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Answer by Koyel Bandyopadhyay, sociologist:
How can you find that someone who gives you peace when you demand it, and also when you don’t demand it? How can you find that someone who cleans or doesn’t, just like how you’d like it? How can you find that special someone who will never desert you when it’s time to split or pay the rent?
The answers to life’s questions are often found when some soul-searching is on. And therefore, do some soul-searching to figure out what kind of person you are before you set out to split your life with a roommate. That’s a key step on which the following steps are dependent.
Further, the following steps are based on the assumption that you have a choice in selecting your roommate. Where you don’t have a choice (and are just moving into a house, apartment, or other situation where your landlord or economic circumstances dictate who you get to live with) you just need to set boundaries and microboundaries.
What you don’t want
Very unlike listing what you’d like on your pizza or Subway sandwich, listing what you’d like in a roommate is not easy. So start with the easier step: List what you absolutely can’t deal with. Smokers? Morning people? Night owls? People who don’t love to party on the weekends? Unemployed people dependent on Papa’s money?
List. And stick to that list like your unborn kids’ lives depend on it. The best roommate is not the one who is friends with you or appears friendly. The best roommate is the one who understands—and oftentimes that understanding comes from similarity in nature, background, or situation. To cut down costs incurred from developing that understanding, it’s best to start with people with whom you’d have least friction of association. If you are a morning person, having a night owl might not be a feasible match.
Show off
Once you’ve made that list, make a list that is the exact opposite (that is, you). Show off that list. Start by being vulnerable and baring your serrated edges. Apart from addressing the requirement of finding a good match, sharing vulnerabilities is the first step to developing trust.
Sugar-coating anything does not work when things are supposed to work long-term. So, introduce yourself (include a paragraph in that email or advertisement) just to start a conversation with your potential roommate. Like begets like.
Pay particular attention to people who are like you: undergrad students gel well with undergrad students; older employed adults go well with other employed older adults. It’s a known truth that perceived familiarity creates homophily and the latter is a good precondition to getting along.
Ask and ye shall receive
Ask your potential roommates for their thoughts on having pets, the kinds of pets they like, whether they’re up for blending smoothies in the morning, musical choices, cleaning habits, outlook on notifying each other in case of any perceived emergency, sharing material possessions, bringing in a friend, and how far that person understands the value of giving you space and privacy.
It’s nice to share knick-knacks of how your day went when you come back home, and it’s even nicer to have an understanding person when you’re just not in a mood to talk to anyone and need some alone time. Also, it is important to do your studies and work than listen to reasons of 56th breakup of your roommate.
Money does buy you peace
Yes, money can’t buy you love, but it does buy you peace. It’s better to have a roommate who has a secure source of income per month (work, fellowship, internship, etc.) to pay the rent than someone who needs to depend on others to pay the rent. When faced with a situation, we find it particularly hard not to be a jerk when a teary-eyed roommate says he can’t pay the rent in the upcoming month because his family shunned him. Therefore, it’s better to come off as a “jerk” before you establish any connection of generosity and understanding. This might appear selfish, but it is realistic in the long-term scheme of things and is essential to self-preservation.
It’s also a good idea to lay down expectations regarding spending on furniture, groceries, and things for common use (toilet paper has started many a feud).
Behavioral issues
Meet with your potential roommate and play it by ear. Does anything sound off? Our instincts are formed in the subconscious layers of our gray matter and are born of measuring patterned behavior; listen to them.
Does this person appear extra nice? It’s best to avoid people who seem overly invested in pleasing and charming you, as they are more likely to be manipulative. Pay attention to whether the person is civil and courteous, honest and responsible, and whether they appear clean and put-together. A person who is forthright is better to be around than a passive-aggressive roommate who posts stickies or notes all around. (I had a roommate who put a sticky note in the deep fridge, outlining her territorial boundaries.)
Communication is the key to having a good relationship anywhere, anytime, but direct communication just saves you from a lot of unwanted acidity.
Talk about past challenges
Ask your roommates whether they’ve had any challenging situations in their experience of living with roommates. Pay attention to the language they use in describing such situations: Is it “them”? Or is it is more issue-based as to why particular things irked the person (and why)? How did your potential roommate handle those situations?
Put yourself in the devil’s seat and deploy the Rashomon effect in thinking about an alternate universe. Do the challenges appear plausible? What would you have done if you found yourself in those situations? What would you have done if you found yourself as the other party in those situations?
Answers to these questions will help you decide whether or not you’d like that specific person as a roommate or whether to stay away from him or her.
Learning to live with a stranger is a valuable life skill. It teaches us not only about human nature, with the potential of yielding a garden-variety experience in roommates, but also about ourselves—and how we react or respond to problem situations. Wherever we go, we always have to deal with humans, and not all of them will end up loving us for who we are (and vice versa). But we can learn to get along just fine.
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