A História de um Empresário Médio: Da Academia ao Mercado

(upbeat music) It's the Brian Lair Show. I'm Kusha Navidar, filling in for Brian today here on WNYC. We'll end today's show with some tips and tricks for living harmoniously with roommates, whoever they may be. You know, let's be real, New York City. There aren't a lot of us who have our homes all to ourselves. Most of us share a kitchen, a bathroom, and one precious quiet corner with somebody. Maybe that somebody is a spouse, a roommate, a parent, maybe an adult kid who moved back in after college. Does anyone else ever time their whole morning around who gets the shower first? I know there are a lot of us out there. Fact is, we are sharing more than ever. In a new piece for Vox, Ali Volpi reports that over half of American adults live with a spouse or partner, multi-generational households have more than quadrupled over the last decade, and about a third of adults under 35 live with a parent. So she rounded up advice from therapists, from researchers and friendship experts on how to live with the people we love, or at least the people we split the rent with. With me now is Ali Volpi, correspondent at Vox, covering relationships, wellness and home life. Ali, hey, welcome back to WNYC. Thank you so much for having me. And listeners, who do you live with? And what's the one house rule that saved your living situation? Rumates, what agreements keeps the peace? Couples, how did you finally settle the war on chores? Parents with adult kids back home, or adults back home with your parents? How are you making it work? We'll also take one or two of your roommate horror stories. We'll see which ones bubble to the top. Call or text us at 212433WNYC. That's 2124339692. Okay, Ali, while those calls are coming in, let's start by your reporting. Living with other people is nothing new. So why does this feel so relevant right now? - Yeah, I just think the way that we are orienting our living situations might have changed a little bit. Housing, like you mentioned, is super expensive. So it makes sense to sort of shack up with other people, whether that's a roommate, whether that's your parents, your grandparents, it makes sense for older adults to maybe live with their adult children if caretaking is an issue. So there's just a lot of different ways we are choosing to live our lives now. And also it's lonely to kind of live by yourself. So it might be nice to have a friend that you room with. And obviously there's the very traditional path of you get married to someone, you're dating someone and you live together. So that is also a very common orientation. - Do you have a sense of what's changed over the past like a couple of decades about who we live with and how? I mean, you had mentioned that there's this traditional path of marriage, but families in like living situations look so different than they used to, right? - Yeah, I think the recent stat that have been catching a lot of headlines of more adults under the age of 35 are still living with their parents. You know, I think that really resonates for people, these traditional milestones of you go to college, you graduate, you get a job that pays really well and you buy a house, that's just not the reality for a lot of young people anymore. Things are really expensive. The job market is pretty precarious. And so it makes people feel a little icky if they can't hit those milestones. But I think the fact that we can talk about the fact that we can live with our parents, we can save some money. It just kind of normalizes the experience for people and I don't think there should be any shame in that either. - We got a couple of texts that have already come in. So I wanna read some of them. The first one, put the toilet seat down. I'm pretty sure that's advice for how to live well with roommates. Another one says, "When my adult kids live back at home, I just have the rule. They have to keep their door closed to their room. They could do whatever they want with it, but I don't want to see it." There's another one that says, "Work wheel for chores." That's pretty interesting. Another one that says, "The only way is to commit to way over communicating from day one. Otherwise, you lock yourself into an impossible cycle of not being able to talk things out." So there's already advice that folks have. We'd love to hear calls, more texts keep those coming in. Allie, I'm wondering before we get into the friction, just make the case work. So you mentioned people don't wanna be lonely. You cite research that people who live with others are actually happier. What are the benefits of sharing a home? - Yeah, you have someone to turn to every day. Loneliness is an issue in this country. Not to say that people who live alone are lonely that is certainly not the case, but you can definitely make the case for if you have someone around to talk to every day. Your social needs are a little bit lower. There's this great researcher, Jeffrey Hall, who I've interviewed a couple of times, and he gave me this great advice that every day you should have a face-to-face conversation