No, Ray is almost certainly right. Everyone I talked to who lived with one exactly one other person (my sister and my mom, and lots of people with their romantic partners) had a way better time than everyone I know who lived in a group house, N=50+. (I can think of maybe one exception?) This is partly about it being easier to negotiate with just one other person, as mentioned in the post, but also just everything being less difficult with just one other person. It’s easier to avoid them if you’re feeling anti-social; it’s easier to build routines alongside just one other person than with a bunch of unreliable housemates; it’s easier to notice which of your social needs are not being met and seek out alternative ways to meet them, rather than feeling socially burned out by being around other people 24⁄7 and yet also not having your needs met.
Obviously I’m primarily talking about pairs of people who like and care about each other, like family members or romantic partners. However, I think some of the benefits would still apply even if it was a randomly assigned roommate. And maybe even still if it was someone you hated, because I think I’d rather live with one person I hated than with multiple people I hated. Not sure though.
In general I think the ability to choose who you interact with is what matters. Feelings of isolation come because you don’t reach out to the people you’d like to interact with (maybe because of anxiety about reaching out, maybe because you don’t have anyone you’d like to reach out to), but that’s at least fixable. Whereas being in a situation where you’re forced to interact with a bunch of people all the time whether you want to or not is harder to escape just by application of your own agency. I’d rather live alone and have to put in the activation energy to reach out to people, than live with others and feel totally trapped. Maybe there’s such thing as an extrovert for whom having people around is just pretty much an unqualified good, but I don’t think I know anyone like that.
Finally, I’ll note that Ray’s comment is coming from a place of experience – his house noticed quite early on that spending the pandemic together would be a bad idea, and Ray and his partner (who moved somewhere on their own), as well as C (who went to live on his own) seem to have had a pretty good time by their self-reports that I’ve heard.
No, Ray is almost certainly right. Everyone I talked to who lived with one exactly one other person (my sister and my mom, and lots of people with their romantic partners) had a way better time than everyone I know who lived in a group house, N=50+. (I can think of maybe one exception?) This is partly about it being easier to negotiate with just one other person, as mentioned in the post, but also just everything being less difficult with just one other person. It’s easier to avoid them if you’re feeling anti-social; it’s easier to build routines alongside just one other person than with a bunch of unreliable housemates; it’s easier to notice which of your social needs are not being met and seek out alternative ways to meet them, rather than feeling socially burned out by being around other people 24⁄7 and yet also not having your needs met.
Obviously I’m primarily talking about pairs of people who like and care about each other, like family members or romantic partners. However, I think some of the benefits would still apply even if it was a randomly assigned roommate. And maybe even still if it was someone you hated, because I think I’d rather live with one person I hated than with multiple people I hated. Not sure though.
In general I think the ability to choose who you interact with is what matters. Feelings of isolation come because you don’t reach out to the people you’d like to interact with (maybe because of anxiety about reaching out, maybe because you don’t have anyone you’d like to reach out to), but that’s at least fixable. Whereas being in a situation where you’re forced to interact with a bunch of people all the time whether you want to or not is harder to escape just by application of your own agency. I’d rather live alone and have to put in the activation energy to reach out to people, than live with others and feel totally trapped. Maybe there’s such thing as an extrovert for whom having people around is just pretty much an unqualified good, but I don’t think I know anyone like that.
Finally, I’ll note that Ray’s comment is coming from a place of experience – his house noticed quite early on that spending the pandemic together would be a bad idea, and Ray and his partner (who moved somewhere on their own), as well as C (who went to live on his own) seem to have had a pretty good time by their self-reports that I’ve heard.