Roommate situations can get awkward, but it can be particularly hard when someone is living rent-free.

In this situation, a young man is living rent free with his brother and sister-in-law, and while they’ve never had issues before, his girlfriend being there has caused some issues.

He thinks he isn’t doing anything wrong, but they don’t see it that way.

Let’s see what Reddit thinks…

AITA for frequently using the living room in a shared space when I don’t pay rent?

I (21m) recently got into it with my brother (29m) and SIL (28f) over the fact they feel that my gf and I use the living room too much.

For some context on my living situation, I am a full time university student but I do work part time (about 8-10hours a week).

When I first transferred to my university from community college my brother and sil offered to let me live with them so I didn’t have to worry about housing cost or food.

Seems like a really nice offer!

They said they were happy to cover the cost of groceries and rent since they both have well paying jobs and I would only need to pay for myself if I wanted to go out or order out.

I’ve also taken over virtually all chores to try and make things more equitable.

Everything seems to have been going well these past few months but things are weird after my gf came to stay with us. She attends a university out of state so we are long distance and she is spending her winter break with me.

Since the semester is over we have a lot of free time and have just been focusing on making up for time lost and just enjoying each others company.

The first instance I got that something was off with my brother and sil was when I sent her my grocery order for the week to my SIL, my brother almost immediately texted me and told me I was asking for too much.

What did he ask for that was too much?

I had added some additional things than I normally would since my gf was visiting and I wanted to make us dinner.

A few of the things my brother had a problem with was that I asked for ground beef, chicken, steak, and shrimp for one week, but I tried to explain to him it was ingredients for a recipe I had looked up.

He and my SIL did eventually concede and added it to the order with the condition they would use some of the ingredients for themselves to “make the cost worth it.”

I thought that was weird but another weird thing that’s been happening is when my SIL gets home from work, my gf and I have usually just finished making our dinner for the evening and are sitting in the living room watching tv.

He’s clearly getting in the way.

It is the only room in the house with a TV. I could tell she’s been annoyed when she’s been getting home, but didn’t think it pertained to me or my gf until my brother approached me at the end of the week and asked if me and my gf would please try to be out of the way and up in my room when my SIL gets home from work because she doesn’t like seeing us “all over each other” and is also annoyed because she would like to watch TV.

I feel like both my brother and sil are very frustrated and the level of frustration has surprised me.

It’s almost like it came out of nowhere. So I’m posting here to get some perspective.

Let’s see what commenters have to say.

A lot of Reddit users had questions on how this winter break was planned.

This commenter tried to say it gently.

While others were more direct in their disapproval.

And this commenter was pretty blunt about it!

Sometimes, you are the inconsiderate one! It’s time to pay his family back or apologize.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.