Roommate Marriage Quotes

Another friend of mine once told me in a deep depression that his marriage was "like running a preschool with a roommate you used to date." Nice.

What I did technically couldn’t be called dating. Unless, of course, he counted my long-term, committed relationship with my friendly bedside vibrator. If that were the case, I’d bet at this point I could petition for common law marriage.

She'd become an English major for the purest and dullest of reasons: because she liked to read. The university’s “British and American Literature Course Catalog” was, for Madeleine, what its Bergdorf equivalent was for her roommates. A course listing like “English 274: Lily’s Euphues” excited Madeleine the way a pair of Fiorucci cowboy boots did Abby. “English 450A: Hawthorne and James” filled Madeleine with an expectation of sinful hours in bed not unlike what Olivia got from wearing a Lycra skirt and leather blazer in Danceteria. Even as a girl in their house in Prettrybrook, Madeleine wandered into the library, with its shelves of books rising higher than she could reach … and the magisterial presence of all those potentially readable words stopped her in her tracks.

But something between us had shifted over the course of our marriage, particularly the last two to three years. We had gone from being lovers to best friends to . . . roommates who routinely irritated each other. If I was honest with myself, that was what it felt like most of the time.

In the Broadway play In Defense of the Cave Man, a man says that when he was first married, he saw his wife cleaning the bathroom and asked her, “Are we moving?” In his bachelor days that was the only time he and his roommates bothered to clean the bathroom.

Our separate--and very different--evenings reminded me how far we'd drifted from each other. Our relationship, which at the best of times had felt platonic, now felt like an obstacle to our happiness. I was living with a roommate I had nothing in common with. And I had changed: I barely resembled my former self, the version of me who sought acceptance and security--or was it invisibility?--in a heterosexual marriage.

Marriages suffer from this same cycle. You start dating someone with wonder and anticipation, drunk on love. You romanticize everything about your partner, and even mundane activities like going to the grocery store together can seem like a fantastic date. But then you fall into a routine, and years later, you’ve become roommates, circling the same safe topics while packing lunches, the monotony broken only by occasional date nights. Deep down, you know why these parts of your life have gone stale. It’s because nothing new is happening. You may say you fear change, but the lack of change in your life is why you feel so blah. Monotony will drive any human relationship or endeavor into a ditch.

While they lasted, male friendships included much more physical contact and emotional intensity than most heterosexual men are comfortable with today. James Blake, for example, noted from time to time in his diary that he and his friend, while roommates, shared a bed. “We retired early,” he recorded one day in 1851, “and in each other’s arms did friendship sink peacefully to sleep.” Such behavior did not bother the fiancée of Blake’s roommate a bit.25

Here’s the deal. When you get married, you become a team. The pastor at your wedding wasn’t joking when he said, “And now you are one.” It’s called unity. The old marriage vows say, “Unto thee I pledge all my worldly goods.” In other words, “I’m all in,” so combine the checking accounts. It’s hard to have unity when you separate your bank accounts. When his money is over here, and her money is over there, it’s easy to live in your own little financial world instead of working as a team. When you do your spending together, it’s about “our” money. We have an income and we have expenses and we have goals. So when you’re both in agreement on where the money is going, then you’ve taken a major step to being on the same page in your marriage, and you will create awesome levels of communication. This all boils down to trust. Do you trust your spouse or not? I’ve heard from people who keep separate bank accounts just in case their spouse leaves them. Well, why on earth would you marry someone you can’t trust? And if that’s really the case, then you need marriage counseling, not separate bank accounts! Your spouse isn’t your roommate, and this isn’t a joint business venture. It’s a marriage! You don’t run your household and your life separately. Your job is to love each other well, and that includes having shared financial goals—which is hard to do when you have separate accounts.

