Living with a roommate can be great: you share bills, watch trashy TV, and might become friends. But it can also bring surprises. Our reader learned this the hard way after asking his roommate to start paying their fair share of expenses.
How it all started.
My now ex-roommate (let’s call him Mark) wasn’t working steadily, but I tried to be understanding for months. I covered extra rent and handled groceries. I also did most of the cleaning (frustrating). But eventually, I had to draw a boundary. I told him he needed to either start pitching in or move out.
Mark chose to move out. I really thought that was the end.
Strange phone calls
A week after he left, my phone started ringing constantly. Sometimes 5 or 6 times a day. At first, I ignored the unknown numbers (I thought they were spam). But I had to see for myself, and I finally answered one.
Mark had been listing my number on applications he’d made. Likely as a form of petty revenge. I didn’t want to escalate anything, but after two weeks of endless calls, I just snapped.
I answered one more time. I kept it brief and said something offhand like, “He’s… not available. You might want to contact someone else about that.” No details. I just said it to make the calls stop.
Unexpected consequences
It worked. A few days later, I got a letter in the mail for Mark, one of those generic notices about a paused process.
I also got a voicemail from an actual investigator asking about someone with the same name as Mark, but in a totally different state. So I called back. I told this super polite guy what happened and shared a few texts. It turns out it was just some weird mix-up where my info got caught in the middle.
What a mess. Seriously.
Just when I thought I could finally exhale and move on, I got a random DM on Instagram from some woman.
She was his previous roommate.
We ended up swapping stories for half an hour. It was kind of healing. Like, “Oh, you too?” Kind of made me feel less alone in this chaos.
Lessons we can take away from the story.
Sometimes, doing “the right thing” for someone else can quietly turn into the wrong thing for yourself. You can give away your time, patience, and support, but when that generosity becomes one-sided, drawing a line is not selfish; it is a matter of self-respect. People who cannot handle boundaries often react with pettiness, and while it is frustrating in the moment, it is also revealing: not everyone is meant to stay in your life, and that is okay.
What matters is how you carry yourself through the chaos. It is best not to lash out or escalate, but to keep it short, clear, and calm. That is strength disguised as restraint. And it often helps to connect with others who went through the same thing; it turns a messy experience into something unexpectedly comforting.
Through that, you learn that your peace of mind is worth protecting, and that lesson will last. At the end of the day, peace of mind is the kind of rent you should never pay for someone else.