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How do i get my roommate to give me and my girl some space?

oviedo — Fri, 22 May 2009 19:27:45 -0800

How do i get my roommate to give me and my girl some space? I've just taken up a lease on a house and moved into the basement with a friend. We're both attend a Christian college, however we have quite distinct views when it comes to relationships.

I am currently involved and sexually active with a girl, he is not, nor has he ever been. I've discussed with him that there will be times when i will want the room to myself with my girl, and he automatically jumps to the conclusion that we will be having sex.

While this will be true some of the time, as stated before, we all go to a Christian college, so sex and sexual activity in general is frowned upon... naturally my girl and I have a reputation of sort to hold up, and don't want it to be public knowledge that we are active.

SO... how do i go about telling/asking him (and the rest of the house) about having my girl stay the night and allowing us to have our private time/space?

Help -- I've fallen for my housemate!

Anonymous — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:33:51 -0800

OMG-does-he-like-me-filter: help, I've fallen for my housemate! I have two requests for you, MeFites: 1) Please read my [long] story and tell me if I'm totally kidding myself about this situation; and/or 2) Tell me your own story about the time you fell for your roommate, housemate, or close friend. Disclaimers and apologies:
• All this dancing around and should-I-shouldn't-I is annoying and embarrassing and makes me feel like I'm 13.
• I realize this post is very long.
• Apologies for posting anonymously, but my username would give me away immediately if the person in question were to read this.

So, here’s my story. I’ve slept with a friend of mine, several times now. I'm 27, he's 25. We live in the same house but separate apartments (he has roommates, I do not). We spend all of our free time together. If we weren’t sleeping together I’d say we’re very close friends, but obviously you include sex in the situation and you’re not really friends anymore.

I like this guy a lot, and if he feels the same way I would like to attempt a relationship with him, despite the obvious hurdles there would be considering that we live in the same house. The trouble is that I’m having a really hard time gauging his interest. Maybe I’m just kidding myself, but I think he does have feelings for me, on some level. I worry that I'm being too cautious and self-censoring, and it comes across like I don't have feelings for him, so he's doing the same thing. Clearly I need to talk to him, and I will. But before I do, I’m interested to see what the hive mind thinks. Allow me to elaborate on the situation a bit...

When we first hooked up, I was thrilled because I really liked him. I would go upstairs and hang out with him in his apartment, uninvited, and basically follow him around like a pathetic puppy dog, which is pretty typical of me. Very soon – like after a week – he started to back off. I called him on it, and he said he liked me but he didn’t think he wanted a relationship with me. He said he needs space in a relationship, and when he doesn’t get it he starts treating his girlfriend badly, and he didn’t want to do that with me. I was very sad but I respected his position and backed off.

Eventually, things seemed to have settled and we started hanging out again. Of course we slept together again. It’s happened maybe a dozen times over the last five months, maybe more, I’ve lost count. It always takes the same pattern, over 2-4 weeks:

Flirt > flirt heavily > flirt even more heavily > spend every waking second together > sleep together (usually sober, fwiw) > spend the night in his arms > hang out the next day, pretend nothing happened, and start all over again.

Believe me, I realize how dysfunctional this is.

Every time we do sleep together, an ever-smaller part of me holds out hope that maybe this time something will actually come of it. But, because he rejected me before, I try to back off and wait for him to seek me out, and take my cues from how he acts. I always assume that he wants to avoid me, but there he is the next day, standing at my door. He’ll come downstairs and spend the whole evening with me, always of his own volition, but he’s hard to read. He’ll stand in my kitchen while I do dishes and cook dinner, and he plays with my dog, and he talks to me and tells me about his day, and when he runs out of things to say he stands around like he doesn’t want to leave; but when we move to the couch to watch TV we sit at opposite ends. There’s no physical contact at all. At the end of the night he says goodnight and goes back upstairs. This has happened so many times now that I’m kind of numb to it so it doesn’t upset me anymore, but it does make me sad.

What I can’t figure out is, does he spend all this time with me because his feelings have changed vis-à-vis the whole relationship thing, but he thinks I’m not interested because I’m not making a move? Or is he just being clueless? I mean, seriously, we spend ALL of our time together, and he seems to be doing it willingly. We are essentially a couple who sleeps together sporadically. (Christ this is so dysfunctional.) So why doesn’t he need his space now? Is it a control thing – like if I were initiating it he’d pull back, but since he initiates it he’s ok with it? If so, that’s seriously annoying.

I’ve never had many male friends, so I don’t have a good frame of reference and I may be way off base here, BUT: I feel like if he really didn’t have any feelings for me, he would avoid me like the plague after he slept with me, to avoid giving me the wrong idea. I’ve even heard him give that advice to others when his roommates and I are talking about girls and relationships and sex and all that. I know him to be a conscientious and observant person, particularly for a guy, so I’m inclined to think he’s not just being clueless. Am I totally kidding myself here? Am I reading way too much into this?

