I’ve never lived with a couple, but I’ve been a part of a couple that has a roommate. During the time that my husband and I cohabited we lived with his friend for a year, and a friend of mine for 6 months. We also offered to let his brother, who had fallen on hard financial times move in, but he decided to move back in with his dad instead.
I won’t tell you not to to do this, but there are a lot of things to consider.
- What does the privacy situation look like? I’d highly recommend that you not only have your own room, but that you and the couple have separate bathrooms. If they choose to shower together, that could be weird for you to hear, or see them entering and leaving the bathroom together. They may also have a fairly open door policy, and pop in to talk to each other during showers, or while getting ready in the morning. Again, this could leave you feeling like something of an outsider.
- Food. They will likely cook and eat most meals together, or run out for food, or go out to eat. What are the expectations? If they cook dinner, are you welcome to join them? When you cook, do they want you to cook enough for everyone, or are you on your own? (Obviously, you making enough for everyone would mean that they do the same for you, or that you get a break on the food bill, or whatever).
- Overnight guests. They already live together, but this is still an important rule anyway. What if they see themselves as more of a family, and want to host out of town relatives for the weekend, or even a week? Are you ok with this, or no? Obviously, you would get the same house guest privileges, but it is something to discuss.
- If you are or start seeing someone, how much time are they allowed to spend at the home? Personally, my husband and I were always fine with our roommates having guests, because we understood that being the third wheel could be weird. But some people may conclude that even though they are in a relationship, they don’t want a lot of strangers coming over and spending extended periods of time in their home.
Basically, these are all issues that you would need to discuss with any roommate and set ground rules on, but they can be more complicated when your roommate is a couple.
And of course, when they fight, they need to keep you out of it. If they try to pull you in, you need to make it clear in no uncertain terms that you will not be a part of this and that they need to keep it away from you. When my husband and I had roommates and we were fighting, we would always go out to the car, drive to a Wal-Mart parking lot, or a park, or a coffee shop, and hash it out in the front seat. To this day, his best friend (our roommate of a year) thinks that we have a remarkable, completely fight-free relationship.
Finally, don’t move in with them thinking that you will get your friend to change his mind. This will not work out well for you. This is why my husband’s brother did not move in. He did not approve of us living together before marriage, and he made it known. We offered to let him move in anyway, but the condition was that he could not try to undermine our relationship. That is, he could not make comments to either one of us about how we should consider moving, how the arrangement was wrong, etc. We would not tolerate a guest or roommate trying to meddle in our relationship-period.
