The Student Room Group

Housemate problems - at my wits end

Well basically I am actually going insane now so I decided I should post here for some sound advice.

I am in my 2nd year at Uni and living with 3 friends who I lived with in Halls last year. My flatmate, lets call him boy 1, has been accusing me of being noisy. I am not really noisy, sometimes I giggle a bit madly and talk a bit too much but I'm fairly considerate. I never have loud music on, I'm quiet in the mornings and at night, I do the majority of the housework for everyone..I'm quite a good person to live with IMHO!

Boy1 is less than ideal as a housemate, doesn't clean/messy etc. He has accused me of picking on him which I think stemmed from me dissaproving of a situation he finds himself in with a girlie. He walks past my room stomping and singing when I'm working, has his music on so loud it vibrates into my room..and I very rarely ask him to be quiet..I just put up with it. Now though every time I speak/laugh he's saying I'm noisy. I've called him a hypocrite and he doesn't understand why. He justifies his noise by my actions e.g. if he's loud, he says to me/other flatmates "well sophie's loud". He also blames my friends, when his friends are noisy..which I find horrible as my friends did nothing wrong when they were over and I now feel like I can't even act like it's my own house.

He is so insensitive to me, and he knows I've had a **** year as my dad died in April and it's hard being at uni away from my mum, and I can't believe he's having a go at me all the time. I've spoken back to him, asking him not to be so hypocritical and be quieter himself a bit. He's very rude to me and tries to "shush" me and I told him it was offensive and I'd prefer him just to say "Sophie can you be a little quieter please?" but he just said I should just be quiet as he was watching tv. It's driving me mad having somebody be normal, then everytime I laugh or do something a little louder than the usual, have a go at me..when I really could do without it. I feel bullied by him, but then I guess maybe he feels bullied by me? But I'm not actually doing anything to him considering all the crap he gives me. My bf reckons I should have been firmer to start with and now cos I haven't been he doesn't see he's doing anything wrong..but I don't believe Boy1 doesn't have a clue about how loud he is?

Basically, I need a strategy for carrying on living with somebody who is constantly picking up on something I do..which isn't that bad..and they do a lot worse. Cheers guys and girls

A very stressed/unhappy/upset Soph :frown:
Reply 1
Um, try not being confrontational. Just ask him why he's like that and ask him to cut you a bit of slack. Find his decent-human-being side.
Reply 2
From the way you put this he sounds like a bit of a bully - you need to sit down, as a house, and talk about the way he's making you feel. At the end of the day, it's your home too ... How about the other people you live with, how do they feel about this? Have they noticed anything? Situations like this can be difficult ...does your uni have any kind of mediation service run through the accommodation office? To give him the benefit of the doubt, he may not realise just how bad his actions are seeming to you - perhaps telling him will make him see. On the other hand, if he is a bit of a bully, then letting the rest of the house know about his behaviour might shame him into behaving.

Ignoring it isn't going to be an effective strategy (I don't think) because you're just going to get more and more upset and annoyed by the way he is behaving. You need to let him know how you feel.
Reply 3
The rest of the house, are kinda ambivalent. They think he's nosiy but my room is closest to his so I get affected the most. I've told him sporadically over the last year and 2months he's loud, and it's affecting me, but he doesn't seem to listen/change his behaviour/care?!

The other guy and girl have said he's loud, but then he always just replies with "well Sophie/Sophie's friends" are loud..and they don't then say "nowhere near as loud as you" when actually that's the truth. I'm gonna try and talk to him tomorrow but after a bereavement, as you would expect, my self confidence/guts are really at rock bottom and it's quite difficult to bring up these things.
Reply 4
I'm really sorry you're having such a tough time ... last year I lived with a housemate who decided to make my life a misery and it really ruined my first year at uni, so please, do something about it and don't let it carry on.

One of the things that bullies rely on is that their 'victims' don't have the confidence to stand up to them - just think, how awful is the rest of the year going to be if you don't say anything? Can you really put up with that?

I know it's easy for me to give advice on here ... I'm probably one of the least confrontational people I know lol, and it takes me ages to get the confidence to get my point across ... It gets to a point where you just have to bite the bullet and go for it, take a deep breath and say 'look, the way you're treating me at the moment is really upsetting me ...' - try not to get riled or upset (hard I know) just explain your point and try to come to some compromise.

I hope it all goes well for you tomorrow :smile:
If your housemates feel the same you should all gang up on him and ask him what his problem is.

Then if he says 'I'm loud because Sophie's loud' they can stick up for you and say that they don't have a problem with your noise levels,but they certainly have a problem with his,or something.

If you are feeling bullied by him the best thing to do is confront him with back up!
Reply 6
Thanks again guys and girls. I've just talked to my mum and decided gonna let the atmosphere calm down for a few days and then try and have a word. I don't want to turn it into a fight, and boy1 is feeling picked on by everyone at the minute so I think bringing it up now will just turn it into a "lets pick on boy1" marathon.

What I'm gonna do is then apologise for being noisy, ask him to cut me some slack and explain how I'm still really cut up about my dad and it's making me feel really sensitive still, then explain that his noise is affecting me and I hope both of us can be quieter so we both don't have problems. As my mum said it's just a petty spat, but it does make life miserable.
Reply 7
Sophdoph
Well basically I am actually going insane now so I decided I should post here for some sound advice.

