Love and Houses
the futility of yearning for real estate
I’ve been vaguely looking into moving into my own place recently, and I say that with as much tentativeness as I can. Looking at Rightmove is no longer just a way to snoop into rich people’s houses and imagine what I’d do with a games room and what gadgets I’d put in my multi-million pound kitchen—it’s an ordeal.
It will come as no surprise to anyone that trying to rent somewhere in a major city that isn’t a) comically out of budget, b) a house share with strangers or c) somewhere that is surely in breach of several health and safety regulations, is quite difficult.
Living alone, finding a nice little (or medium, why not dream big) flat where you can pretend to be an adult and can gaze wistfully out of a window at the city skyline, is almost instantly out of the question. ‘Nice’ is a high bar to meet within a reasonable price range, and the importance of having a view quickly begins to make its way off of the ‘must have’ list. Before long you find yourself remarking on the presence of windows at all.
The logical next step is house sharing, reducing costs and potentially still holding on to the fantasy of living somewhere nice. Any number of websites can offer you a room in a shared house; there are Facebook groups dedicated to the endeavour, and at least once a week someone on Instagram is sharing a thrice-screenshotted story advertising a friend-of-a-friend’s search for a roommate.
House shares, as a concept, are unappealing to me. Maybe it’s because I’m not outgoing enough or I have control issues (both likely factors), but the idea of moving into a house with people I don’t know, sharing a kitchen, a fridge, more often than not a bathroom? Repulsive. This probably makes me come across as snobby and privileged and perhaps also a smidge neurotic, but unfortunately it is my truth.
Also, no matter how much an existing house group will assure you that they’re a friendly gang who love to go out for brunch on the weekends and have regular movie nights, how low could the chances really be that they’re not a killer? Or, if not homicidal, someone who doesn’t do their washing up? Or leaves their food to rot in the fridge? Or has frequent and obnoxious visitors? There are so many possibilities, and frankly few of them are things I could live with without ending up being the statistically-likely slaughterer that I fear.
Two housing options have been culled, leaving the third: moving in with your friends. It seems a sensible option, but it’s one that comes with a particular set of expectations.
If you want to move in with friends, people with whom your relationships are, you hope, strong enough to sustain prolonged proximity, most observers will assume that this is a stopgap. Not necessarily to getting a place of your own (a dream so unrealistic that it’s rarely even floated as a possibility), but to move in with A Romantic Partner. You can’t live with friends you’ve known for years beyond your young adult life; instead, you must aspire to meet someone (soon, ideally), ‘fall in love’ and invest, together, in a new home, life, and future.
House sharing with friends is seen as a rite of passage, yes—but one that you’ll grow out of. Above that, however much you love living with friends, you’re expected to want to move on.
Every sitcom that features roommates or a group of friends in a shared living space (Friends, New Girl, the list goes on) reinforces this with a poignant plotline where one friend moves out and goes to live with A Partner. This is always an important moment; they’ve matured, they’re no longer unfulfilled and tragic (single in mid-20s) but have cemented their place in the world. They are part of A Couple, with A Home that is inevitably nicer than their flatshare and has less of a chaotic, student-y vibe.
Maybe I’m pessimistic or just haven’t experienced the wonders of romantic love, but this is a very strange system. Why can’t living with my friends be the final product? Why, instead, does that have to be merely the first step on the housing path?
Moving in with a romantic partner has its benefits, I suppose. Of course, when you fall in love you’ll be able to sacrifice any semblance of personal space so you won’t mind living in a flat designed for one person, a double bed taking up so much of the bedroom that you can hardly open the wardrobe. The rosy glow of adoration will mean you don’t even need to worry about the fact that wherever you are in your home you can hear another person’s every move.
The only exception I can see to this is marrying extremely rich and moving into such a massive house that you occasionally misplace one another. I remember watching an episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills at the impressionable age of 14 and seeing Lisa Vanderpump talk about having to downsize her home, accompanied by a montage of her shouting her husband’s name from various mezzanines and gauchely decorated rooms and thinking ‘that’s the life’.
It’s bleak to be reminded just how much of life is built around the assumption that you’re part of a couple. Maybe this all sounds very sad, the bitter ramblings of someone lacking in both rentable accommodation and romantic prospects, but once you’ve looked through enough listings for rooms in shared homes it becomes a reality that’s difficult to ignore.
If anyone with significant real estate and an interest in a marriage of convenience happens to be reading this, please get in touch. Until then, I will continue to scroll through Rightmove and hope for a minor miracle.
reading this while battling the london tenting crisis... great read lucy!!!