Hi im boy1. My name is Tom and i live with soph. This thread was found by a friend of mine (questionable at the moment) who was meant to live with us but took a year out at the last moment, anyway thats another story.
Right basically i wanted to say something because i feel a little misrepresented here and i will agree with most of the people here i do sound like a complete b****** from what soph said. I must say that a little exaggeration was involved in her description of events.
Ok so first off i will admit im not exactly the best housemate in the world but i am by no means a bully. I am generally accused of being too nice and giving in to people too easily in fact. I am messy and don't do a quarter of the cleaning housework but i do sort out other things that could be classed as housework. For example i generally look after our internet connection and network in the house, i sort out any blown bulbs and fuses around the place and have recently taken the kitchen tap apart to fix it as it wouldn't turn off. I realise that this isn't quite the same as cleaning but if told to do the washing up for example, im quite happy to do it as i know that i do less than the girls in the house. She also doesn't do the majority of housework, she does as much as the other girl we live with which is more than me or the other guy but not the majority.
As to the noise. Sophie is a very quiet housemate and as she says never has loud music or her TV up high. But she is a loud person in terms of speaking. She's not excessively loud or anything but she could defiantly not be described as quiet when she speaks. The time i believe soph is referring to is when myself and the two others we live with were watching tv quietly and soph walked in with her bf and started talking to everyone in the room pretty loudly to the extent i couldn't hear the TV which annoyed me as i feel soph would have said something to me if i had done the same to her. Sophie walked into the kitchen which is through a couple of doors around a metre away from the lounge entrance and was still talking to people (the other girl we live with and her bf i believe) but she raised her voice so she could speak to people in the lounge and it annoyed me i couldn't watch the program i was watching. I know it was petty to get annoyed but i was tired after a day at uni and was relaxing. Im sure everyone has been there and i got annoyed with her for being loud and interrupting me relaxing. It came to a head when i said 'shhh' to her which was a bad move. I can see why it insulted her but i really didn't mean it in a nasty way, i just wanted to show her that i would like her to be a little quieter without interrupting her conversation. At the time she had moved back into the lounge and was still being much louder than she needed to be to talk to the others. As soon as i said shh to her she shouted at me for being rude and disrespectful and i did what i usually do and backed down and apologised to her.
I can't remember saying i felt picked on but i do feel that soph occasionally says snide remarks to me that aren't provoked and are unnecessary. I feel that im the one who gets the remarks because the other girl we live with is a good housemate, very inoffensive and keeps out the way whilst being very friendly, and the other guy we live with stands up for himself much more and is to be honest tidier than me.
On the stomping and singing front i must say that i didn't think i sang along to music outside my own room or shower but i could have done it a few times accidentally as sophs room is right between mine and the bathroom. But i don't exactly belt out like an opera singer so i wouldn't have thought that less than 5 seconds of my voice would be that bad even if im not exactly the best singer in the world. As with the stomping...well i have been told i stomp by others but it is by no means intentional. IIm not particularly heavy (bit less than 12st) so i don't really have an excuse for it, i just walk that way. I really didn't think it was that bad but i really don't know what i can do about it if it does annoy soph that much. To make this clear it would only be about 5 seconds at a time and i don't march past her bedroom to be spiteful, i am honestly walking from my room to somewhere else or vice versa and to get anywhere in the house i have to go past sophs room.
On the music front i will admit i do like listening to music at moderate to loud levels depending on my mood but i don't do it all the time and have immediately stopped or turned it way down in the past when asked. To be honest i didn't realise how well the sound travels to sophs room and have now got into a habit of going and standing outside sophs room to check how loud it is when i do play it or playing it loudly when there isn't anyone in the house.
On the friends being noisy front there has been one occasion each where friends have been the cause of a rift. Once when a couple of friends from my course came round and we were pretty noisy. In my defence it was 10am and we had just had a lecture so soph was up and in her room so could have asked us to keep it down. I can understand why she didn't though and i am sorry we were noisy that day. The second incident was with 3 of sophies friends from home who were down to visit. I didn't object to them at all, what i objected to was the way sophie treated me when they were around. I was introduced to them as a 'loser' which isn't the nicest thing to be introduced as to strangers, especially in the tone she said it. Also every comment was pretty much an insult or put down. This came to a head when soph walked into the lounge with her friends following her and i was standing near the door letting her through but it obviously wasn't enough as she barged me into the window out the way and then laughed. At that point i was fuming and said to the other girl we live with that i couldn't stand it anymore so i got my coat and went over to a friends house.
Although she says i am insensitive it is because of her dad dying that i feel i can't confront her about these things.
Im sure there is more to say but i think this is a pretty mammoth post already so i will leave it at that.