Roommate problems- she doesn't want to allow me to have my boyfriend over

Do you have a formal roommate agreement? If you continue to break it, it may no longer be just her problem.

OK, well, she’s annoyed with you and your boyfriend. You’re there taking over the living room every single Saturday and he’s spending the night at least 1/2 of them since you said he’s been there 3-4 nights this semester.

Can you and your boyfriend go out once in a while? Does she ever get a chance to have the living room on a Saturday?

Is there a common area in your dorm where you and your boyfriend could watch TV instead?

maybe she isn’t around on weekends because you guys are there hogging up the living space?

id be uncomfortable too.

look, if he’s your boyfriend, he should take responsibility and share his room as well, or go hang out in a common room or something else, or pay for an airbnb.

does she get along with your boyfriend? maybe the problem is with him. my sister’s boyfriend is pretty uncomfortable to be around, can’t explain why really, he doesnt really greet my family and just walks in as if he lives here and then doesn’t even acknowledge our presence, if he happens to go to the kitchen and someone else enters it he immediately leaves, it’s just really anti-social. yet my cousin’s boyfriends actually coexist with the rest of our family and say hello and if they’re gonna be in the living room, we all hang out, they dont just take over the space and make it awkward for anyone else to hang out with them.

so when you and ur bf hang out are you more open and do you let your other roommates hang out too? obviously it doesnt seem you guys get along enough to hang out but at least so it isn’t awkward for her to just sit down in her own living room or for them to walk by without feeling that “they dont want me in here”

example: when they arrive do you guys just stop talking and wait for them to leave? little things like that
or do you completely ignore them when he’s there and act like they dont even exist? (no greetings, just you snogging w/ ur boyfriend or laughing obnoxiously, continuing whatever conversation you were having w/o so much as acknowledging your roommates) sometimes when couples are together they tend to be more annoying (like laugh really annoyingly or in a “fake” manner that they normally wouldn’t do w/o the other person around).

at the end of the day your boyfriend isn’t part of the roommate agreement so he has no right to be in there to begin with. it’s a privilege to have him come over. so don’t take advantage of their leniency with curfew and guests rules. respect the rules, if they break it then that’s on them but don’t give them a reason to blame you.

She and I have never been friends, but I do say hello when she and my other roommate come in while he’s there. The extent of our conversations (which is always very minimal or nonexistent) stays the same, with my other roommate we’ll have full conversations with her like I do normally. When he came over yesterday we gave her her space and ate in our little kitchenette area because she was in the living room, but like usual when I show up to the room in general she packed up her things an left withing 5 minutes. We’ve never had a good relationship and I have tried to work on that by starting conversations but I never get much back from her. She never spends time in the room even when he isn’t over, which like i said is an afternoon/evening a week. Meanwhile she and my other roommate have friends over more often than that and I need to go someplace else to relax or get work done.

A lot of you seemed put off by the fact that I ask for the warning, but that is pretty common practice here between roommates.

The television is your property, but that doesn’t give you the right to take over the room it is in all day in a weekend. And to see you guys beak a clinch or worse every time she walks in would get old fast. Guessing the double standard us because you are annoying on an ongoing basis. Shape up – you are the inconsiderate roommate here.

I’m pretty sure most people understand that.

She doesn’t like you for some reason. Stop giving her ammo to use. End of story.

You seem to be wanting confirmation for your stance on this issue, and clearly are not getting it. Put the shoe on the other foot to see how it feels.

OP, what I’m getting from the direction of this thread is not you actually trying to put yourself in your roommate’s shoes and understand why she feels the way she does so you can solve the problem, or even you listening to the advice that you came to ask for, but instead you defending yourself and trying to justify why what you’re doing is fine. I think you should take it as a piece of information that even when you yourself present the information in your own words, people are saying “Yeah, I can understand why she might be annoyed.”

Try imagining this from your roommate’s perspective. It sounds like you need to have an actual conversation with this roommate, and maybe all of your roommates together, so that you can all set some fair ground rules and expectations around friends and partners coming to the room: frequency as well as other behaviors.

