Maybe you and your roommate don’t get along to begin with, or maybe you’re best friends who share each other’s clothes, go for brunch together and watch TV shows together. Even if you have a great relationship with your roomie, if her boyfriend is constantly sleeping over, using your shower, snacking on your food or even just hanging around too much, you’re bound to get frustrated. There’s going to be a lot of strain on the living situation if there aren’t some rules when it comes to boyfriends! Here’s how to deal with your roommate’s SO.
Set ground rules
As soon as you can tell things are getting a little more serious between your roommate and the person she’s been casually seeing—he’s spending more time around your place, she can’t stop talking about him, they hang out a bunch—it’s probably time to sit down and talk to your roomie about ground rules.
Susan Fee, professional clinical counselor and author of 101 Ideas & Insights About Resolving Conflict says it’s better to do this before you even meet the SO, if possible. “It’s easiest to agree [on] these conditions before you ever meet [him] – that way, nothing is considered personal, but fair,” she says.
Kathryn Williams, author of Roomies: Sharing Your Home with Friends, Strangers and Total Freaks, says it’s crucial to communicate.
“Hopefully you have a good relationship with your roommate or consider her a friend, but even if this isn’t the case, living together requires talking to each other and setting expectations,” she says.
Sarah*, a junior at Middlebury College, was on the other side of the situation: she was the one with the boyfriend who liked to lounge in the dorm room without a shirt on.
“I thought my roomie was [okay] with it, but we ended up getting into a blowout fight because she had pretended to be fine with it but really wasn’t,” she says.
It’s better to get it all out in the open at first before his frustrating habits become the status quo. Ashley*, a senior at Northwestern University who lives with five girls who have boyfriends, learned this the hard way.
“Without exaggeration, at least three of [their boyfriends] are over at my apartment at any given time, and it’s gotten to be a huge annoyance,” she says. “Being the only single one, I was really the only one who had a problem with the constant overcrowding. But because I didn’t say anything in the beginning, the constant boyfriend herd was the status quo, and by taking issue with it so late in the game, I was the one causing the disturbance in our apartment. So get it out of the way early and it will be a lot easier.”
It might get uncomfortable, but it’s always better to have the conversation sooner rather than later to avoid any more awkward conversations later. Approach the subject rationally and politely, sitting down with your roomie to set the ground rules.
“If the behavior persists or the roommate balks, then you can be a little more forceful about your expectations and more specific about ground rules,” Williams says.
Spend time getting to know him
His witty comebacks are just slightly on the annoying side, he insists on ruffling your hair any time he sees you and he always bites his nails. But your roommate clearly sees something endearing and lovable in his qualities, so it’s in your best interest to try to see her boyfriend in a positive light.
Rachel, a freshman at the University of California, San Diego, says she realized it made sense to look at her roommate’s boyfriend in a positive light.
“After a few weeks of disliking him just on principle because he was always around, I started trying to see him how my roommate does,” she says. “She and I get along very well and I trust her judgment, and if she’s happy with him, I feel like I should be on good terms with him.”
Williams says that it’s important to try to let a potential friendship between you and the SO happen organically, but that it’s definitely a good thing to strive towards!
“If everyone becomes friendly and comfortable, then an SO who’s always around might be fun rather than a bummer,” she says.
Getting to know him when you hang out in groups and chatting with him while your roommate’s in the shower will not only keep your interactions with him friendly, it will make your roommate happy.
Talk to your roommate’s boyfriend one-on-one
If you didn’t have the ground-rules talk (or even if you did and it didn’t seem to make an impact) and your roommate and her guy are still doing things that drive you absolutely insane, it’s time to confront him about it.
Williams suggests you go to your roommate to discuss issues that involve the two of them as a couple (e.g., too much living-room PDA), but she says that if it’s something that only applies to the boyfriend, such as him not putting the toilet seat down or drinking your milk from the fridge, it’s a different story. “If you have a good relationship with him and know each other now, you might speak directly to him,” she says.
Sometimes you might feel there’s an important issue between you and him and you don’t feel like you need your roommate to be the mediator. Some collegiettes have found that their roomie’s boyfriends take their concerns more seriously when they hear them face-to-face.
“My roommate’s boyfriend was consistently using my shampoo when he would shower at our place,” says Anna*, a sophomore at McGill University. “I decided it would sound obnoxious for him to hear about it through my roommate, so I talked to him about it myself. He’s a great guy and he absolutely respected what I said. It just made more sense to go straight to him, and it worked out.”
Guys can do some weird stuff—and if it directly affects us, it’s even weirder, ruder and more invasive. Don’t be afraid to talk to him about what’s frustrating you (this will be even easier if you’ve established a good relationship with him, so see the tip above!).
Come up with viable solutions
Your roommate or her boyfriend might take offense to the perfectly reasonable complaints you have. But talking to your roommate or her boyfriend about what’s bothering you won’t be received nearly as negatively if you happen to throw in a few suggestions for how to remedy the issue.
Laura, a senior at McGill University, has “perfected the art of the alternative suggestion,” she says. “Take care to avoid seeming condescending, but when [your roomie and her guy] decide they want to stay in and use the kitchen to cook dinner for the third night in a row, gently mention that you know a great restaurant that opened up just down the street.”
Before she talks to her roommate or her roomie’s boyfriend about things that bother her about him being around or his weird habits, she tries to come up with solutions to offer to make it a win-win-win situation for everyone.
Lightly suggesting they use headphones when they watch a movie on her laptop or setting up another cup in the bathroom for his toothbrush so he doesn’t keep knocking yours onto the floor are better options than telling them they’re being too loud or yelling at him for getting your toothbrush dirty.
Roommate situations are always going to be tricky, but they can be even more sensitive when they involve love-related problems. Make sure you communicate with your roommate and give her boyfriend a fair chance before you (respectfully) confront her or him to solve any problems.
*Names have been changed.