I have lived in “intentional communities” and attest that mature and self capable men and women of all ages can and do live excellently in compact (from [augmented] single home suburban dwellings of a dozen *or more) to ranch style configurations.
It is truly a new level of human excellence. The Epicurean garden of our age.
This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular discussion, people have responsibilities, and people come and go.
If you want a better life sometimes you have to game up with a better self.
* Once 20 in a single Venice Beach home (close enough to the beach.) there were old VW buses parked in the back yard and rooms with bunks, people paid $400-600/mo. It was wild yet it was civilized. Obviously city shut it down after years working well. It all comes down to good house rule and willful participation.
Aurornis · 1h ago
> It is truly a new level of human excellence. The Epicurean garden of our age.
> This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular discussion, people have responsibilities, and people come and go.
> If you want a better life sometimes you have to game up with a better self.
I think it’s funny to hear the concept of teaming up with other people, putting in the work, sharing responsibilities, and having discussions among the community unit is described as “a new level of human excellence”
Because this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household. Many people do this. A lot of this thread feels like single people reinventing the concept of family to fill a void. That’s fine, of course. The funny part is being it described as a new and novel form of human excellence
raffael_de · 1h ago
> Because this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household.
Actually, not at all. A co-living arrangement of adults (or WG for Wohngemeinschaft, as we call it in Germany) is not well advised to work like a family household. A family has someone being the father, someone else being the mother and then there are children. While some WGs might stabilize into such a pattern for a while, it is certainly doomed to fail and end in drama. It's more like a team at work - which infamously isn't a family either.
Aurornis · 19m ago
I was talking about the virtues described in the parent comment, not a specific German Wohngemeinschaft
danaris · 1h ago
> this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household
It's describing what it's like to do so well.
IME, most people do not approach family with sufficient intentionality to achieve what sunscream89 describes. At best, they settle into a comfortable set of unconscious agreements and patterns that work OK for each other. At worst, those patterns cause constant friction that eventually tear them apart—or cause them to go to therapy and start adding intentionality to the relationship(s).
Aurornis · 1h ago
> It's describing what it's like to do so well.
And the comment above is describing the absolute best case communal living arrangement
> IME, most people do not approach family with sufficient intentionality to achieve what sunscream89 describes
In my experience, most roommates don’t do anything even close to what sunscream89 describes.
However most families at least make an attempt be a family, not just roommates.
sunscream89 · 1h ago
A family is completely different.
I have a large family, this is nothing like even a functional family. Nothing.
I have lived in over three intentional communities (some others were too casual). From elaborate roommate situations to full on company town.
Working and living together in the “Epicurean dream” is intentional community, one lost to main stream awareness. And that is a form of excellent living!
I guess there are those who find living and working for others the natural way, and those who would live and work for themselves (as a community).
Tade0 · 1h ago
The closest that I've gotten to this sort of arrangement was in a large cabin in the woods without electricity or running water where, signified by two shot glasses with rounded bottoms and a jug of moonshine passed around, there was always someone awake and tending to the property.
My task was to carry water so that it could later be heated for drinking/bathing (sponge-bathing really).
The location and (lack of) amenities served as a filter, so it's not something I think could be easily reproducible.
sunscream89 · 22m ago
Once I lived in a desert commune that was like this. Frown on boozing (or over boozing) otherwise everyone was as wildlander as one can imagine.
Location for this was everything. Live like a well stocked savage in a pristine removed wonder of the world.
Community was around for so long there were prepper’s stocks spanning decades.
Btw, MREs do die. And they’re nothing worth living on.
derektank · 2h ago
>With six roommates, I would cook a couple dishes a week. Every meal would be multi course, with different people making salad, protein, sides, and maybe mixing up some drinks for the cooks.
I've never split meals with any of my roommates when I had them, and I cringe at the idea of asking them to accommodate my own idiosyncratic tastes. I, naturally, have lived on my own since I could possibly afford it. But I can see why this would be a huge benefit if you are so inclined to shared meal prep.
This article also makes a strong case for repealing laws outlawing SRO buildings, which can be designed to better accommodate shared cooking and socializing spaces than a building of 1 bedroom apartments.
lelandfe · 2h ago
Yeah, if you’ve got really hard opinions about what you like, it might be tough. It might also be a way to expand your palette though? I’m living with a Swiss girl and an Argentinian guy right now and am enjoying the new foods I’m introduced to.
ghaff · 2h ago
In school, with roommates/housemates, we would very seldom do shared meals (where one person basically prepped the meal) and I do pot-lucks with friends today. But it's not the normal thing. People have different schedules and preferences.
