heya, been a while since ive been on here, but uh, i need some outside advice very badly right now and a place to type it all out so i currently live in a 5-person household. all of us knew each other and were friends before moving in, but i mostly know just 1 of them super well because we go to school together. along with my friend's SO, the other 2 people that live with us are girlfriends. ill call the 2 of them Otter and Seal, and then my main friend Cat to make this easier to follow, at least hopefully lol (Cat's SO doesnt have much to do with this situation so they wont be mentioned much, if at all) another thing to mention is otter and i are both all sorts of brainweird; i have anxiety and panic disorder, and otter has a lot of bad anxiety issues as well, although i dont know the specifics. im pretty sure otter is avoiding me, if she doesnt straight-up hate me, and i want to know how to fix things. otter and seal have always been kinda messy, at least for my standards; they would leave dirty dishes out and food out for days at a time, until cat or i were basically forced to wash them if we wanted to make food at all. there have been a few times i asked them to clean up their dishes and wasn't particularly nice about it, and they would act like i was their mother nagging them to clean up. which...i dont want to be at all? and i dont think i was being rude or mean? i asked friends about my wording and they said i was being direct but nice, and im inclined to agree but i dont fucking know at this point. otter has been acting kinda distant for a while; she stopped talking to me or cat's SO, stays in her room all the time, and complains a LOT when she does actually talk to us. ive tried asking if she was okay and if there was anything i could do to help before, but she just completely brushed me off each time, so i stopped asking. ive been having a lot of trouble formatting this so im just gonna bulletpoint a list of...incidences...issues? something like that a friend came to visit and stay at the apartment for a week recently. okayed it with all my roommates over a month in advance and reminded them a few days before they (my friend uses they/them btw) arrived; i ask if its okay if i invite a few other friends over for dinner one day to meet visiting friend; everyone says its fine, otter and seal were gonna be out one evening anyway, so i plan it for that day. the day my friends are visiting, otter says shes uncomfortable having so many people over at once; i tell her im sorry and that the reason i asked a few days in advance was so no one was uncomfortable; otter says its fine (again) and doesnt talk to me the rest of the day; otter is gone the entire time my friends are over except for about 5 minutes when her and seal get back; otter doesnt say a word and rushes to her room when my friends are there; friends later ask me if she was okay visiting friend apparently woke otter up one day by being loud; otter texts cat complaining about it and cat tells my friend but feels uncomfortable being a messenger for otter; friend feels bad but has no idea when/how they woke otter up since it was far after the fact otter makes absolutely no effort to talk to my friend or hang out with us, even when we invite her places; figure she doesnt want to hang out with us; otter apparently takes offense to this?? after my friend leaves, otter leaves a comment on my friends instagram clearly upset they didnt say goodbye to her and wasnt informed the day my friend was leaving; i had mentioned in front of otter the night before that my friend was leaving; no one had any idea otter was around when my friend left (otter goes to work with seal a lot and seal was working that day, so we just assumed she was with seal since we hadnt seen or heard otter all day); friend feels incredibly uncomfortable by the comment; otter told me she had no idea my friend had left but just said "oh well, its fine!" when i told her i was sorry. (i admit i couldve put more effort into seeing if otter was around, but her avoidant behavior made me hesitant to try and talk to her at all) otter doesnt clean her cats litterbox for 8 days; i ask her to clean it since it smells and she says "alright, fine, you only have to ask me once" clearly very upset; im confused since this was the first time i asked her. it is now 2 days later, and she still hasnt cleaned it this morning, otter is blatantly avoiding me; talking to cat super quietly and glancing in my direction when im the room, and only leaving her room when im in my room and not the kitchen or living room otter's cats go in my room a lot since i allow them on my bed and they like to hang out with me while i do schoolwork; otter will walk into my room and take the cats for seemingly no reason; cats are clearly upset and go back to my room the moment otter sets them down otter texts me out of the blue telling me to keep my door open so the cats can come in and out; i respond that ill keep my door open any time im home, but it stays closed when im