Or, perhaps he does have feelings for me but he’s conflicted due to his “space” issue. Is it worth trying to convince him that I get it, and I think we could still make it work? Usually I would say that you shouldn’t have to convince someone to want a relationship with you, but maybe this situation is the one exception to that rule. (I’m sure you guys are going to rip me apart for thinking that there are ever exceptions to the relationship commandments, several of which I know I’m trying to break here.)

Or, on the off-chance that The Hive thinks he actually might feel the same way I do... I think I’m being pretty obvious about the fact that I have real feelings for him, but that may not be the case, especially since I’m so afraid of scaring him off. Should I be more forward? Should I cuddle up with him the next time we watch TV together? Even if it’s been almost a week since we last touched each other – or would that be too out-of-the-blue?

I’m terrified of the devastating embarrassment I’d feel if I tried a move like that, and he recoiled and told me I’ve got the wrong idea, or he just froze and acted really uncomfortable. But I also know that I can’t keep on with things as they are. So either I try something like that, or I be more blunt and tell him how I feel and ask him to do the same, or I just drop the whole idea and start avoiding him as much as possible so I can get over him. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to move on if I think there’s a possibility something could happen.

MeFi, I want to hear your stories about the time you fell for your housemate or roommate or best friend, and what you did about it, and how it ended up. You can give me advice if you like, or just talk. If you think I'm being an idiot, tell me. If you think there's a chance here, tell me. Do your worst! Throwaway email: onlyindreams1234@gmail.com

Roommate dating

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 09:54:22 -0800

I'm dating a roommate, but we need an excuse to go into her bedroom after a date. What can I do? She seems to really like me, and we've been going out for a couple of weeks. She's also one of my roommates, but only for a little while longer as she has to go back to the US. There are five students living in this apartment.

She has a room with a door, the rest of us have low walls in a loft setup (this means my room is a no-go).

I'm not sure how to carry the relationship from kissing outside her bedroom door to go inside it. I don't know if coming out with "can I sleep with you tonight?" is a smart thing to say or not. What should a guy do in this situation? Should I just take her by the hand and go in with her?

I feel that she is interested, but is too shy to make a move- especially as there are no convenient excuses like "you have a long way to walk home"... my bedroom is just a few feet away.

To jump, or not to jump?

sunshinesky — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:18:12 -0800

My roommate likes me. A lot, it seems. He's been treating me impecably since I moved in, and I fear I'm falling for it. So this gets a little more complcated...

I moved in to his house over a month ago, on the recommendation of his recent ex (They broke up in october). He lived alone after she moved out, so there was plenty of extra space to fill.

Awesome.

Within a week of my moving in, he tells me that he's starting to have feelings for me and that while he doesn't expect reciprocation, he wanted to get it off his chest. I totally respect that, and went on with life sans-awkwardness. Turns out his ex had encouraged him to tell me, so no problems there either.

After he told me, I thought about it a bit and explained to him that A- I hardly know him and don't know if I like him yet, and B- Living with my boyfriend is the last thing I want to do right now, considering I had just uprooted myself after my own breakup.

Only now, I think I'm starting to like him. Yes, life has improved dramatically since moving in with him. He treats me with much more respect than my boyfriend ever did, and seems to not care what he's dong, so long as he's with me.
Now, I'm guessing I'm crazy to think this treatment would continue if I did pursue him... but say, if I didn't want a relationship, would it still be possible to, you know, BANG him?

In short, what are my options here? Would it be an awful idea to ignore it? Would I regret just .doing. him? What if I start wanting him to be my boyfriend?

Hey! I can hear you two in there!

Anonymous — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 16:10:37 -0800

My brother (with whom I share an apartment) and his girlfriend are having extremely loud sex, and they can't seem to quiet themselves down. Up to now I've mostly tried to deal with it one on one with him, but he's really defensive about it. I have told him how much this annoys me several times, and I know he has told her in attempt to get her to try to control herself. She was embarrassed, but nothing has changed.

The worst for me was an occasion about a month or so ago where I had a bunch of friends over, and the two of them came home and pretty much immediately went back to his room. When the screaming started, my friends, feeling understandably awkward, left almost immediately. Nothing as bad as that has happened since but me and my girlfriend still have to hear them going at it two to three times a week. It's not a matter of paper thin walls either, because I have sex there not too infrequently and he admits he's never heard a thing.

So basically they know I can hear them just about every time they have sex, several times a week. It's loud enough to wake me up. I want to be nice about it, I've told him how I feel about but he keeps telling me there's nothing he can do about it. Before you ask: no I can't move out. Luckily nobody's coming to blows over this or anything, it just hardcore gets on my nerves / the nerves of my girlfriend and guests. Is there anything I can do or say?