GregDavidson · 2h ago
I'm a geek and have shared my home with housemates for 50 years. When I was poor and when I was prosperous. When I was married and when I was not. It's almost always been good for me, including for growth in my social intelligence. It was especially valuable when my wife died. Some of my housemates have been challenging. More became close friends. Living together people take their masks off. Quality social connections have been invaluable to me.
wussboy · 1h ago
I think it's important to call out the difference between "what I prefer" and "what is good for me". We understand this fully in many aspects of our lives (from "My body prefers to do heroin" to "I prefer not to exercise but I do it because it's good for me").
I see a lot of comments here along the lines of "I prefer to live alone because roommates are a pain in the ass", but I think there might be a lot of value to doing this because it's good for you. Living with other people forces us to corral our worst tendencies, to break out of virtual worlds to engage in the real one, to form bonds that will force us to grow and change.
I think it's strange that our preference in this area, but not many others, could be so dominant over what is good for us.
8f2ab37a-ed6c · 2h ago
In the US, is it concerning when a "grown man" in his 30s or 40s and beyond still lives with roommates, when dating and trying to attract a mate? Is there an expectation that you should be displaying a certain lifestyle that will attract a partner, and if you're living with a bunch of roommates, you're failing to do that?
I believe that's not the case in many other countries in the world, but what about the US?
kdamica · 2h ago
Especially in high cost areas like NY or SF, it’s completely normal for adults, even highly successful ones, to have roommates. I personally know plenty of men who had roommates up until they moved in with the person they would end up marrying.
Aurornis · 1h ago
The US is a huge and diverse country. People in it have diverse expectations.
It’s also going to depend on the location. Having roommates in a very high cost city is no big deal at all.
unclad5968 · 1h ago
In the cities I've lived, this is standard yes. For better or for worse, a man that isn't displaying capability to provide for himself is typically less attractive than one who is. Again, this is my experience. I'm not making an argument for or against.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
Absolutely. All else being equal, a man over the age of 30 without his own residence is basically undatable (as per unsaid expectations in the US).
hnthrow90348765 · 2h ago
Treating this as a universal standard of women for men is probably more harmful to anyone's dating chances than having roommates or not.
chistev · 2h ago
No, I prefer living without roommates, if I can afford it. I want my privacy and autonomy.
nixass · 2h ago
Absolutely never again with roommates. None of the "benefits" of having them can justify not living alone if one can afford
4b11b4 · 2h ago
Agree, did that
Aurornis · 1h ago
The talk about having roommates into your 30s, 40s, and 50s to be able to split the load, avoid loneliness, socialize more, find motivation to do things with others, and have interesting conversations with people in different life situations is all interesting and good. Certainly something a single person should at least consider.
But it also feels funny to read this as a someone with a family at home, because a healthy family home life checks all of these boxes and more. I’m sure someone will come along to comment that not all families are this good at being friendly and splitting the load of cooking and such, but I think you’d find that most roommate situations aren’t splitting the load of cooking and making meals together like this at a much higher rate.
jlarocco · 1h ago
I think personality plays a big role. If it works for you, great!
But living with a group of people sounds like hell to me. When I go home, I want to be alone and relax. I don't want to deal with other people's shit, and I don't want to bother them with mine.
It's so unappealling to me, I would live out of my car before I gave in and tried living with roommates.
Bradlinc · 1h ago
I had a roommate for the first time again in my early 30s after getting divorced. Looking back now I enjoyed it. I felt that I had to grow up and get my own place again after our lease was up. I think this was true, at the time I did have a two year old daughter and we were living illegally in a warehouse. Not the best way to raise a small child. However, if I could go back, I think I would have found another communal living space. My roommate on the other hand may have more mixed feeling about it given the screaming two year old and my constant cooking of monkfish… which was later barred from the menu.
cpach · 2h ago
I can relate a lot to this. For most of the years between leaving home and meeting my wife I had at least 1 room-mate. I enjoyed it. Living alone is very boring IMHO.
