I've been living with my roommate for a few years. She's one of my oldest friends, and we've known each other since high school. In a lot of ways she's a good roommate, but my big sticking point with her is: she refuses to give me personal space whenever I use our common areas.
Basically: if I go out to use our kitchen to cook or put together a snack/drink, she is going to follow me. The excuse she gives is that she needs to wash her dishes/put away her dried dishes, but it's always when I'm out there, and always right after I get into the kitchen (and I never use our kitchen for more than 5-10 minutes BECAUSE she does this). I also do not ever get to use our living room because she is always out there, watching TV as soon as she gets home until she goes to sleep at night. She only ever goes out about 1-2x a month, so this is literally almost every night. I use our TV maybe once every 3-4 months.
I've asked her to stop a couple of times, once when she kept hovering in the common areas whenever I used our bathroom (including when I was ill and vomiting), and another time when she was deliberately interfering with me while I was working from home. She stopped the bathroom hovering but still won't admit she does it, and won't stop completely.
(Also side note: she has the larger room out of the two of us, and has insisted she needed the larger space when we moved in. So it's doubly irritating because I had a smaller space to begin with.)
The breaking point for me: about a week ago, she came down with a really bad chest cold and stayed home from work. Which I am sympathetic towards! Except then she continued to hover over me directly while I was in our kitchen making food, even though she had a really deep chest cough. I started wearing a face mask around the apartment and stepping away from her while I was cooking, and she kept doing it.
The next day I said to her straight out: "I don't really love that you follow me around the kitchen, but I especially don't like you coughing on me when you're sick." Her response: "It's not Covid, it's not a big deal!" and "I need to do my dishes!!" She did say "Okay, sorry" but she was terse for the next few days, and then after that I went to visit family and haven't seen her.
Part of me feels like I shouldn't have let this go on as long as it has, but on the other hand: come the fuck on, I am allowed not to want to get coughed on while I take five minutes to make my dinner. (I did get a Covid test and don't have Covid, but STILL.)
How do I start reclaiming some boundaries? Part of me wants to go full-on petty and start hanging out in our living room all the time, the more mature part says to just start by firmly saying "I would like space while I cook my food", and another part of me is looking at single apartments. I can't afford one right now but I am looking for a better job and could possibly get one in the near future. (Which is a whole 'nother thing -- ever since I mentioned the job hunt, roomie is suddenly very keen on us getting a bigger apartment! Which I absolutely do not want to do because I know she won't let me use it!).
TL;DR: Roommate hovers over me when I use our kitchen or living room and gets mad if I ask her to stop, what do I do?
Submitted October 27, 2021 at 08:11AM by quityankingmychain https://ift.tt/3jH0afx
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