Two more letters from one more column

[conuly]

Link

1. DEAR HARRIETTE: I am 22, and I am dating a 30-year-old man who is a residence life coordinator at a dormitory for a large Midwestern university. A part of his benefits is that he has an apartment attached to the dorm, so if the residence assistants need him, he is there. This apartment does not have any rent attached to it.

I was about to move in with him when he told me that I needed to pay $1,000 a month to him as "rent." I was shocked when he told me this. I have full knowledge of the fact that he doesn't pay rent and that he is just planning on taking $1,000 from me every month. This has made me rethink not only moving in with him, but dating him in general. What do you think I should do? I thought that he was going to be the one, but unfortunately, this event has shaken my confidence in him. -- Not a Good Fit

DEAR NOT A GOOD FIT: If there ever was a red flag, this is it. You could simply walk away, but if you are curious, ask him why he thinks it's a good idea to charge you for rent when he is paying none. Perhaps he has bills he needs to pay. Maybe that extra grand will help pay for something essential in his life. If that's the case, he should state it up front. But that kind of need is best worked out through a transactional relationship -- a roommate with no benefits. Since you two are in a relationship, one would presume that you wouldn't be expected to fund his dreams. Find out why he thinks it's a good idea to charge you. Hear him out, but if I were you, I would move somewhere else. Oh, and be sure to take your heart with you!

*******

2. DEAR HARRIETTE: My fiance and I moved in together at the beginning of October, and he is terrible at cleaning up after himself. I have OCD, which he is very aware of, yet he still doesn't see the importance of putting away the dishes or picking up after himself. He does take out the trash and the dogs, but other than that, I am constantly cleaning up behind him. While dating, I never knew it was this bad. How can I tell him that he needs to be more intentional about keeping a clean house without sounding like a parent? -- Clean Home

DEAR CLEAN HOME: Perhaps you can allocate an area of your home that can be his to treat however he likes: his man cave, so to speak. In that space, he can throw his socks around and be as untidy as he wants. You don't have to ever go in there. That is his space. Outside of that, ask him to follow some basic home hygiene rules. Make a list of what you want him to do to keep tidy. Invite him to work at establishing a routine that will help him to honor his agreement. Know that he won't always be successful, but if and when he tries, thank him. This will reinforce the good habit.

Comments

[conuly]

Well, she gets one right (sorta) and one totally wrong, which is shockingly good stats for Harriette!

1. Ignore the rest of Harriette's answer, LW1, just walk away.

Also, I'm slightly concerned by the fact that this man who lives on a college campus apparently is dating somebody barely out of college. On the one hand, adults can do what they want, yes! On the other, it's not at all shocking to me that some guy who's going to try this "pay me $1000 rent, baby, when we move in to my free apartment together" scheme is 30 years old and can't find somebody his own age to date. Or, less charitably, is deliberately trying to date people who are new to this whole adulthood gig and presumably have less experience recognizing red flags.

2. LW2, don't marry this dude. Just don't. There are plenty of other nice people you could marry who clean up after themselves. This is not your OCD.

If you're bound and determined to ignore my excellent advice on the matter, at least remember this: Couples counseling today is a heck of a lot cheaper than divorce tomorrow.

[synecdochic]

For LW1, the shitty communication is a red flag and the fact he wants the money paid to him is a red flag, and it's probably some fuckery, but in a lot of cases having a second person move into a reslife coordinator apartment on campus who is not legally married to the person employed by the university does mean that the second person needs to pay rent, because they don't have the legal relationship of being employed by the university and the apartment is not part of their employment benefits so they are legally a tenant and "tenants that don't pay rent" can be A Problem, legal and liability-wise (whereas the person for whom housing is part of the employment benefit is not a tenant for the purposes of landlord/tenant law because employment-related housing is exempt from a lot of that).

The fact the dude wants the rent paid to him could be shady, or it could just be "they're going to be deducting it from my paycheck so you need to pay it back to me". She'd have to check with the university itself to figure out which -- but if it's at the point of checking the dude's employers' policies about this stuff, it's probably a good idea to just bail.

[conuly]

Well, okay. I guess he might have a legitimate reason, but it's still sketchy not to spell that out clearly to your partner.

[synecdochic]

Yeah, like, he is not automatically trying to scam her and there's probably a good reason for it, but his bad communication around everything is enough to be A Problem by itself.

[topaz_eyes]

Re letter 1, I do think it's reasonable for bf to ask LW to split other living-related expenses he must otherwise pay himself, eg utilities or internet (assuming those are not included in the rent). But asking for rent on a rent-free place? Dump him, LW.

Re letter 2, cleaning up after oneself without prompting should imho be a bare minimum for living together.

[movingfinger]

How did LW2 never see the inside of the fiance's previous residence? These habits do not manifest suddenly.

The advice from Harriette is ridiculous "he's just a man" crap.

[castiron]

When I first visited my ex, he had a very neat apartment. Thing is, he was on a one-year postdoc, and said apartment didn't have all his stuff, which was stored at his mom's house back in his home country. If we'd lived in the same city and I'd actually spent more time with him in person before we married, I might have realized that the apartment wasn't representative of his actual habits.

Spouse, now, I knew was a clutterer from the beginning, and I'm still hoping that after the kids are grown the finances will work out for us to buy a duplex so that we can have separate living spaces, but I knew what I was getting into, and Spouse (unlike Ex) contributes enough in other ways that I can put up with the mess.

[ysobel]

If he previously lived with a roommate -- or his mom -- it could have been disguised by the other person doing the cleaning

[ioplokon]

I suspect he has realized that if he leaves stuff undone, LW will do it

[princessofgeeks]

The differing cleaning standards for the second letter could definitely become a deal breaker. If they can afford it, my advice would be to hire a cleaner. They will never agree on this and it will just get worse and worse as time goes on. I have lived this, although I do not have OCD. People have different standards and in general they do not change. You can not make a person who is comfortable in a dirty house into a cleaning-aware person. Not gonna happen. Frankly I am delighted he takes out the trash given everything else in the letter.