Jhsto · 1h ago
My personal anecdote is that living with roommates while doing a PhD has been the worst living experience. That is, I'm rather jealous how the author ended up with a functioning setup and I wonder what attributes to this. Sometimes I wonder if the main cause for my challenges is that living with other PhD students is a competitive environment of time (constant prisoner dilemma situations where nobody cooperates to maximize their time to work), or if it's the mix of cultural backgrounds (I don't know how to get them to cooperate).
deadghost · 1h ago
I generally like having roommates, but when they're bad, they're BAD. I've also never done the communal cooking thing. Either they don't cook, are bad at cooking, or have dubious food hygiene. I haven't met any potential partners through them either. I might take a walk or swim with them but I sure as hell didn't get OP's experience.
No comments yet
nsksl · 2h ago
The case for normalising poverty.
profunctor · 2h ago
Having roommates (aka sharing a home) when you leave your family home has been the norm forever. Roommates are not poverty
nsksl · 2h ago
Buying an old beater car as your first car has been the norm forever. But that’s because young people still have no wealth, ie they are poor, not because they don’t want a shiny Audi.
ramesh31 · 2h ago
>Having roommates (aka sharing a home) when you leave your family home has been the norm forever. Roommates are not poverty
Poverty has been the norm forever. The idea of economic progress for the common person is barely 3 generations old.
cpach · 2h ago
One could argue that for many people, isolation is a form of poverty.
nsksl · 2h ago
You could argue everything, but I’m pretty sure 99% of those sharing a flat are doing so because they can’t afford a flat for themselves, not because they enjoy the company.
d4mi3n · 2h ago
It can also be a matter of preference. I lived alone after moving away from my family for a few years. For someone working long hours, far from home, with a demanding job, there is a particular kind of loneliness at coming home after dark to a cold, quiet home.
I ended up cohabitating with close friends after that for a solid decade, during which I met my wife who also joined us. It can be a wonderful arrangement if you have the right people and everyone is working to look after themselves and each other.
os2warpman · 1h ago
Living alone is not living in isolation.
My three daughters are grown and have moved out and now I live alone in a four bedroom house.
Between work (in office mon-thurs, wfh fridays), my volunteer (fire department and watershed steward), fitness (yoga and lifting), and social club (amateur radio, astronomy, and makerspace) commitments, and my girlfriend (smart and beautiful)-- the 1-3 nights per week I get to come home and sit alone, in the dark, in my underwear, listening to the worst 90s techno ever produced at full volume are the only times I have to relax.
As an added bonus when you live alone you can accomplish many things that would be difficult and/or very costly with roommates. Very few people want to live in chaos for months as you methodically open up each wall in your 70-year-old house to run CAT6/HDMI/speaker wires in every room by working an hour or so during your precious few free nights and weekends.
(in my underwear, while listening to the worst 90s techno ever at full volume)
danaris · 1h ago
How about "the case for acknowledging the reality that actually exists, rather than trying to pretend it will go away if we ignore it"?
gedy · 1h ago
To each their own, but I wanted nothing MORE than to finally have my own place throughout life (first a bedroom, then a dorm room, then apt). It was a real motivator, and it's not that I didn't have decent relationships with roommates or family.
ramesh31 · 2h ago
Women have such different lives. It's things like this that make it so painfully obvious why single men are isolated and alone in modern society.
mock-possum · 2h ago
Could you expand on that a bit? You’re the second comment to say this is about ‘women’ and I don’t get it - what’s different? Whatever you think is ‘painfully obvious’ here is obviously not landing for me, can you spell it out?
derektank · 2h ago
>I missed coming home to postgame my bad dates with my roommates over a cup of tea.
For whatever reason, I think men are a lot less likely to engage in this kind of social behavior, even if they are roommates. They're also a lot less likely to engage in spontaneous dance parties or enjoy group hip hop twerking exercises. Basically, a lot of the benefits of having roommates that the author describes are experienced far less often by men with roommates
wibbily · 1h ago
We just do it differently... "postgame work over several beers" is the norm in every house I've lived in, even when we didn't know each other well.
derektank · 49m ago
Perhaps experience varies, but I've never talked about specific dates in any detail with even my close male friends (let alone roommates)
ramesh31 · 2h ago
Pretty much. And I'm not even remotely saying it's a good thing. This is one of a myriad reasons men objectively live shorter, less healthy, and lonelier lives. You can speculate a million more reasons as to why, but it's just the reality of life.
micromacrofoot · 2h ago
on the other hand I've yet to meet a woman that punches holes in drywall when they're mad, I've had 2 male roommates that have
bee_rider · 1h ago
Bad male behavior is generally a bit more threatening and unpleasant to be around. But, I’ve also lived with good male friends, and with male strangers that ended up being great.
