stop things from getting out of hand or prevent roommates from spitting on food.

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As it turns out, not being able to spot another person’s distress can lead to bigger problems. If you think your housemate is a bit annoyed that you forgot or were too busy to take out the trash, they might be feeling a lot more frustrated and just aren’t mentioning anything. Likewise, putting on a smile and brushing off something that bothers you makes the roommate assume that everything is normal when it’s not.

The research found that individuals living together not only drastically underestimated each other’s emotions, but they also assumed that the other was feeling the same way they were. To make this fragile relationship work, they need to voice how they feel while simultaneously trying to figure out the other person’s point of view.

If there are reoccurring problems with your roommates (and they aren’t the absolute worst), it might be time to check in with them and see if you’re not accidentally overseeing some big signs. Fights about dirty floors aren’t always just about that; they might come from things happening outside your apartment. The next time something is “fine,” don’t forget that we tend to underestimate other people’s feelings without really intending to, so try to find out and ensure that everything is really okay.

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