Have you ever had a non-traditional living arrangement as a grown up? Do you care to speculate about them?

In my experience, the traditional expectation is that when you’re young you’ll have roommates, and when you get older you’ll either live by yourself or with your family when you start one.

I have had a lot of lame roommates in my life and looked forward to living alone. But right now, I live with my boyfriend, one of his best friends, and 2 other housemates, and it is a pretty great system. Everyone gets along, everyone contributes something different to the house, and it’s a fun, inviting place to be.

Similarly, my best friend was really excited about living alone for the first time in her life, and now that she’s done it for about 5 months, she’s lonely and wants a roommate to take her spare room.

So, have you ever voluntarily had roommates, or some kind of cooperative living arrangement by choice instead of by necessity? I guess I’m thinking of arrangements that don’t include family members—even though it’s not very common (in my culture) for grownups to live with parents, or extended family to stay with you, that doesn’t seem unusual to me. But if you have experience with that, feel free to comment.

Even if you haven’t had this experience—why do we do things this way? I can imagine a lot of scenarios in which sharing a living space could be helpful for sharing responsibilities (e.g., childcare).

Do we not do it because other people are too difficult to get along with? Because we all are very particular about our living space? Are those problems insurmountable?