I am in my 2nd year at Uni and living with 3 friends who I lived with in Halls last year. My flatmate, lets call him boy 1, has been accusing me of being noisy. I am not really noisy, sometimes I giggle a bit madly and talk a bit too much but I'm fairly considerate. I never have loud music on, I'm quiet in the mornings and at night, I do the majority of the housework for everyone..I'm quite a good person to live with IMHO!

Boy1 is less than ideal as a housemate, doesn't clean/messy etc. He has accused me of picking on him which I think stemmed from me dissaproving of a situation he finds himself in with a girlie. He walks past my room stomping and singing when I'm working, has his music on so loud it vibrates into my room..and I very rarely ask him to be quiet..I just put up with it. Now though every time I speak/laugh he's saying I'm noisy. I've called him a hypocrite and he doesn't understand why. He justifies his noise by my actions e.g. if he's loud, he says to me/other flatmates "well sophie's loud". He also blames my friends, when his friends are noisy..which I find horrible as my friends did nothing wrong when they were over and I now feel like I can't even act like it's my own house.

He is so insensitive to me, and he knows I've had a **** year as my dad died in April and it's hard being at uni away from my mum, and I can't believe he's having a go at me all the time. I've spoken back to him, asking him not to be so hypocritical and be quieter himself a bit. He's very rude to me and tries to "shush" me and I told him it was offensive and I'd prefer him just to say "Sophie can you be a little quieter please?" but he just said I should just be quiet as he was watching tv. It's driving me mad having somebody be normal, then everytime I laugh or do something a little louder than the usual, have a go at me..when I really could do without it. I feel bullied by him, but then I guess maybe he feels bullied by me? But I'm not actually doing anything to him considering all the crap he gives me. My bf reckons I should have been firmer to start with and now cos I haven't been he doesn't see he's doing anything wrong..but I don't believe Boy1 doesn't have a clue about how loud he is?

Basically, I need a strategy for carrying on living with somebody who is constantly picking up on something I do..which isn't that bad..and they do a lot worse. Cheers guys and girls

A very stressed/unhappy/upset Soph :frown:

He just sounds like a total immature ****wit,
Your best bet is to just ask him why hes like that, and if he just gives you more imaturity its best just to make him a lost cause and get on with more important things.
Reply 8
He sounds like he is insecure and an attention seeker. It is good if he is feeling picked on. I reckon you should tell him calmly and coldly how annoying and pathetic he is. Throwing in a few harsh and upsetting comments (but cooly without emotion) may do the trick. Hopefully you can negotiate and come to an understanding but if not one of you is going to the buffers and you sound like the stronger one. If he cannot change then it may be necessary to steer him into those buffers and exact some revenge by encouraging the other housemate to gang up on him. If you supply the rope he may hang himself, metaphorically speaking. Of course to work out an understanding would always be best
Reply 9
You people should try living with real nutcases.

My weirdest flatmate experience was in Berlin: my flatmate was a 21-year old skinhead who was into body-building and who'd lost his driving licence from drink driving (so I had to drive him around sometimes). He had a huge tatoo on his back depicting a goddess holding a naked man and a naked woman and it took over his whole back and on his stomach, the words "Nothing to lose".

With the other flatmates they'd have parties where they'd have plenty of crack around.

The scariest moment was when his brother (whose room I was renting for a few months) came back, came into the room at 3am when I was sleeping to use the hifi, with his girlfriend and they started dancing in front of me, the girlfriend wearing virtually nothing. I had to get up anyway but once I was up and dressed, he grabbed me by the shoulder, got his gun and told me he and his brother used to be in an East Berlin gang and that if anyone was messing with me, then he'd finish them.
Reply 10
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.
You know, some people use TSR as a place to air their feelings when they don't feel able to talk to the people concerned in real life. It's also a good way of gaining some perspective and getting other people's points of view. It's not a place for people to air their dirty laundry on the internet, and it's certainly not a place for you to fight with your housemates to an audience.
Reply 12
I couldn't even be bothered to read all of Boy1 post to be honest :p:
But why do you feel the need to defend yourself to us anyway????
We dont care whos in the wrong,
No offence or anything.
Reply 13
Your both right but i just felt angry about what she'd said and how she'd portrayed me. Suppose i was just arguing back with her and i should speak about it to her in person which i am planning on doing because i have some other unrelated issues with her that need to be resolved.

Just had an extremely stressful new year so this didn't help and needed to vent
Reply 14
Boy1
Your both right but i just felt angry about what she'd said and how she'd portrayed me. Suppose i was just arguing back with her and i should speak about it to her in person which i am planning on doing because i have some other unrelated issues with her that need to be resolved.

Just had an extremely stressful new year so this didn't help and needed to vent

Well nobody here is going to see you as a bad person or anything, we will just take the persons word for it and give them the advice they need thats all.
susiemakemeblue
You know, some people use TSR as a place to air their feelings when they don't feel able to talk to the people concerned in real life. It's also a good way of gaining some perspective and getting other people's points of view. It's not a place for people to air their dirty laundry on the internet, and it's certainly not a place for you to fight with your housemates to an audience.


Umm his response was certainly not fighting, it was in fact pretty reasonable. In fact now that they have both have each others point of view they may resolve things. It's probably good they did it in print rather than in person because they were forced to hear each others side rather than yelling at each other. Good luck guys.