When love moves in
Shared apartments are the real estate equivalent of the internship generation: We hardly have any money and can't afford rent on our own, so we share it - but sometimes with more people than expected: Couples in the shared apartment - does that work? A plea for love in all real estate.
You come home. By traditional standards, you may not have done much today. You were at university, a seminar here, a beer in a bar there, then another in another, but why not? You are young and life is a matter of opinion. You are surrounded by mostly nice people, the philistines are the others, you are usually single and 'everyone with everyone' is making a comeback. Love is actually just a convention, it's all just biochemistry. Only your roommate seems to be able to suppress it...
So you come home to your cute little shared apartment, a temple of informality, with a creaking wooden floor and deposit bottles on the balcony. And then there is this smell. You go into the kitchen and sure enough: Saltimbocca alla romana. Your cool roommate with short hair and tattoos sits at the table and mashes avocados. Next to her sits her friend, this imp: the same concept as her, only with a full beard. He also mashing avocados. They cook together. For the fourth goddamn time this week! Yesterday we had couscous! And you want to vomit into this scene of smug Instagram romance!
"But but. Where does this unjust anger come from?" I ask you in the voice of a wise old wandering monk. "Have you not mashed avocados with your temporary great love countless times? And didn't you take up the entire kitchen with your busy couple's cooking evening? While your roommates felt somehow betrayed by your attempt to play adult in a comfortable way while living a wild, naughty student life in a wild, naughty shared apartment? While they were whispering about how your loved one could actually pay rent as often as he graces your 54 square meters of freedom? Have you never been an ignorant little nest-builder?”
No? Me neither. I've always only had casual relationships that were an enrichment for my shared apartment and at the cooking evening we always offered that the others could have something before we went to my room with dinner to have lovely sex. My wandering monk voice fades from exhaustion, but you nod in understanding, greet the two lovers and drink another beer with them. Couples in a shared apartment – perhaps they are not the Antichrist after all, as disillusioned singles often suspect.
In his WG lexicon, cabaret artist and author Markus Henrik has a solution ready for every situation in the 'democratic microcosm' of WG. And who could know better than the expert who has lived in 14 shared apartments?
According to him, timely communication is everything: A new partner who often visits the shared four walls or even moves in changes the feeling of the shared apartment - after all, a shared apartment is also a type of relationship that ideally provides emotional support and in which there is to work. According to experts, this work is very simple: open your mouth. Talk. Don't present your roommates with a fait accompli or unfinished dishes that you completely forgot about because of the three-hour love game on the stove. Anyone who then suggests contributing to the costs as part of a couple is already the most popular roommate without being a roommate. ◆