I mean, we didn’t twerk together. But it was fun to have a guy to plop down on the couch and watch play videogames, talk about Romans with, or whatever other male-coded quirkiness you want to pull up.
We often say “normalize <whatever>” to the point where it has become a bit of a trite phrase. But, there’s a lot of social pressure for men to be isolated. We should normalize living with your bros. It shouldn’t just be the wall-punchers that live together. (I mean, it isn’t).
ramesh31 · 2h ago
>on the other hand I've yet to meet a woman that punches holes in drywall when they're mad, I've had 2 male roommates that have
This is basically my point. Adult women can live together, adult men cannot.
sfilmeyer · 2h ago
I'm a man, and had wonderful experiences with my many (mostly male) roommates, with only occasional hiccups. Saying adult men cannot live together seems pretty excessive.
micromacrofoot · 2h ago
they can but it's inherently riskier, especially with a woman involved
nytesky · 1h ago
Golden Girls!
OutOfHere · 2h ago
The article is clearly for a class of women who want to stay single forever, not for men. Most people should be focusing more on having stable relationships with a partner, not into roommates.
mock-possum · 2h ago
Why women? It’s written by a woman, certainly, who does offer the disclaimer,
> I understand not everyone is wired like I am.
Why not men? Why would a man not prefer to live with roommates, to split meals and chores and have easy companionship for a cup of tea and a movie at the end of the day?
On the other hand, why should a man not want to be naked around the house, play trashy music at 7am, and bring someone home for the night without worrying about roommates?
What does men and women have to do with any of this, in other words? You’re the second comment to explicitly mention gender and I do not see the connection.
ipaddr · 2h ago
Women are more likely to pair up for safety and community reasons.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
Women can be more social, whereas men can be more independent, taken to their respective extremes. Men don't like having to explain their behavior to someone, or want to tolerate anyone else's behavior. Being social was cool back in college, but not since past the age of 35.
Men are fighting hard to improve their resumes/businesses/finances/health, and as such their lives, and they don't need or value idle time spent with roommates coming in the way. The role of a provider weighs more heavily on men.
It is truly a new level of human excellence. The Epicurean garden of our age.
This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular discussion, people have responsibilities, and people come and go.
If you want a better life sometimes you have to game up with a better self.
* Once 20 in a single Venice Beach home (close enough to the beach.) there were old VW buses parked in the back yard and rooms with bunks, people paid $400-600/mo. It was wild yet it was civilized. Obviously city shut it down after years working well. It all comes down to good house rule and willful participation.
> This has never worked without the WORK involved. People clean, people have a forum for regular discussion, people have responsibilities, and people come and go.
> If you want a better life sometimes you have to game up with a better self.
I think it’s funny to hear the concept of teaming up with other people, putting in the work, sharing responsibilities, and having discussions among the community unit is described as “a new level of human excellence”
Because this is just describing what it’s like to have a family and a household. Many people do this. A lot of this thread feels like single people reinventing the concept of family to fill a void. That’s fine, of course. The funny part is being it described as a new and novel form of human excellence
Actually, not at all. A co-living arrangement of adults (or WG for Wohngemeinschaft, as we call it in Germany) is not well advised to work like a family household. A family has someone being the father, someone else being the mother and then there are children. While some WGs might stabilize into such a pattern for a while, it is certainly doomed to fail and end in drama. It's more like a team at work - which infamously isn't a family either.
It's describing what it's like to do so well.
IME, most people do not approach family with sufficient intentionality to achieve what sunscream89 describes. At best, they settle into a comfortable set of unconscious agreements and patterns that work OK for each other. At worst, those patterns cause constant friction that eventually tear them apart—or cause them to go to therapy and start adding intentionality to the relationship(s).
And the comment above is describing the absolute best case communal living arrangement
> IME, most people do not approach family with sufficient intentionality to achieve what sunscream89 describes
In my experience, most roommates don’t do anything even close to what sunscream89 describes.
However most families at least make an attempt be a family, not just roommates.
I have a large family, this is nothing like even a functional family. Nothing.
I have lived in over three intentional communities (some others were too casual). From elaborate roommate situations to full on company town.
Working and living together in the “Epicurean dream” is intentional community, one lost to main stream awareness. And that is a form of excellent living!
