Dear Prudence: Roommate's Sometime Girlfriend Wants to Use My Bathroom

[raine]

Dear Prudence,

I rent a house with three other people. I pay a bigger portion of the rent for the master bedroom with the private bathroom. It is also the only bathtub in the house. “Jon” lives upstairs. He has an on-again, off-again relationship with “Sarah,” and they have one kid together. Sarah has two other kids with someone else, but she brings all three over here all the time. We live near a public lake and park. The kids do not like showers, so Sarah tries to use my bathroom during those visits. I hate it because her kids can’t keep their hands to themselves and Sarah refuses to supervise them properly. My bathroom is en suite, and there’s no door between the tub and my bedroom. I don’t want to have to worry about running into kids changing or taking a bath.

I have tried talking to Jon about it, but Sarah just bulldozes him. Jon needs to side with her or else he “doesn’t love” her. It is “too hard” to take her kids home dirty and bathe them there (apparently she lives with her parents, and there is never any hot water). Last time, I locked the door and ignored Sarah while she tried to pound the hinges off. I came out after she left. Jon asked me and I lied that I’d had my noise-canceling headphones on. I don’t want to keep doing this. None of us are really friends, so I am afraid to bring it up with my housemates. I don’t really care if Sarah and the kids are in the public spaces. I don’t want them in mine. Help, please!

—Stay Out

First, the good news: You do not have to be friends with your housemates in order to have a house meeting or to establish ground rules for guests. That’s also the bad news, which is that you’re going to have to have a house meeting where you establish ground rules for guests you can all agree upon. That doesn’t mean you’re all going to like those rules or that Jon’s going to have a good time enforcing them, but even a partially unsatisfying compromise, honestly hashed-out, is better than a mix of contradictory, unspoken objectives. Even if Jon can’t or won’t commit to maintaining house rules when his sometimes-girlfriend comes over, you don’t need his permission to keep houseguests out of your room. Nor is it your responsibility to figure out how or when Jon and Sarah clean their kids after they go to the park. Since they can still use other bathrooms both in your house and hers, you’re not preventing them from accessing basic hygiene. “Sorry, you can’t use my bathroom, but there’s another one downstairs” is all you have to say. The questions of how much Jon loves Sarah or whether there’s something wrong with the water heater at her parents’ house are not yours to resolve. You have a straightforward problem with a pretty simple answer. All you have to do is be clear with your housemates about it.

Comments

[jadelennox]

Jon may well have failed to communicate the terms of the lease, or that he pays less rent. So Sarah may be bring selfish, or Jon maybe being so conflict avoidant that he's creating conflict.

[raine]

Or Sarah could be one of those people who thinks, "well, LW allowed it once, so it's totally OK every time!"