that with somebody you care about, that is ideally meaningful. And it's way easier to check that off when you live with somebody. When you don't, you kind of have to leave your house to do it and pick up the phone, which again, those aren't hard things, but it can feel like the barrier to getting your social needs met are way easier. Not to mention it's cheaper if you split the bills, split the mortgage, split the rent. And of course it comes with its own challenges, but yeah, having somebody around really impacts people's wellbeing. - Another expert that you've talked to along those lines of the one that you mentioned recommends actual scheduled house meetings, which she admits feel odd at first. This kind of dovetails with what you're saying about daily check-ins. Why do we resist scheduled things with the people we live with? - Yeah, 'cause it should feel natural, you know? We think, oh, this is our partner, this is our friend, this person should just inherently know what I'm thinking because they know me so well. But that's not the case. We cannot expect people to read our minds. So we really need to be very communicative about the things that we want in our living situation because everyone should feel comfortable. And so the more we sort of sweep that under the rug, the more we get resentful and nothing gets done. So having that concrete time of like, yep, we're gonna do this on Mondays. We're gonna talk about our chores or talk about the things that need to get done that week. I think it can just be a really easy way to work into your schedule and make sure like everybody's needs are getting that. - We have some more texts coming through. There's a lot. So, Ali, thanks for sticking with me. I think you're gonna enjoy these two. I'm gonna read through them. Stop telling your cohabitants what to do. Full stop. You're not their mom or dad. You're not their manager. Use eye statements. Be ready and willing to compromise. If it isn't working, reflect on your own needs. Find a new roommate. Here's a text from Alicia and Queens. I've lived with my husband since 2019. Relationship saver, incense matches in the bathroom. Little matches that are dipped in incense and mask, dot, dot, dot, every smell, nose emoji. Thank you, Alicia. And one here that I wanna read and then I wanna turn to a question for you, turn little annoyances into inside jokes. My partner has a penchant for leaving drawers and cabinets open to my chagrin. We call it a ghost now. As in, a ghost has left this drawer open. It doesn't bother me so much anymore and he's gotten better about it anyhow. So Ali, this leads to a question that I had for you which was from a therapist that you talked to that you quote who says the happiest households aren't conflict free, they're creative. What does that mean? - Yeah, it's like we need to come to a solution on things and that's why I think the ghost joke is really, really great because you're drawing attention to it. You're not sweeping it under the rug. You're not telling them what to do about it but sort of adding humor to the mix is drawing attention to it and not making the other person feel attacked because everything is a compromise when you live with people. You are never going to have your or living situation be exactly the way you want it unless you live by yourself. So everything needs to be a compromise and so we shouldn't come at it from feeling like, "Oh, I'm losing if I give up this." Or, you know, "I am being told what to do." So we need to come to things from like a creative solution and so by infusing humor into things, you really take the emotion out of it and so I think that's a really creative solution. - Listeners, we want to hear from you. We've got space for phone calls. We've got so many texts coming through which are great. We'd love to hear from some folks. Who do you live with and what's the one house rule that saved your living situation? What agreement keeps the peace? What questions do you have for Allie? Give us a call, send us a text. We're at 212433WNYC2124339692. So one expert you spoke with has something called the uncomfortable rule. Can you talk about that a little bit more? - Yes. So the minute this expert said the minute that people, you know, stop wanting to get along or compromise like the Dynamics shift and so they came up with this idea called the uncomfortable rule and so that is it. Anyone is uncomfortable, you all agree to talk about the problem and listen. And I think that falls under sort of the communication category. But everyone needs to buy into this, you know, that like we all need to have an open mind. We need to talk about this and we need to listen and sort of accept the fact that we might be following short in some way, which is pretty uncomfortable. So I think that's a super good way of going about it because if one person is feeling weird, like that disrupts the whole dynamic of the house, like I've certainly been that person who's just passive aggressive cleaning because I don't wanna talk about things. And it would just be so much easier if we talked about it and then the other people dedicate