When the four of us are gathered on our back patio, I wonder if our neighbors think we are swingers. We’re not. We are four friends living together in a single-family house in the suburbs.
I live with my partner, our two friends who are also coupled, and an orange cat. Some may boil this living arrangement down to four adults being roommates, but I would argue it is more than that. We are four adults in our late 20s and early 30s actively choosing to live together. Living together has filled a sense of community that many of us lack in adulthood.
We had a sense of community in college
Many adults our age lost that sense of community when we left college. In college, friends grabbed dinner, watched movies, reviewed each other’s papers, and got ready for and went to parties — all together.
But in our adulthood, friends rarely spend casual downtime together. We often have to coordinate schedules and plan four weeks in advance for a dinner. Each hangout is a planned ordeal with prepared plans and timetables, or dress codes. Or we see friends at weddings and other milestone parties, again with timetables and dress codes.
But with this living arrangement, our hangouts are casual and mostly unplanned. On weeknights, we watch basketball games and go into town for ice cream. On weekends, we disc golf or paddle on the river. We often make grocery runs together, discussing how bok choy fits into the following week’s meals or replenishing our communal fruit stash. And every spring, we plant various types of tomatoes, peppers, and herbs.
Like Sunday family dinners of previous generations, we cook a house dinner on Tuesday nights. These dinners are elaborate, three-course meals. We have delighted in strawberry semi-freddos, carrot cake, meatball subs, French onion soup, chicken piccata, fish and chips, Korean garlic cream buns, and falafel.
Every July, we invite friends over for a summer party, grilling burgers and throwing a disc around the backyard. And in December, we host our annual Christmas party with appetizers, a signature cocktail, and a gift exchange.
We moved into a single-family house
We weren’t anticipating this life when we first started living together. In May 2020, I was living in a basement apartment with a hot plate and mini fridge, and my partner and his friend were living in college apartments two years after graduating.
The three of us moved into an apartment together. Through the pandemic lockdown, we watched through the “Fast and Furious” franchise for the first time, Netflix’s Outer Banks, and Masterchef; adopted a cat and named him after a “Fast and Furious” character; and leaned into our cooking and baking.
With the help of my roommates adjusting our rent payments, I pursued a master’s degree. They read my papers, and it felt like my college days. When we outgrew the apartment and gained another roommate, we moved into a single-family house in a suburban development in a county that feeds into D.C..
We are surrounded by families
We are surrounded by parents with two to six kids, older adults who sent their kids off to college and spend their Saturdays manicuring their lawns, and just generally adults who conformed their lives to what was expected of them. Our four-bed, three-and-a-half bath with an unfinished basement suburban house traditionally reflects the nuclear family. An expectation that in it, one would fill it with a mom and a dad, a boy and a girl, a dog maybe. But we have filled it with two couples and a cat.
Many practices of modern everyday American life have changed through the 2020s. As our digital spaces grow and physical spaces diminish, and the cost of living rises with minimum wage remaining unchanged, we need a change in our style of living.
Traditionally, at our age, my partner and I are expected to be married, locked into a mortgage, and parenting at least our first child. But now, at our age, my partner and I are sharing a house with two friends, choosing the weeknight hangouts and joint annual parties. We still mow the grass, host annual parties, and live like a family would, but as four friends.
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