My partner and I moved in with an acquaintance when we moved state about 3 months ago. My partner and I have both lived in share houses for years with friends, acquaintances and strangers and are both of the view that open communication is the best way to ensure a shared household runs smoothly. e.g. We might not all agree on everything, but we can all compromise and be respectful.
We have been having trouble with our new housemate as we have open conversations, ask for his input and set compromised boundaries accordingly. This is around simple things like sharing food, asking before using or taking our stuff and replacing things that have been broken (he has broken multiple possessions of ours since moving in, constantly takes things without asking including food and never offers to replace or pay his way, when we ask for money he says yes then avoids ever paying it, or asks us for made up sums of money in return for things we all know full well we haven't used).
Our housemate acknowledges and agrees with these things in conversation, but completely ignores them in practice. When we try to address and re-establish these boundaries, he agrees and acts as though he has not violated them. We both feel very gaslit and cannot manage to get him to respect us, our space or our belongings. He has lived in a series of share houses and despite what he initially said to us before moving in, we have found out that all of these situations have fallen apart pretty rapidly and he has moved back to his mum's house each time.
This is in addition to him just being an extremely self-obsessed, obnoxious and disrespectful person (constantly using our speaker to walk around the house with music at full volume or singing the same line of a song over and over for hours loudly while he knows I am on video calls for work and uni, putting music on loudly in the same room while we are sitting and watching TV, leaving his dog with us overnight and expecting us to walk and feed him without asking, arguing with me about my experiences as a woman, arguing with my partner about his experiences as a POC (housemate is white), occasionally defending neo-nazis because they 'aren't in the KKK or anything' (???), inviting people who have made racist comments to our house and then arguing that their comments didn't make them racist when our mutual friend pointed it out, hammering hooks into the walls in the lounge room of our rental to hang photos of himself without checking with us or the real estate, constantly talking about how hot, smart and talented he is and how shit, uncool and stupid other people are, etc. etc.). He has a lot of insecurities and a lot of super narcissistic traits, I can understand the pathology but it is really really difficult to manage in our home. I lived with a narcissistic and abusive parent for 15 years of my life and I am reliving a lot of that stuff in this housing situation, which is not ideal.
He works in childcare and is by no stretch of the imagination a clean or neat person (my partner and I spend a lot of our time in shared spaces cleaning up after him, he's a bit like a walking tornado, using his and our things and dropping them where he stands until we pick them up). Now that we are in the midst of coronavirus, he is calling other people fuckwits for ignoring the measures such as social distancing, hygiene etc. but also has repeatedly refused to wash his hands when he comes in to the house and continues to socialise almost daily. He constantly criticises things that he does and refuses to acknowledge that he does them. He went out all day yesterday and last night (to smash a casual fling) and has gone out again today to go get coffee and shop. He invited two strangers from depop over during social distancing measures and had them sit in our loungeroom to try on shoes. I am immunocompromised and work in frontline community services, I have pleaded with him to abide by these measures and respect our home as a shared space. He says he is but literally before our eyes he is ignoring everything and we can't keep ourselves safe in our home. Every time I bring it up he gets visibly angry and refuses to continue the conversation so at this stage, I have given up.
Generally, we would work out a way to have a respectful discussion with a housemate we couldn't live with about finding another living situation before it got to a boiling point. The problem here is two-fold; we feel unable to ask him to leave in the current climate for economic and also general human reasons (we wouldn't do that to someone, no matter how obnoxious, and we also couldn't reasonably find another housemate or cover rent ourselves if we did ask him to go back to his mum's house).The other is that he seems to be so disconnected from reality and unable to process what we are saying to/asking of him. We don't invite him to hang out with us, yet he just comes along (our friends can't stand him and it made it super awkward to have people over prior to social distancing). He keeps coming into our room to talk to us when we are trying to limit the time we have to spend with him and physically distance ourselves from him. He seems to think we are all best friends (he doesn't have many [if any] genuine relationships, I do feel bad for him but he is extremely unbearable so I get it).
I worry that if we do try to have this conversation after the pandemic is over he will just ignore it (I cannot express how bizarre his cognitive dissonance is, it's like he is having an entirely different conversation) and we won't be able to get him out of our home without taking legal action. My other fear is he will get aggressive and shut down anything we try to say as he has historically, when he hasn't liked what we have had to say. We don't want to have to go the legal route as this is a really slow process where we live (Australia) and we are also worried he will do vindictive things to punish us (we are particularly worried for our dog when we aren't home, should it get to this).
TLDR; My partner and I love our house, we have both put a lot of work in to it and really don't want to move. Out housemate of 3 months is driving us both up the wall. How do we survive the next few months of living with someone who is in a narcissistic dream world during a pandemic, and how do we get him to leave after this is all over, without taking legal action? Reddit, pls help!
Submitted March 27, 2020 at 09:18PM by throwawayquarantineb https://ift.tt/2JjDE9E
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