time to listen. - All right, I'm matching you at the sink with a sponge, wiping a plate and not breaking eye contact with the roommate, not saying anything, just being like, do you see this? What helped out in that situation for you? Talking about it later, I mean this was, I was living with my best friend so we did have that basis of communication. Um, and yeah, I was just sweeping up around her while she was taking a nap on the couch. Like that is not the way to go about it. And so, you know, you just have to apologize later and be like, "Listen, I know this is not the right way to go about it. I just wanted to keep to a weekly cleaning schedule. I get it that you don't want to do that. I'm happy to maybe take more on as long as like the common areas stay clean." And something like that, I'm sure I didn't say it nearly as eloquently, but you know, you just need to talk about it. Yeah, you see, you stumble through it kind of. It doesn't have to be a perfect conversation. It just has to be a conversation of respect. I guess is one thing I would suggest. Um, here's a text we have, "If at all separate bathrooms, which can make a big difference for folks. One expert says, "Peace at home isn't about square footage, Ali. It's about everyone having one space that's truly their own." Which is why I bring up that, that text about separate bathrooms. But what does that actually look like in a place that's so small in an apartment like the kind you find in New York City? Yeah, it is really tough. I was very lucky that my best friend who I lived with, we both had our own separate bathrooms. And that really, really did change the dynamic of things. Even when I lived with a partner, we had separate bathrooms. And that is truly some of the best advice ever. But yeah, like you mentioned, some apartments are not big enough for that. One of the experts I talked to suggested just like having a space that's your own. So if there's like a door you can close, I mean, I've even seen people put up like curtains, like in a little corner. And they're like, "This is like my meditation space. This is my yoga space." I think if there's just like any place we can cord and off and make our own. Or again, even if that is the one bathroom, but you're like, "I want to take my weekly bath on Thursday nights. Like can I just have an hour?" I think it's really important to just like have a space where you can shut the door, be by yourself. And maybe that's your bedroom, you know? But like just to have a door is very important. Yeah, let's go to Al from Belmore. Hi Al, welcome to the show. Hey, how you doing? Good. Go ahead. Alright, so yeah, I was just calling just to make a reminder of emergency preparedness for families and spouses and stuff. Like have a game plan in case, you know, there's a cooking fire or electrical fires and things like that. And I had from my experience, we almost had a fire in our house. And like I feel like everybody freaked out when the situation kind of happened. You know, but being able to like say, "Have that communication with your spouses to be tardy, clean up, get rid of it, outdated it, you know, equipment you're using, stuff like that." You know, just have that kind of communication when both you on separate pages sometimes, we're trying to be on the same page when it comes to that. Yeah, Al, thanks so much for that. And Ali, one thing that it reminds me of kind of like what Al was saying is, you have to have forethought. It's not just about what's happening in the moment, but it is so much easier to have conversations about things that have not yet happened or like just looking down the road instead of just trying to respond to everything when the damage is done. Is that what do you think about that? Oh yeah, that's super practical. And you know, it's inevitable that things will come up. Like hopefully it's not an emergency like a fire, but you know, there might be incidents where like the roof is leaking or an appliance breaks. Like how are we going to deal with it? How are we going to communicate with our landlord or you know, find a contractor to come fix this? I think it's really important and something that I wish that I had done. Al, thank you so much for that. Ali, we've got about 30 seconds left here. I'm wondering what resources do you suggest to people when they are in some kind of conflict with their roommate in a situation they haven't experienced before? Yeah, again, we've mentioned this before. Talk about it. Also, the author Ivarodzki has a book called Fair Play, which I think is really, really good when you're coming to dividing up chores. And that's a really great paradigm for how to divide labor in the household so it feels equitable. Have you changed anything about the way that you have been a roommate? I mean, I live by myself now. Oh, no. You just look back fondly on the times when you had somebody with you. Well, we have to leave it there for today. My guest was Ali Volpi, correspondent covering mental health relationships, wellness, money, home life, and work at Fox. Ali, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.