asleep since the cats like to wake me up a lot; get no response we live in the south, so the electric bills over the summer get crazy expensive; we have an apt talk in may setting rules for the AC and such; otter and seal wanted the AC way lower than the rest of us; we tell them to get fans and i offer a little desk fan i never use; we all come to an agreement, and i thought everything was okay. about a week ago, otter sent all of us a group chat sounding upset that we gave her and seal shit about the AC and telling us to stop leaving lights on all the time; she specifically mentions me leaving my room light on; i apologize and tell her ill get better at it; no response from anyone when we renewed our lease a few months ago, we all agreed to sign for another year. literally a week after we turn the lease in with all our signatures, otter and seal tell us they plan on moving out by december. im kinda miffed but not super upset since rent is cheap and i need to stay here to finish school anyway; cat is in a similar boat; cats SO is really upset by this, but i havent had the chance to talk to them more about it one time after asking otter and seal to clean the dishes, seal makes a vague post on instagram calling me a bully for "being forceful" there are more things that happened, but im honestly getting tired and theyre a bit more complicated/long-winded >>;; may add to this tomorrow when i have more brainpower it all came to a head for me today, when otter made a post on deviantart and called us (me, cat, and cat's SO) "entitled" and "make [her and seal] feel guilty about everything they do". i dont really...know what to say? i hate making otter feel anxious and upset for living with me, since ive had to deal with that feeling before, but also i dont really know where or how i messed up. i wanna try and talk about it but me just talking to her seems to make her upset. also we have a bunch of alphabet magnets on our fridge and i saw today that some of them spell out "fuck u hant" which is...just close enough to my name to freak me the fuck out and make my anxiety go crazy. i saw it and immediately just panicked. after i calmed down i went here to write this post so uh. here i am. if this is confusing or you need more info, i can go more into detail if people need it. i think im gonna stop here since im thinking about the stupid fridge magnets again and its making me anxious
Sympathy, sometimes large households with many roommates are a pain. Something that I found helped with roommates with brainweird and needing to clean is having a house meeting about chores and then creating a chore chart that rotates month to month. That way no one feels they're being unfairly targeted for cleaning and everything goes well. We also had a rule that once dishes hit the sink, you had 48 hours to wash them. Basically, laying out expectations clearly is probably your best bet. Even though asking Otter to clean is completely reasonable, sometimes if expectations aren't communicated well (often because anxiety brain translates "hey can you clean this so i can cook" as "god you horrible messy person why do i have to ask you to clean up after yoruself), it can feel like being targeted. As for the friends thing, I dunno. I don't always want to hang out with my roommate's friends, but then I don't get upset when they don't say bye to me. Good luck with the situation, it sounds awkward.
It sounds a bit like the sorts of problem you get with ask/guess culture clashes. In this instance, you would be the asker, and Otter would be the guesser. In guess culture, it is considered rude to say "no" to any request. Ever. It is therefore up to the requester to figure out whether the requestee wants a thing before asking them anything. This requires them to do a lot of pussy-footing and indirect conversational prodding before asking if a thing would be OK- because in guess culture, "Is it OK if/Would you mind/Do you want to (whatever the thing is)?" is perceived as an order. And something like "Please do the dishes" is perceived as a violent demand. It's also a pretty common feature in certain types of emotional abuse; in these cases, "can't say no" is a feature, not a bug. Basically, fuck guess culture. Conversely, in ask culture, you ask if a person wants a thing, and assume that the answer they give accurately communicates their opinion. Anyway, assuming you're perceiving & reporting accurately, it sounds like Otter has some communication/boundary issues, and possibly expects that any answer contrary to the one she thinks you want is going to result in a blowup, or at the very least Be Very Rude. Not sure what advice to give you; I'm still sorting this out with my mom. I have at times made her cry by answering "No" to "Do you wanna (set the table/do the dishes/clean the garage)?" Granted, I knew that she actually meant to tell me to do those things, but the truth was I didn't want to do those things, and I don't fucking like lying. ... So, yeah, I might not be the person to ask. :\