Landsman and Bina were married to each other for twelve years and together for five before that. Each was the other's first lover, first betrayer, first refuge, first roommate, first audience, first person to turn to when something -- even the marriage itself -- went wrong. For half their lives they tangled their histories, bodies, phobias, theories, recipes, libraries, record collections. They mounted spectacular arguments, nose-to-nose, hands flying, spittle flying, throwing things, kicking things, breaking things, rolling around on the ground grabbing up fistfuls of each other's hair. The next day he would bear the red moons of Bina's nails in his cheeks and on the meat of his chest, and she wore his purple fingerprints like an armlet.

I do not need a ring. I tried marriage before, as many know. Let me state here that Tom Dennis was a good, decent man who treated me gently and, when I asked, he let me go. I do believe he loved me. But my fiancé was no easy roommate, leaving glasses on wood tables (wood tables, dear reader!) and dropping socks and candy wrappers whenever they ceased being of immediate use; he became like those beachgoers who assume their litter will go out with the tide. I should have known from this that my relationship was in some trouble. But I knew all couples had these fights, and I assumed they were not a detour from love but its bumpy path. So imagine my surprise when (Tom Dennis far in the rearview mirror) I moved into the Shack with Less and this new roommate began to exhibit the same tendencies—socks on the floor, underwear behind the bathroom door, unwashed plates—and, reader, I didn’t care at all! I remember making the bed and finding underneath his pillow a mushroom-like profusion of tissues (for his morning nose-blow) and being filled with…not rage, but tenderness! With Tom Dennis, it was a chore I was willing to bear. With Less—I did not care at all. I stared at those tissues, stupefied. I did not care at all. The difference, you see, dear reader, is that I love him. How do I put it? He is not the best, God knows. He is not the best. But he is the best I ever had. Because to love someone ridiculous is to understand something deep and true about the world. That up close it makes no sense. Those of you who choose sensible people may feel secure, but I think you water your wine; the wonder of life is in its small absurdities, so easily overlooked. And if you have not shared somebody’s tilted view of the horizon (which is the actual world), tell me: what have you really seen?

If we consider the possibility that all women–from the infant suckling her mother’s breast, to the grown woman experiencing orgasmic sensations while suckling her own child, perhaps recalling her mother’s milk-smell in her own; to two women, like Virginia Woolf’s Chloe and Olivia, who share a laboratory; to the woman dying at ninety, touched and handled by women–exist on a lesbian continuum, we can see ourselves as moving in and out of this continuum, whether we identify ourselves as lesbian or not. It allows us to connect aspects of woman-identification as diverse as the impudent, intimate girl-friendships of eight- or nine-year-olds and the banding together of those women of the twelfth and fifteenth centuries known as Beguines who “shared houses, rented to one another, bequeathed houses to their room-mates … in cheap subdivided houses in the artisans’ area of town,” who “practiced Christian virtue on their own, dressing and living simply and not associating with men,” who earned their livings as spinners, bakers, nurses, or ran schools for young girls, and who managed–until the Church forced them to disperse–to live independent both of marriage and of conventual restrictions. It allows us to connect these women with the more celebrated “Lesbians” of the women’s school around Sappho of the seventh century B.C.; with the secret sororities and economic networks reported among African women; and with the Chinese marriage resistance sisterhoods–communities of women who refused marriage, or who if married often refused to consummate their marriages and soon left their husbands–the only women in China who were not footbound and who, Agnes Smedley tells us, welcomed the births of daughters and organized successful women’s strikes in the silk mills. It allows us to connect and compare disparate individual instances of marriage resistance: for example, the type of autonomy claimed by Emily Dickinson, a nineteenth-century white woman genius, with the strategies available to Zora Neale Hurston, a twentieth-century black woman genius. Dickinson never married, had tenuous intellectual friendships with men, lived self-convented in her genteel father’s house, and wrote a lifetime of passionate letters to her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert and a smaller group of such letters to her friend Kate Scott Anthon. Hurston married twice but soon left each husband, scrambled her way from Florida to Harlem to Columbia University to Haiti and finally back to Florida, moved in and out of white patronage and poverty, professional success and failure; her survival relationships were all with women, beginning with her mother. Both of these women in their vastly different circumstances were marriage resisters, committed to their own work and selfhood, and were later characterized as “apolitical ”. Both were drawn to men of intellectual quality; for both of them women provided the ongoing fascination and sustenance of life.