Other thoughts:

-It doesn’t matter if it’s common to ask for the warning. That’s common at lots of colleges across the country. It’s still intensely annoying to have to remember to give someone a heads up when you are coming home to your own space. The frequency also matters: doing it occasionally to give your roommate some space is one thing; being expected to do it once or twice every week is too much.

-If your roommate is always suspiciously missing when you and your boyfriend are around, or immediately leaves the room when you come in, it’s potentially because she’s trying to avoid being around the two of you as a couple (or maybe just him or just you). That doesn’t mean that she’s totally fine with what’s transpiring.

-Having non-romantic friends over is different from having a boyfriend over. That’s not a double standard. It just is.

-You say there’s no added layer of intensity, but that’s from your perspective, and it’s difficult to be objective from the inside. Have you actually asked her?

So it sounds like if the boyfriend were out of the picture, she would still not like you? Why? You are not coming across as not liking her (although you aren’t close), it sounds like it’s a case of she doesn’t like you.

FWIW I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask for a text when she’s returning to the room. But she isn’t willing to do it for you for some reason, and there lies the root of it. It sounds like she has no patience for getting to know your boyfriend as well. Do you know why?

Politics? Not sure here, just guessing.

I have understood now that she sees it differently from having a platonic friend over, and I tried to talk to her about the issue she seems to be having with me in general but she claims she’s just busy and doesn’t get work done as well in the room as in the library, she claims she doesn’t have an issue with me and she honestly doesn’t even know my boyfriend enough to have a personal problem with him. Everyone’s advice about just going to a hotel or something means well but not on a college student’s budget especially when we already have to pay for an uber to see each other because we go to different schools in the same city. I have been trying to see things from her perspective but she never seems to try to explain things to me or work with me to find a solution, which I have been trying to do with her. in regards to talking to her about the intensity between my relationship or my other roommates romantic interests, she says my other roommate is better because it’s in the bedroom away from us which I didn’t know was an option because I was originally told it wasn’t.

I would’ve been trying to “shape up” earlier if i knew she had a problem, but she never told me anything until blowing u last night, I can try now and have made adjustments in the past when she has told me of issues she has had in the room. I can’t do anything until she actually tells me about a problem

haha if you’re asking if we agree on politics all 3 of us have actually had great agreeable rant sessions once or twice before. I’ve tried to talk to her about the issue she seems to have with me but she claims she doesn’t. At the beginning of the school year we sort of just coexisted and things started moving downhill after she listened in on a phone conversation of mine and thought I was talking about her, which I wasn’t. The other issue she seemed to have with me last semester was her assumption that I was a slut, which I’m not sure where it came from because 1) I am not 2) slut shamming isn’t cool and 3) I don’t talk to her about my life romantic or otherwise. I worked hard the start of this semester to be friendly but like I said earlier I don’t get much back from her, I’m open to idea on how to ease the tension between us (in regards to things other than the boyfriend issue) because I am at a loss, I don’t see us every becoming great friends but I would like us to at lease be civil

Can you lock the bedroom door?

OK, maybe it’s just me, but it’s kind of gross to know people are having sex on your couch. Like, Really Gross, in all caps. It’s like it isn’t your couch any more. I would be very bothered.

This in no way is comparable to having platonic friends over.

The reality of the situation is you don’t have to like or be friends with your roommates, but you do have to coexist. Hundreds of roommates aren’t friends , but continue to manage to live together without incident. It may be personality issues that are pervasive rather than just boyfriend issues. I guess you will have to determine whether you are willing to live within the rules of the roommate agreement or if it bothers you that much that you need to request a new room assignment .

^So true re the couch. That gave me the icky shivers.

What do you think will happen next year? Will you room with the 3rd roommate in a double?

I am within our roommate agreement. And unfortunately we don’t have a bedroom door (weird, right?) and although I don’t like publicizing my sex life, I have had sex with him once and that was our valentine’s get away at an AirBnb

I’m actually a special alternate to be an RA so I’ll most likely be called to RA next year, therefore I’ll probably try to get a single that way I’m not leaving a roommate who is a friend to be paired with someone random after I move out