[conuly]

I was under the impression that cleaners, typically, do *cleaning* - not tidying. Unless you pay them more, I guess, but at any rate you'd have to pay them more if you want them to come every single day, which it sounds like.

[princessofgeeks]

I think it's possible they can work something out with a cleaner that they can tolerate, but as unfair as it is, I don't think the letter writer is going to be able to get the roommate to change at all. It will be arguing and lip service and go downhill fast.

[dissectionist]

I am a naturally messy person and always have been. I’ve struggled to learn and force myself to keep hygiene-necessary spaces tidy (kitchens, bathrooms) but find that so draining that there’s little energy left for other spaces. You’re correct that cleaners don’t tidy, but having them come once a week forces us messy people to tidy up once a week so the cleaners can do their work, and being able to leave the heavy cleaning to the cleaners (who do it about twice as well and four times as fast as I can) leaves us with more energy to cope with tidying. So it actually does help in a couple different ways, and doesn’t need to be a daily thing.

[althea_valara]

Thank you for this comment!

I am also a naturally messy person. Right now it doesn't matter much because there are other people who can handle the hygiene places (and I tend not to make a mess in those areas anyway) but when I get a place of my own again, I'm hoping to be able to afford a cleaner because yes, having SOMEONE in my house from time to time *will* force me to tidy up.

(I've often wished I was less untidy, but I honestly think it has something to do with my particular brand of brain weasels - it's like the untidiness just disappears when I'm not looking at it. Thus, I have a VERY high tolerance for clutter. And since a lot of my spoons go towards handling said brain weasels, that leaves not much left for what most consider to be necessary chores.)

[dissectionist]

Yep, this is a big neurodiversity and/or chronic illness issue for a lot of us. Having clutter can be comforting, or we get overwhelmed by the executive functioning required to clean, or we have depression or other illnesses that increase fatigue or decrease motivation and then cleaning becomes too much, etc.

I’ve constantly wished my brain were otherwise as well; cleaning is a life necessity for most of us and I wish it wasn’t so intensely draining and often upsetting. But despite years and years of reading books about how to get okay with cleaning and putting their advice into practice, I’ve had to accept that it’s never going to come naturally to me, it will never be a pleasant activity I feel satisfied by afterward, I find clean spaces somewhat existentially stressful, and cleaning is just a Swamp of Sadness I have to slog through as much as possible.

[princessofgeeks]

I am not making any moral judgments about it at all. No one way of operating is necessarily better. There are many many reasons for the vast differences we see in how people keep their living spaces. But something this fundamental can really cause enormous stress in the relationship and IMHO the solution is not going to be for the letter writer to try to make or teach the roommate how to be a neat person.

And the standards people set are so individual. I am fairly neat person and don't have clutter and keep up with the kitchen. But I hate dusting and really should sweep the other floors more often. But my mother dusts twice a week and you can eat off the floor in her house. The bathroom floor!!! She thinks I am a terrible slob.

[dissectionist]

Oh yeah, there’s zero way to force others to change. If someone isn’t motivated to do so for themselves, and then capable of making that change (which is a very different matter from having the motivation), nothing is going to happen. If they want to make this relationship work, compromise from both parties is going to be essential. A cleaner once or twice a week is a reasonable compromise *if* they can afford it, he’s willing to tidy in advance of the cleaner, and LW can cope with it being messier the rest of the time. Those are three big ifs. But a cleaner can be a godsend if those three things are doable.

[princessofgeeks]

My feelings exactly. Any "solution" that hinges on the LW making the roommate do their share independently and in the way the LW wants, all the time, may be literally impossible to implement.

[ethelmay]

There's a huge spectrum of possible tidiness and possible personalities, though, and I think some people actually just haven't learned. I am a lot better at keeping up with housework and decluttering than I used to be. I am definitely somewhere in the ADHD range, but I have learned to work with the brain I have. I am never going to be systematic about most stuff, and when I thought I needed a system I never really got started.

[princessofgeeks]

No doubt I am letting my personal experience color my opinions here. I have cohabitated with a total of four people who were comfortable letting the trash and dirty dishes pile up, etc., for various personal reasons and it never really got any better at all.

But of course this is just an anecdote and others' experiences are different.

[ioplokon]

If LW2 actually has OCD & doesn't just mean they are fastidious, I think there is probably more to get into than just the cleanliness of the apartment (or like, probably it's an issue, but the OCD stuff is tangential to that; definitely a big part of the dynamic is probably that fiance knows that if he doesn't do something, LW will feel compelled to).

Basically, if they don't split bc they're incompatible, there should be some effort to separate 'these are our standard chores and cleanliness requirements' from 'thisnis LW's OCD pushing them to clean and check that everything is clean and realize that 5 more things must be clean'. And LW needs a partner who will do his housework unprompted & on some kind of predictable schedule rather than passively relying on LW's OCD (also, big challenge for LW even with a better partner will be LETTING THEM DO IT & sitting with the discomfort of needing to do those chores, which is why imo they need to find someone they can actually trust will do their part.)

[ethelmay]

Yeah. Also it worries me when I see people trying to leverage OCD or perfectionism to do a task better. Even if they do do it really well, they may be harming themselves unduly in the process. A clean house is never worth spiraling anxiety or whatever.

Figuring out what's different standards, what's different training, what's different gender expectations, and what's different brain chemistry is kind of a lot. And of course all those are intertwined.

[tielan]

I'm feeling fully judgy tonight.

DUMP THE BASTIDS.