There is no expectation of silence when you live in an apartment building, but you should be able to sleep at night without too much trouble.

What would you do if your upstairs neighbors started out really nice, and even gave you their number to text if they were ever being too loud, but over the course of months, they started being louder and louder, and even ignoring your text messages?

That is what is happening to the guy in this story, so he is wondering what he should do next since they keep having loud conversations on their balcony late at night, and it is keeping him awake.

Personally, I think he should talk to them in person and see if they can work things out. They definitely seemed reasonable at first, so hopefully that would work. Read through the full details below and see if you agree.

AITA for telling my neighbors not to talk on their balcony late at night?

I’ve been living in my current apartment for just over 7 months. At first things were always nice and quiet, but a couple months in that changed.

You can’t expect complete silence when living in an apartment building.

I started hearing lots of noise from the apartment above mine, just the usual footsteps and furniture moving and what-not.

I tried to ignore it for a while but it was pretty constant, especially at night it seemed like. Eventually I worked up the courage to go talk with my upstairs neighbors face-to-face about it and they were surprisingly nice and helpful!

Wow, they were actually cool about it. You don’t hear that too often. I wonder what the catch is.

They said they would put down more rugs to soften the noise and even gave me one of their phone numbers to text if I wanted to tell them to be more quiet.

The footstep noises got a lot better after that and I was happier hanging out in my apartment again.

I’m sure they didn’t know that they were being too loud.

Fast forward a few months and I wake up in the middle of the night (around 3am) to a loud conversation coming through my bedroom window.

Took me a minute, but I figured out it was my upstairs neighbors talking on their balcony. The balcony happens to be very close to my window (which apparently isn’t very thick).

You would think they would realize that talking out there is a problem.

After a little while of me not being able to fall back asleep, I shot them a text and asked them to move the conversation inside. They didn’t see the text for a bit, but when they did they apologized and things got quieter.

Recently, though, these late night conversations on the balcony have been happening more and more often. 4 nights ago I woke up at 3:30am and again at 5:30am from the noise. Last night their conversation was loud enough to where I could make out every word being said, like they were sitting next to my bed.

If it were just a one-time thing, then that is no big deal.

I text them to move inside every time I get woken up, but they’ve started to increasingly ignore my texts. Last night they responded that they already meet “my wishes” on weeknights (up for debate imo) and want to have a party now that it’s the weekend.

I ended up sleeping on the floor in my closet last night for some peace and quiet.

When the talking is that loud, it is fine to ask them to keep it down.

So, am I in the wrong for telling them to move their conversation inside every time it wakes me up at night?

Should I just get better at adapting to it? Or is this a reasonable thing to ask them to do?

AITA?

Maybe it is time for another face-to-face conversation. They seem like reasonable people for the most part. He can discuss options with them and hopefully come up with something that works for everyone.

Let’s see if the people in the comments have anything helpful to add.

Here is someone who says the neighbors are terrible. I think that is a bit over the top.

People can talk normally in their own apartment.

He needs to try something on his end to fix the problem.

Texting has stopped working.

This person thinks his neighbors need to be quieter.

His neighbors seem pretty reasonable, maybe he is being overly sensitive to sound. You can’t expect people to be silent in their own apartment, and if they are talking in a normal voice, that isn’t a problem.

I think investing in a white noise machine or even some earplugs might be a good idea. His neighbors are willing to be flexible, he should too.