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One thing you’ll notice right away when you go to college is that living with roommates is very different to living with your parents. Sure, you have a lot more freedom – you get to choose when you go out and come home, you get to pick what you eat and when, you get to decide if and when to go to bed. Sure you also have to learn how to cook and clean for yourself and how to do your laundry, but those are a small price to pay for the kind of freedom you’ve probably longed for for years.

But living with roommates – generally all of whom are strangers until you move in – can require some negotiations and compromises too. Because you all have different life experiences, different preferences, and different routines and lifestyles, and living around one another can be quite complicated until you figure things out. And honestly, that’s all a part of the deal.

The guy in this story was well aware that his habits weren’t to everyone’s taste, and was completely upfront about that to begin with. But when his roommate started to get frustrated with him for acting as he’d always said he would, he started to feel annoyed about it.

Read on to find out why.

AITA for waking up my roommate?

I recently moved into a dorm at college and I am currently rooming with two different people, one of which I share a room with. I hadn’t known any of them prior to rooming with them and we live on campus.

The roommate I share a room with said they were okay with noise. They explicitly said “I am okay with noise, so YouTube videos and music won’t bother me” in their biography on the housing portal.

I further messaged them to confirm this because I had planned on streaming in college, but I decided against it. However, they said they would be fine with it.

Let’s see what really happened when these two started being roommates.

I specifically roomed with them because I knew I would be staying up long nights and I needed someone who wouldn’t be bothered by the noise (the sound of me typing).

Well, them being fine with noise was a flat out lie. I have woken them up accidently multiple times even though the only noise I’m making is the sound of me typing.

I’ve realized that they’re not fine with noise even though they said they were and I’ve tried to be more and more quiet, but they’ve made multiple passive aggressive remarks about me staying up all night and waking them up.

Now this roommate is feeling frustrated about the situation.

I feel entitled to make this little amount of noise solely because I asked multiple times if they were fine with noise and they said yes every time.

I’m not making noise out of spite or pettiness and I’ve stopped all calls/video games when they go to sleep so that the only noise is my keyboard, which is a laptop keyboard and not mechanical.

Am I in the wrong for waking up my roommate?

AITA?

Honestly, this situation kind of sucks from the perspective of both roommates.

This guy thought he’d been clear about the fact he was going to be disruptive and the other guy was okay with that.

But maybe the other guy now realises he’s not okay with noise as much as he thought, or maybe he didn’t anticipate the times that his roommate would be making noise at.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person thought that regardless of what his roommate had said in the beginning, his noise was unreasonable and he needed to make some changes.

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But others thought that he’d set his stock out from the beginning, and was not in the wrong for living as he’d said he would.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who gets revenge on her neighbors after they keep using her trash bins.

However, this Redditor thought that the two roommates needed to communicate and compromise.

It’s true that a big part of living with other people is learning to create boundaries and respect one another through compromising. And it really must suck knowing that you’d been honest from the beginning about the fact that you’re going to be making noise through the night, and being told that was fine – before the goalposts suddenly shifted. That’s not really okay on the part of his roommate, but also if he is now realising retrospectively that he’s not as much of a heavy sleeper as he once thought, he’s allowed to have made a mistake too.

The truth is, these two need to sit down and have a conversation, leaving the talks they had before moving in together in the past. Clearly things aren’t working out for them, and short of seeing if one or the other of them can get a room swap, they’re going to have to figure out an arrangement where they can live together, with one guy streaming and typing through the night while the other is able to sleep. Who knows what that arrangement will be, but they need to sort this out between themselves.

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Author

Kyra Piperides

Kyra Piperides, PhD | Contributing Science Writer

Dr. Kyra Piperides is a contributing writer for TwistedSifter, specializing in Science & Discovery. Holding a PhD in English with a dedicated focus on the intersections of science, politics, and literature, she brings over 12 years of professional writing and editorial expertise to her reporting.

Kyra possesses a highly authoritative background in academic publishing, having served as the editor of an academic journal for three years. She is also the published author of two books and numerous research-driven articles. At TwistedSifter, she leverages her rigorous academic background to translate complex scientific concepts, global tech innovations, and environmental breakthroughs into highly engaging, accessible narratives for a mainstream audience.

Based in the UK, Kyra is an avid backpacker who spends her free time immersing herself in different cultures across distant shores—a passion that brings a rich, global perspective to her writing about Earth and nature.

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