Have you ever been in a situation where someone in your household would bring their boyfriend / girlfriend over so much that it was as if you acquired an additional tenant?
Today I was watching Judge Alex show where one sister was suing the other for rent. These sisters lived together and had an agreement not to bring their boyfriends over too frequently, but one of them fell in love and had her guy there all the time. So hence with the second sister felt as if she ended up with an extra roommate and no privacy, so she moved out before the lease was up.
This reminded me of a few situations that I’ve been in when I was a university student. Looking back at those times, I have no idea how I lived like that. For about a year I rented a room in a house with 5 other young female students. It was 6 of us in a house, with only 2 restrooms and 1 kitchen to share. If some of you know Toronto neighborhoods, this was an old house in the heart of Kensington market.
Our landlord was a nice Chinese lady from Hong Kong. Despite her polite appearance, when I just came to view the room she told me very bluntly “I don’t want this place to turn into a whore house!” and said that boyfriends were not allowed in our bedrooms. It was OK to bring a boyfriend to the common area to socialize, but not to have them overnight.
Let’s just say that the girl who was in the room next to me had a different interpretation. Her boyfriend started coming over almost daily, sleeping overnight, cooking in our kitchen, and using our shower.
At one point I heard a noise from her room and thought she came home, but turned out he was lounging there alone. She flew for the weekend to Vancouver, but he figured to stay in her room anyway without her.
Another time late at night I carelessly walked out from a shower with a towel on my head and another towel wrapped around my body, colliding head to head with him. Let’s just say I didn’t expect a guy to be walking around what was supposed to be an all women residence.
Well, I was stuck in a rent agreement and it’s not like I had another place where I could move during the school year, so I just had to put up with the situation. I felt quite uncomfortable with this.
I want to ask all the males reading this, would you say that this is an issue that women are the only ones who can feel strange when there is a person of opposite gender appearing excessively in their residence without their consent? I wonder if gender has anything to do with this conflict, or if it is equally undesirable both ways.
I actually had a situation like this in college. My roommate at the time had his girlfriend spend plenty of time in our dorm room (apartment-style as it was). But we stayed out of each other’s hair. He converted the study area into his private space and I had the rest of the room. He put up a sheet to separate his space from the rest. Of course, there was a rule that prohibited cohabitation. (He also smoked, and the room was supposed to be non-smoking.) I never reported him, though.
I didn’t say anything either. The worst is when you get your roommate and the suitor mad at you and you are stuck in the same house.
I think maybe the landlord didn’t break it down to her as much as she broke it down to me. Sometimes people see a woman that is cute and social and think that she’s the one who’s gonna f*ck around. But this is not a fact.
That girl was average and she claimed how she is so religious and Christian. Maybe the landlord didn’t even think that this is the one who will bring a guy over.