Thanks for posting this. A lot of relatable feels and useful takeaways here.
(Reposting some of this from a lower-level comment)
From this post and my own experience, I’m getting the sense that living in a large group house was actually a pretty big detriment for many folks during COVID. You’d think it would be a good thing, because you can get your social bar filled just socializing with each other. And maybe that’s true. But it increases the amount of negotiation about risks literally exponentially, which makes it much easier to lapse into a default of “nothing is allowed and no one does anything.” Even though that’s actually very costly.
It was much easier for me and my spouse to handle negotiation about e.g. “I want to go on bike rides because my sanity is at critical levels,” because that was basically just one negotiation we had to have, instead of having 8 similarly-sized negotiations for each risky thing each person wanted to do and every objection brought up by every other person.
Also, we’re married and have been together for almost 10 years, so we’ve had a lot more practice at this kind of thing with the two of us. I also enjoyed your earlier post about how being in a group house together doesn’t mean you’re ready to be, basically, married to all the people you live with, meaning you aren’t ready to have these huge life-changing negotiations about collective decisions that you need to make together. Whereas in marriage that sort of thing is par for the course.
Yes, 100%. We started with ~10 people in the house, and gained and lost various people over the course of the year. There were greatly varying levels of trust among the pairwise relationships – the rough categories being (1) me and my partner, and some other sets of best friends, (2) long-time housemates, (3) newer housemates, and (4) a totally random squatter who we worked really hard to kick out before shit got real. That is just so much to negotiate.
And then if you have two ~10-person bubbles that want to collide, with the same problem of varying levels of trust, everyone’s feelings get involved, and so you’re like, “well, I miss hugging my friend, but there’s no way it’s worth dragging 20 people into it.” And someone sends you their microCOVID spreadsheet but they admit they haven’t been filling it out reliably, and neither have your housemates been reporting their microCOVIDs reliably, and you just throw up your hands and give up forever.
And also, there was a time when having 9 housemates meant that it didn’t feel important to seek out other interaction, and then that was no longer true and I didn’t adjust. I haven’t even been video calling friends this year, even though I always feel good after I do. So there’s definitely a measure of social inertia there that has nothing to do with fear of COVID.
So there’s definitely a measure of social inertia there that has nothing to do with fear of COVID.
My experience is that fear, or at least fear that is in the background and that I am dissociated from, creates social inertia and other inertia for me. (Also grief that I am dissociated from.)
As a data point, I found it to be a net positive to live in a smallish group house (~5 people) during the pandemic. The negotiations around covid protocols were time-consuming and annoying at times, but still manageable because of the small number of people, and seemed worth it for the benefits of socializing in person to my mental well-being. It also helped that we had been living together for a few years and knew each other pretty well. I can see how this would quickly become overwhelming with more people involved, and result in nothing being allowed if anyone can veto any given activity.
Thanks for posting this. A lot of relatable feels and useful takeaways here.
(Reposting some of this from a lower-level comment)
From this post and my own experience, I’m getting the sense that living in a large group house was actually a pretty big detriment for many folks during COVID. You’d think it would be a good thing, because you can get your social bar filled just socializing with each other. And maybe that’s true. But it increases the amount of negotiation about risks literally exponentially, which makes it much easier to lapse into a default of “nothing is allowed and no one does anything.” Even though that’s actually very costly.
It was much easier for me and my spouse to handle negotiation about e.g. “I want to go on bike rides because my sanity is at critical levels,” because that was basically just one negotiation we had to have, instead of having 8 similarly-sized negotiations for each risky thing each person wanted to do and every objection brought up by every other person.
Also, we’re married and have been together for almost 10 years, so we’ve had a lot more practice at this kind of thing with the two of us. I also enjoyed your earlier post about how being in a group house together doesn’t mean you’re ready to be, basically, married to all the people you live with, meaning you aren’t ready to have these huge life-changing negotiations about collective decisions that you need to make together. Whereas in marriage that sort of thing is par for the course.
Yes, 100%. We started with ~10 people in the house, and gained and lost various people over the course of the year. There were greatly varying levels of trust among the pairwise relationships – the rough categories being (1) me and my partner, and some other sets of best friends, (2) long-time housemates, (3) newer housemates, and (4) a totally random squatter who we worked really hard to kick out before shit got real. That is just so much to negotiate.
And then if you have two ~10-person bubbles that want to collide, with the same problem of varying levels of trust, everyone’s feelings get involved, and so you’re like, “well, I miss hugging my friend, but there’s no way it’s worth dragging 20 people into it.” And someone sends you their microCOVID spreadsheet but they admit they haven’t been filling it out reliably, and neither have your housemates been reporting their microCOVIDs reliably, and you just throw up your hands and give up forever.
And also, there was a time when having 9 housemates meant that it didn’t feel important to seek out other interaction, and then that was no longer true and I didn’t adjust. I haven’t even been video calling friends this year, even though I always feel good after I do. So there’s definitely a measure of social inertia there that has nothing to do with fear of COVID.
My experience is that fear, or at least fear that is in the background and that I am dissociated from, creates social inertia and other inertia for me. (Also grief that I am dissociated from.)
As a data point, I found it to be a net positive to live in a smallish group house (~5 people) during the pandemic. The negotiations around covid protocols were time-consuming and annoying at times, but still manageable because of the small number of people, and seemed worth it for the benefits of socializing in person to my mental well-being. It also helped that we had been living together for a few years and knew each other pretty well. I can see how this would quickly become overwhelming with more people involved, and result in nothing being allowed if anyone can veto any given activity.