Shared Housing: It's Not Just For 20-somethings

This isn't about massage or your body but it is about your health, emotionally and socially.

As many of you have realized, I share my home with more than my husband. We also have a 3rd housemate, Tina. The three of us have known each other independently since about 1990 and have lived together since 2005. We bought our house together in 2006.

This article from the NY Times captures a sense of what we're doing and why we're doing it. As we were all facing our middle years we knew a few things about ourselves: none of were going to have children, we'd grown tired of renting, buying a house in the DC area is expensive even with 2 incomes, and home maintenance is a PITA. Why not share? We now shoulder the financial and maintenance responsibilities on three sets of shoulders, not just two.

Plenty of people get more than a little freaked out at the idea of sharing a house, once past about the age of 30, with anyone you aren't related to by blood or marriage. I won't say it's been trouble-free but then living with just my husband hasn't always been trouble-free! Jeff and I have had plenty of roommate-style negotiations and conflicts to settle (how many dishes is too many in the sink, after all?) so sharing a marriage license or DNA is no guarantee of peace and harmony. The divorce rate would suggest it's also no guarantee of security.

There are lots of things to think through, lots of questions to ask yourself and ask the other person(s). But it's a creative alternative to living alone.

Community is widely recognized as one of the things that helps us stay healthy, mentally and physically, as we get older (there, I found a way to make it about health!) but a lot of us end up living alone. If you're anything like me, you've discovered (or will discover) that making new friends and establishing new social circles gets more difficult with each passing decade. That's less about personality and more about the logistics of life. Living with more than one other person, even more than a spouse/offspring/relative, is one way to keep your social circles fresh and open.

As you stare down the road at your 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s and whatever comes after that, be open to creative ways to keeping yourself in community and to sharing the responsibilities of life.