Va.: Do you think your roommate asked herself, “What’s a nice way to have my boyfriend over 99 percent of the time, even though I promised my new roommates that we had broken up?”
It’s not her priority to be liked; her priority is to have her boyfriend stay over. And so, voilà, her boyfriend practically lives there and you’re starting to resent her for it.
Here’s where I’m going with this: People tend to get what they prioritize. Till now, you have made it your priority to be accommodating and nonconfrontational toward your new roommate — and so, voilà. You’re accommodating the nonpaying fourth roommate.
If you don’t like the way things have turned out, then you need to reset your priorities to reflect what you want. Do you want the boyfriend to pay rent, stay somewhere else or just acknowledge you in the hall? Is there negotiating room that you’d be willing to use to remain on good terms with your roommate? What is your worst-case scenario — saying nothing and feeling like a big fat doormat, or speaking up, only to have your roommate move out/declare war/start a cold war/ignore you completely and continue hosting her boyfriend as usual? Which do you want more — to keep things in your comfort zone, or to draw a line where you think it belongs?
There’s no right or wrong choice here; there’s only what matters to you and what you’re willing to risk to achieve it.
And the whole purpose of finding these things out is, hard as it may seem, to take that risk you’ve deemed acceptable and clearly state what you want. Not just with this, but with anything.
You may alienate your roommate, you may not; no matter how carefully you deliver your message, ultimately, you can’t control how she receives it.
But you can be sure you believe in your message, put yourself in other people’s shoes as you formulate it, prepare for the full range of reactions to it and then deliver it to the best of your ability. You can have a plan in mind for handling it if her reaction isn’t a good one.
I realize that to the nonconfrontational, confrontation is Everest.
But if you’re confident that what you’re asking is both fair and important enough to warrant a disturbance to the status quo, then taking a stand might feel better than you think. Either your roommate will be gracious enough — or sufficiently outnumbered? — to cooperate, or you’ll be ready to regard her hostility as an acceptable alternative to letting her wipe her feet on your face.
