Living on Your Own vs Living with Other People

this year i moved into a flat: not strictly by myself but with people whom i didn't know and still don't really know because we are all engrossed in our separate lives. (we literally do not talk to each other) so i am practically living on my own, and i am glad of it. i finally get the privacy i need.

however i would not always recommend living by oneself. if you are unemployed for a long period of time you can get quite restless and bored and lonely and thats when you start to want to have people around that you can talk to. what i am trying to do here is to make an opening for myself to tell everyone that

TODAY I FINALLY GOT A JOB AFTER SIX MONTHS OF UNEMPLOYMENT AND ITS A GREAT JOB AND I AM VERY ECSTATIC!!!!!!!!!!

i'm off to the pub now to celebrate!

Plus: I am not clean. When I lived alone I was perfectly content to live in filth, which was not a good thing.

In fact, I'm currently looking for a roommate so I'm not forced to abandon my lovely apartment and head back to a lonely overpriced studio. So if you happen to be thinking of moving to Chicago, hey! Why not do it next month? :)

I've just come out of a year the best and worst of living together and living alone. 6 months sharing a one bedroom flat with a belgian I really didn't get on with,plus she smoked 30 a day. It wasn't my choice of situation but where I was in Italy it was nigh on impossible to find somewhere to live and we just took the place. It was by no means . then she went back to belgium. and I lived alone.

That was good, except I do like to be socialble and I love to cook for people. And I do like to have the support of close friends around me. Admittedly I haven't tried living alone in a city where there are a number of close friends close by and I do definately appreciate the space.

Anyway today I move into a good sized house with friends of mine up in sheffield, so we'll see how that goes

1. Who is DJ Crow Atak and what are you doing going to the pictures with him / her?

2. What was your Grate Wurk, what happened to it, and when are you going to get back to it? None want to see it more than I do.

I'm now living with one of my oldest friends and her bloke and it's great. We've all got similar tastes in music/books (but still different enough for a good argument) and eat the same food and shout at the telly together.

I miss cooking for people while living on my own, also less likely to go out and be active. I never really had space of my own 'til 1995 so it was weird and full of hidden costs. The social life in shared houses can be exceptionally good; I have been known to stay in if I can't get a plus one for the various gigs, etc. I go to.

So hopefully I'll be back in London in November and fingers-crossed will find some people to live with too.

Our flat is lovely though and we have an ace landlord. It is also very, very orange.

At least I don't lie on the sofa in a short dressing gown with my chest hanging out like SOME people. And I am the only one who ever buys bog roll.

Now I live with someone, and it's fine. My job means I'm never there, so it doesn't really feel like living with anyone at all. I'd like it if I was home more, to be honest. That said, I can never get near the computer at home...

i want to live in a cave

:(

Can I borrow one of them to do some cleaning up around here?

Though, specifically, with the complication of living with a *couple*.

My housemate got married a few months ago. I was really happy for him his fiance/wife is a lovely person. The house seemed big enough to absorb another person without any problem, and he said that they were perfectly happy for me to go on living with them.

However... I feel like a selfish, heartless bastard, but things have changed in a way which is really exacerbating my loneliness (is that even the right word? More like alienation).

It's not just the physical problems of having another person move in. (We've tried to schedule the mornings so shower/kitchen conflicts are not a problem, but the evening is a different story - no matter what time I come home, it seems that they're in the kitchen.) It's a "personal space" thing - the Wife is obviously nesting, making the place her own, but this means she's intruding in areas that were formerly mine. Reorganising the garden, for instance.

And apart from all that, it's hard for me, as a terminally single person, burned out on relationships, not very up on "love" and all that, to be constantly rubbing up against this happy relationship. It's like I don't even get to relax in my own home. Lazy bad dinners in bed with the TV have become the norm, instead of a luxury, because they're being coupley all over the kitchen. I haven't even seen the inside of the living room (TV, cable, video, DVD, etc. which my housemate always says I'm welcome to use) for months.

Should I just give up and move out? Honestly, I'm sick of moving, and I *liked* this house. It's not even something I can really *talk* to them about, because it is me being oversensitive, but it's painful constantly being around newlyweds. I could certainly afford to rent a studio or one-bedroom and live by myself. (I was planning on buying such a thing in six months to a year anyway.)

What do I do? Grit my teeth and bear it for another year? Move out? Am I just being oversensitive and selfish and I should shut up and just be *happy* for them?

Argh.

But I also cannot help feeling a bit rubbish and put out by it all.

I mean, the few times I have asked to cut in, and said something like "Look, I am very hungry, my dinner will take 15 minutes to cook, do you mind if I use the kitchen now?" I've felt guilty and awful as hell about it.

I don't really want to be mates with them, I want to keep it as businesslike an arrangement as possible. We're housemates, not friends - I really need that kind of layer of insulation/privacy or else it makes personal issues out of things that are not. (In a way, it's better for me to live with strangers than with friends.)

My feeling is that you should plan for moving out. They are obviously moving into another stage of their lives now, however happy they are to have you there as well. Talking about it might clear the air (if indeed it feels unclear) but it won't change the underlying situation.

As to the original T/S, I will be renting out the room again when they leave. Why? Well I'm a social animal. For all my misanthropy and cynicism I LOVE people. For a long time I loved living alone because it allowed me to switch off and not have to do anything. Now I want to have someone else in the house. Pure and simple it's a good way to meet new people but also it's someone making noise in the house. I was getting sick of the silence only broken by me or the neighbours. I think part of the motivation is that if someone’s in the gaff it means that you don’t need to go out to have a chat with someone (I hate phones) so I can save to buy, hopefully.

God I do waffle. Sorry.

These two points are both the exact opposite of what I would say.

we have a winner!

-- Ally

This describes my living situation in my last two years of college perfectly. I can't say a bad word about this roommate, truly a Good Person as well as creative/intelligent/friendly/etc... but I usually need a bit of time alone, and he generally needed to be interacting with people constantly. So there were plenty of those situations described above and it got on my nerves.

Now I've lived alone for about a year, which obviously has its drawbacks, but I like it much more overall. I can still hang with friends a lot, but they're not popping into my room every 10 minutes. It is more expensive though.

Moi aussi.

Dogs might chew up your favorite shoes, but they aren't going to up & decide that your stuff doesn't look nice in the living room and remove it or anything. Really, the worst my dog is stuff like pull the pizza carton out of the recycling by the door & tear it apart looking for mmmm-yummy-3-day-old-melted-cheese.