They promised years ago they’d stick together, but now he’s exhausted by the mess, noise, and constant caretaking.

He wants to move in with his partner, but his roommates claim he’s trapped by his old promise.

Read on for the story.

AITA? My friends won’t let me move out

I (M26) am living with my long term best friend (A, M25), and our mutual friend/their partner (B, F25), and promised a couple years ago that I wouldn’t move out if they couldn’t find someone to replace me.

Now I want to move out, and our tenancy is up for renewal, but they haven’t made any effort in the past 4-5 months to find someone except for one of our friends (C, M26), who I’m worried won’t be accepted by the landlord.

They waited months to fill in the necessary forms, and even if they hadn’t just lost their job, they probably didn’t earn enough to be approved.

There is another person (D, M19) in our close-knit group who would want to move in, but my housemates don’t want that because of his age.

Uh oh.

Living here is so bad for my mental health, my friends barely help with the cleaning, smoke weed and cigarettes in the house, and will spill the ash trays and not even clean them up properly.

They leave takeaway boxes out for days, leave food in the sink, wet clothes in the washing machine, and they constantly play loud music/movies until 1-3AM in our small retirement community-esque neighbourhood.

I tried so so hard for the first couple years to just keep the place clean but it’s honestly impossible with how messy they are, especially with my health issues.

Sounds like it.

I felt really pressured and expected to do this just because I wasn’t working, but now that neither of them are working either I’m realizing that they just don’t clean, and don’t care about the mess.

If I want to live in a clean home I have to do it all myself, but that just isn’t fair or sustainable.

I’ve talked to them about this multiple times and nothing changes.

They also just can’t take care or adult responsibilities, like essential phone calls (I’ve had to make their Universal Credit phone calls and submit evidence for them), responding to emails from the landlord, cleaning for house inspections, etc. etc., so I’m just taking on so much responsibility.

I just want to move out of here, and in with my partner, but I feel so trapped because I can’t just make my friends homeless by not renewing the tenancy.

That’s a tough one.

They don’t seem to see any issue with any of this, and don’t have any sense of urgency even with our tenancy agreement ending in 6 weeks, and basically just have the attitude of “well I guess you can’t move out then”.

AITA for being angry and hurt over this?

WIBTA if I just didn’t sign the tenancy agreement, despite my promise?

He knows moving out might upend their plans, but staying could destroy his health—and his sanity.

Reddit is unanimous in their vote: NTA.

This person has a suggestion.

This person says to just leave.

And this person says a warning helps, but also…leave.

When your best friends treat you like a live-in maid, sometimes breaking a promise is just growing up.

This is super awkward.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.