millennialgeneration

The Selection Process:

To start, you may want to consider not living with your best friend.  Many of you have experience in this area and think that it’s an obvious piece of advice, but I’ve seen plenty a friendship ruined because of sharing space. You may love a friend because he or she is the exact opposite of you or very similar to you. In my situation, an opposite would be a messy, free-spirited, loose, and unstructured person, and, believe me, I do have friends like this whom I love. However, I think that we’re all old enough to recognize that this kind of a friend is not a good person to live with.  Why? I am completely neat, anile, and organized, and, though the opposite appeals to me as a balancing agent it could and would impinge on my ideal living space and my friend’s happiness.  On the same note, someone who is your mirror image could also be detrimental, because you may not have enough space from yourself.  It may be great at first, but eventually you will get tired of yourselves and clash. The key is:  Balance. You want to find someone who balances your personality and isn’t your twin.

An opposite or a parallel aren’t the only kind of friends to be cautious of sharing a house or apartment with. You must also be cautious of a clinger or a competitor or, worst of all, a competitive clinger. Most people change significantly in their twenties, so you wouldn’t want to live with someone who won’t allow you to transform, forge new friendships, and be independent.  Some friends, especially good friends, can resent you or feel left out when you want to hang out with a new group of people alone. When you’re living with these clingy friends, it becomes difficult not to do everything together, and, for lack of a better phrase, you could become sick of them and them of you. Another common trend, especially among women, is for us to compare ourselves with our friends.  If you have a friend that sometimes says, “I’m so jealous of you,” in less than a complementary way, or if you feel competitive with him or her, it may not be great to live with them.  With either one of you or both of you comparing, an unhealthy, painful cycle will begin.

Finally, and most importantly, you want to consider what is important to you in a roommate.  It may sound like relationship advice, and in a way, it is.  Though you may not have sworn to stay with this person through sickness and health, you will have a rent/lease commitment with him or her. Everyone has different requirements for roommates, just as they do for boyfriends and girlfriends so it’s important to be on the same page with the potential roommate/s before he/she moves into your apartment or vice versa. 

Andy Mathieson, a writer living outside of New York City says, “Race, sexuality, and religion don’t matter to me, but same sex is preferred, more for her sake than mine.  No girl likes waking up in the morning to a half-Asian dude cooking omelettes in the nude, unless she really likes omelettes.”

 Keep in mind:  gender, relationship status, profession, age, cleanliness, schedule, religion, smoker/non-smoker, pet/no pet. 

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