I guess there are those who find living and working for others the natural way, and those who would live and work for themselves (as a community).
My task was to carry water so that it could later be heated for drinking/bathing (sponge-bathing really).
The location and (lack of) amenities served as a filter, so it's not something I think could be easily reproducible.
Location for this was everything. Live like a well stocked savage in a pristine removed wonder of the world.
Community was around for so long there were prepper’s stocks spanning decades.
Btw, MREs do die. And they’re nothing worth living on.
I've never split meals with any of my roommates when I had them, and I cringe at the idea of asking them to accommodate my own idiosyncratic tastes. I, naturally, have lived on my own since I could possibly afford it. But I can see why this would be a huge benefit if you are so inclined to shared meal prep.
This article also makes a strong case for repealing laws outlawing SRO buildings, which can be designed to better accommodate shared cooking and socializing spaces than a building of 1 bedroom apartments.
I see a lot of comments here along the lines of "I prefer to live alone because roommates are a pain in the ass", but I think there might be a lot of value to doing this because it's good for you. Living with other people forces us to corral our worst tendencies, to break out of virtual worlds to engage in the real one, to form bonds that will force us to grow and change.
I think it's strange that our preference in this area, but not many others, could be so dominant over what is good for us.
I believe that's not the case in many other countries in the world, but what about the US?
It’s also going to depend on the location. Having roommates in a very high cost city is no big deal at all.
But it also feels funny to read this as a someone with a family at home, because a healthy family home life checks all of these boxes and more. I’m sure someone will come along to comment that not all families are this good at being friendly and splitting the load of cooking and such, but I think you’d find that most roommate situations aren’t splitting the load of cooking and making meals together like this at a much higher rate.
But living with a group of people sounds like hell to me. When I go home, I want to be alone and relax. I don't want to deal with other people's shit, and I don't want to bother them with mine.
It's so unappealling to me, I would live out of my car before I gave in and tried living with roommates.
No comments yet
Poverty has been the norm forever. The idea of economic progress for the common person is barely 3 generations old.
I ended up cohabitating with close friends after that for a solid decade, during which I met my wife who also joined us. It can be a wonderful arrangement if you have the right people and everyone is working to look after themselves and each other.
My three daughters are grown and have moved out and now I live alone in a four bedroom house.
Between work (in office mon-thurs, wfh fridays), my volunteer (fire department and watershed steward), fitness (yoga and lifting), and social club (amateur radio, astronomy, and makerspace) commitments, and my girlfriend (smart and beautiful)-- the 1-3 nights per week I get to come home and sit alone, in the dark, in my underwear, listening to the worst 90s techno ever produced at full volume are the only times I have to relax.
As an added bonus when you live alone you can accomplish many things that would be difficult and/or very costly with roommates. Very few people want to live in chaos for months as you methodically open up each wall in your 70-year-old house to run CAT6/HDMI/speaker wires in every room by working an hour or so during your precious few free nights and weekends.
(in my underwear, while listening to the worst 90s techno ever at full volume)
For whatever reason, I think men are a lot less likely to engage in this kind of social behavior, even if they are roommates. They're also a lot less likely to engage in spontaneous dance parties or enjoy group hip hop twerking exercises. Basically, a lot of the benefits of having roommates that the author describes are experienced far less often by men with roommates
I mean, we didn’t twerk together. But it was fun to have a guy to plop down on the couch and watch play videogames, talk about Romans with, or whatever other male-coded quirkiness you want to pull up.
We often say “normalize <whatever>” to the point where it has become a bit of a trite phrase. But, there’s a lot of social pressure for men to be isolated. We should normalize living with your bros. It shouldn’t just be the wall-punchers that live together. (I mean, it isn’t).
This is basically my point. Adult women can live together, adult men cannot.
> I understand not everyone is wired like I am.
Why not men? Why would a man not prefer to live with roommates, to split meals and chores and have easy companionship for a cup of tea and a movie at the end of the day?
On the other hand, why should a man not want to be naked around the house, play trashy music at 7am, and bring someone home for the night without worrying about roommates?
What does men and women have to do with any of this, in other words? You’re the second comment to explicitly mention gender and I do not see the connection.
Men are fighting hard to improve their resumes/businesses/finances/health, and as such their lives, and they don't need or value idle time spent with roommates coming in the way. The role of a provider weighs more heavily on men.