Couples who live together shouldn’t have a third roommate. I don’t mean Kato living in the guesthouse or the twenty something couch surfer that never leaves. I’m talking about that thing that clutters the space, causes you to fight, and never seems to go away.
It’s different for everyone. For a friend of mine and her fiance, it’s the wet towel.
The wet towel that ends up on the floor, the chair in the kitchen, and worst of all, the bed. For some reason, the guy can’t seem to hang the thing up, and my friend cannot seem to let it go. It could be the downfall of their relationship and the one issue she cant stop talking about or get over. Why is that towel so annoying? Why has its size expanded to exaggerated proportions, cloaking all the good in the relationship? As women, we hate being our mothers. We don’t want our partners to make us into our mothers by acting like they did when they were kids, prompting us to scold them til they hate us. But then why can’t the guy just hang the darn thing up? What is he passively aggressively trying to say?
Is he claiming his territory, or is it just a stubborn refusal to concede? If the third roommate was eliminated, well then what? Would another problem, perhaps the real issue, surface in its place? My friend should just hire a cleaning lady. “These things are fixable,” I said. “You’re lucky in this case – you can just throw money at it.”
I had this issue with my ex-husband, before we were married, when we were living together. Boxers were abandoned upright on the bathroom floor, and shreds of toilet paper dangled like confetti on an empty cardboard roll. Maybe he just didn’t think to change it, or knew that I would. But why is it so hard? A guy takes the time to dig through a pile of comics and select the perfect one to accompany him to the can, but he can’t stop at the linen closet on his way and grab a fresh roll of toilet paper? So, we hired a cleaning lady. That, plus some learned conscientiousness from my ex, solved the problem. The roommate was banished!
But then a new one moved in. Xbox.
Halo became the guest on the couch that my ex chose to interact with rather than the roommate he moved in with (me). I felt like my mother, pleading with him to play less, or at least put it away at bed time. That didn’t work. People advised me, “You should just throw his Xbox out when he’s not looking!” Kick the roommate out once and for all! But I couldn’t do that. Then I would firmly be solidifying myself in the role of mom.
I wanted it to come from him.
Did it, you wonder? Well, if you read my blog, you know how that story ended.
My ex-cub had his own apartment, but he practically lived in mine. And so did his guitars. In their black cases. Which when stuffed together in a corner resembled three dead roommates.
I suspect we all have that thing in our lives. That thing that causes us to triangulate, that divides our attention and obfuscates the underlying issue. It’s much easier to talk about, and to, the third roommate – blame it for all our problems – instead of confronting the scary shit hiding under the dirty laundry. And the towel, like all laundry, no matter how many times we tend to it, keeps coming back.
It’s still too early with my new boyfriend to identify our third roommate, or if we’d even have one; we don’t live together yet, nor does he even have a key to my apartment. But regardless, our communication is excellent. Oh. Wait. There are those stubborn string cheese wrappers that reappear stuck to the counter and floor…
Who is your third roommate, and how are you dealing with it?
The children or I should say the grown up children are the worse,especially just before going to college. When they go off to college you start to appreciate the fact that there is no one to pick the cloth after or clean the kitchen after a late night snack. You still have a lot to anticipate. This is just a practice….
There is always a third roommate , better get used to him.
The big question is your love ,and tolerance.
nudnick.
I’ve heard many a couple complain that one partner’s BlackBerry or iPhone is the third roommate. I hope that no thing plays that much of a role in a couple’s life, though.