Marriages collapses due to ignoring a spouse, not paying attention, living like roommates , poor or no communication on daily basis, no quality time together and clear absence of love and care between them.

Okay. I'll give you a peek inside my mind, but only because you are pushy and I know you aren't going to give up until I do." I huff out a breath. "I push because I love you." "I know. So, you want to know if my singleness in the midst of all this marital bliss bugs me." ... "Yeah. To be honest, my singleness has bugged me a little lately. It never did. I always really felt confident choosing not to get involved with anyone. But, lately, with each of you dropping like flies, I feel more alone sometimes. I'm not alone. I know that. And I'm still committed to my decision, but I'm working through some things." "Like not having a roommate." ... "Yeah." I admit. "Of course the lack of roommate situation matters to me. I mean, you and I had our little life together and I loved it. Don't get me wrong. I want you and Duke to get married and build an amazing future together. Don't ever think I don't. But it's a loss for me. And I'm free-falling for a minute. I'll find my bearings. Please don't worry about me." "I know you will. I just don't want you to commit to being single without leaving room for love if it surprises you from out of nowhere." I take a deep breath. May as well lay everything on the line. "I have given this a whole lot of thought lately. I just don't think my heart is made for one more break. I know I only had one serious boyfriend. So, my stance is a little ridiculous considering my lack of experience. And I'm not even sure I loved Shane. I probably didn't. But, when he cheated on me, it impacted me more deeply than I expected. Over time I realized I'd rather stick with friends. I don't think I'm the type of woman suited for relationships with men. Besides, I love my life. It's not like I need a man. Marriage isn't glamorous. It's actually hard. Worse than it being hard? It can end up an endless stream of monotony. I don't want to sign up for that." ... "Sorry." "Don't be sorry. Marriage is hard. And not every marriage is build on a solid foundation. But, with the right person, it's also beautiful, strong, and wonderful. Even with the right person, a relationship will have highs and lows. I'm not delusional. Duke and I will face hardship. It's sort of par for the course in life, right? But, I'd rather go through hard times with him than have all my days without him. That's what happens when you find the one you're meant to be with.

When the thunderstorms let up, John and Christine, after eight years of marriage, and Stevie and Lindsey, after six years as roommates, had separated. Mick and his lady Jenny were in the middle of divorce proceedings—only to eventually remarry.

The Romance Some couples only live together as roommates, which is bad. All the wife does is just cook, take care of the house etc, all the husband does is provide for the house, act like the boss of the house ask for sex whenever he feels like it. Some even only ask for sex from their wife when they feel like it's time to have another baby and women thought it is taboo to ask their husbands for sex when they feel horny, whereas, some are shy to do so. Hmmm!! In some Marriages, there is nothing like gisting, romancing, going on dates, attending events together, praying together, studying the word together apart from the general family retreat. This has led many women to the arms of strange men, although that is not an excuse to commit adultery. It was even recorded in the Scripture that Father Isaac caressed his beloved wife Rebekah. Spoil each other with romance. Write love letters to your spouse and put them in his or her pocket or handbag

Separate vacations have become more popular among married couples. We don’t think this is a good idea. Over time, doing your own thing will cause you to lead separate lives. We are not talking about a three-day trip to Florida with your sister or best friend—if you want to take small trips like this, feel free to. But if you want to take a major vacation—say, to spend two weeks in Europe—your husband should be your travel companion. But suppose your idea of a fun vacation is going to Europe or lying on the beach in the Caribbean, while your husband loves tours of historic sites and museums. Our advice is to figure out a way to do a little of both. One year, you can go to the beach, the next year you can do a tourist package together, or go on a trip with a beach near some sites of cultural interest. Once you start planning separate vacations, you become like roommates, not lovers.

You didn’t seem to see me as a woman any more. I was just this . . . roommate. A roommate you barely spoke to. I was like some wallflower in my own marriage – sitting there waiting for somebody to come along and get me up to dance.’ Just