Living with 3 roommates was actually great—especially considering they were random strangers I met on Craigslist.
“My roommates? Oh, I live with three guys I met on Craigslist.”
The guy I was talking to at the bar raised his eyebrows in what I could tell was a last-minute effort to appear casual and conceal his, I don’t know, shock (?) at what he’d just heard.
This happened pretty often.
Three of my closest friends are two strange men I met on Craigslist. (The third was one of their tagalong friends who turned our musty old couch into the (his) de-facto guest room.)
I’m Meredith, A (proud) Merry Loner regaling the random happy happenstances of her life. This is (part of) my origin story.
I Was Just a Loner Looking for Friends Roommates After College
I graduated from the University of Rhode Island (URI) in 2018 after triple-majoring in writing, communications, and French. I was lucky enough to be able to turn my internship at a public relations agency into a full-time gig, so instead of spending the summer procrastinating and then panicking about finding a job, I could move right on to the next mission: find a place to live.
People told me to look on Craigslist, which, immediately made my fragile twenty-one-year-old frame shiver. (If you’ve heard of Craigslist, then you know why.) But my wiser, older sister assured me that, “Yeah, it seems weird, but this just is the place to go to search for an apartment.”
So with an optimistic, trepidatious heart (the kind that only a young adult who is green to absolute everything could have) I went to the online bulletin board my teen years / Internet had told me was full of serial killers and weirdos.
A real question: Is this still where the youth find their first apartments? My story is from 2018, so it’s only been a scant six years, but we know how quickly time changes things …
To be totally honest: I didn’t put that much thought into it.
I visited two apartments. The first one was fine but unmemorable. The second was also fine—but had a strange twist that I didn’t reveal to a soul until at least two years later.
Here’s how it went down:
- I rolled up to the club in my super sleek, super sexy sky blue Ford 2003 Windstar minivan with the broken window. (Before you ask, yes: This was what brought all the boys to my yard.)
- Some random bloke (whose identity we’ll conceal by calling him Tom) opened the door. He looked nervous and confused to see me: “Sorry, I’m not going to be very good at this,” he said. “Normally Allan [again, identity concealed] shows people around … Wanna see the basement?”
Things were going great.
I’d just crossed the threshold into my second Craigslist-vetted apartment, and a random dude was already inviting me into his basement.
I said yes.
The rest of the tour was uneventful. The apartment was four bedrooms (I would have three roommates); it had a washer/dryer, a pretty big kitchen, a porch, and it was located right downtown (in Providence, Rhode Island, for context). It seemed pretty good.
As I was walking down the block to my car, I sent Tom a text thanking him for his time. My plan was to ask him about the next steps and what I needed to do to send an application to the property manager.
He responded: “no problem said the green goblin.”
No, we did not talk about goblins.
We did not make any jokes about goblins.
We did not share any pop culture references to a movie or TV show featuring goblins.
This was straight out of the blue and 100% the weird-ass stranger-danger behavior I was expecting from Craigslist.
“This is the place for me,” I said to myself.
Living with 3 roommates: And so began my years as the real-life girl from New Girl.
(At least that’s what people told me.)
Unlike most hipsters in 2012, I never watched New Girl (though I somehow managed to retain the memory of those “a-dork-able” years with beanies and lumberjacks that pop culture rammed down our throats). But I’m told it’s about some pretty basic-ass chick who ends up living with three strange men and, naturally, develops a sitcom-worthy cute friendship with each of them.)
Pretty accurate.
Thusly were the adventures of Meredith, Tom, Niall, and Arthur (Yes, those are made-up names for identity concealment.), ripe with cutesy sitcom moments like:
- stealing street signs and proudly displaying them in our living room
- furnishing said living room with lawn chairs and a beer fridge
- making fun of each other’s dates
- throwing parties around our kitchen couch
- Friendsgiving
To me, this was a very special time of my life because I made wonderful friends and fantastic memories. But in the grand scheme of comparing my life to other people’s, it wasn’t anything spectacular.
So I thought.
Loners—forever tragically misunderstood
Like that aforementioned guy I met in a bar who thought it was weird AF that this already weird girl was living with 3 roommates who were strange men she met online (Actually, I only met one of them before moving in. The other two were even more random roommates.), a lot of people thought it was a weird arrangement.
Mostly, I heard a lot of comments like:
- “What do your parents think of this?”
- “What does your dad think?”
- “Is the apartment gross?”
- “Are you doing all the cooking and cleaning?”
What?
What? What? What?
First of all, I was (as the Internet likes to say) a grown-ass woman who neither needed to nor chose to seek my parents’ permission nor advice before making decisions.
- It’s not that my parents didn’t care if I was potentially sliced and diced and stored in a meat freezer by some rando on the Internet, but I was an adult—and they treated me as such by not interfering in my life choices.
- See above.
- Simply no. Actually, if we’re going to go there and talk about stereotypes, my testosterone-filled apartment was actually 100% cleaner and more organized than my sister’s parallel living situation (she had two female roommates). Obviously, these two apartments are simply anecdotes and are not representative of people’s behavior at large … but the all-girl apartment was a cluttered mess full of throw pillows, candles, and other material shells of one-too-many trips to Target. The three-boys-and-one-girl apartment was organized and tidy, largely because it was mostly empty. (And the minimalist in me loved it.)
- Hard eye roll. I wasn’t anyone’s housekeeper—and no one expected me to be. Like reasonable adults, we all took care of our own needs. Next.
Naturally, a lot of the probing questions stemmed from the fact that I was a young woman living with three strange men. But I also think that many people were simply perplexed that I did something on my own:
- found an apartment without using her network
- took a chance on strangers instead of pre-vetted acquaintances
- trusted that nothing is that big of a deal and that she would be able to figure things out independently no matter what happened
This was unlike pretty much everyone else I knew from college or high school who generally stayed within their growing social Venn diagram:
Being a loner actually helps you make more friends.
This is the secret that no one tells you.
When you’re too afraid, nervous, or insecure to put yourself in situations where you’re not going to know a soul, you drastically reduce your chances of meeting new, not-likeminded people.
Which means you drastically reduce your chances of:
- having conversations you’ve never had before
- learning to see things from a different point of view
- realizing the world is full of people who walk, talk, and think differently than you and your friends
Most of us don’t do this enough.
Don’t feel bad—it’s literally in our genes, says one study that finds our desire for ‘like-minded others’ is hard-wired.” [Source: University of Kansas]
It’s why we tend to make friends with people who think like us. [Source: Vice]
But how much can you broaden your horizons and break out of your comfort zone when you’re always living within a social safety net?
This is one of the superpowers of Merry Loners
We have the self-assurance to make life decisions without soliciting others’ advice.
We’re not afraid of being alone or spending time with people who aren’t friends of friends of friends whom we already know and trust.
Above all, we have confidence in ourselves to handle any situation, no matter how it turns out.
Because we believe that we can make most happenstances happy.
Living with 3 Roommates: Random Strangers I Met on Craiglist Became My Friends | References
University of Kansas | Study finds our desire for ‘like-minded others’ is hard-wired
Nature Communications | Similar Neural Response Predict Friendship
