Thanks, SD. If you ever "grow" beyond wanting to kill him or kick him out, to the point of actually enjoying him and wanting him to stay, I would really love to know how you achieved it. THAT would be the book I would want to read. Also, I'd love to hear anything that you pulled from my thread to help you with your roommate sitch and how it applies to you.
Just hearing all the different perspectives gets me thinking. Lots of people have lots of ideas of things to try (offline, too). In my sitch, since it's a housemate, it's not too long before I hit the line where I don't want to have to work THAT hard on it. I'm not his mom. I'm not his GF. I'm not willing to go very far down the road of leading him by the nose and training him.
At this point, the value to me in this irritation is that it gives me needed practice in identifying my limits and clearly and kindly conveying them. I also get practice in setting reasonable limits. Even though I'm irritated and every thing he does bothers me, it's not reasonable to complain about everything. So, I get to practice choosing my battles and letting go of the rest.
There's the prevalent idea that there's some as yet undiscovered effective method of getting the other person to hear and understand. I see the value of making the effort to find that. Some posters claim that only the blunt threat of leaving (or in this case having to leave) will wake the other person up. I tend to think the latter is true in many cases. My recent example is that a mutual friend just told me that Housemate completely overlooked the content of a couple of my carefully worded email requests and interpreted them as me being grumpy because P is gone. So, he's trying to be understanding and extra nice to me (he told her), but he's basically ignoring my specific requests. He can't imagine that it might actually be about him.
In some of the tapes I've been listening to, Pia Mellody talks about getting beyond some of the long term aggravations she had with her H (and I can identify with her examples). She claims that it was the hard work of healing from codependence that made the difference. Specifically, that's about building self esteem, setting boundaries, accepting reality, and taking care of oneself. She particularly emphasizes that taking care of oneself makes the biggest difference. So, I'm trying that.
I have noticed that when I'm focusing on GAL and taking my bike rides then I'm actually able to have some moments of enjoying my housemate. That has nothing to do with what he is or isn't doing. It also helps if he's doing something useful and productive and hasn't broken or killed anything in the process. But that's a much riskier proposition.
You have your S who factors into your equation. I merely have rent, cat-sitting, guilt, and last but not least - P thinking I'm a mean person (because she never minded picking up after Housemate or any of the other things that I mind). Hence the motivation for this attempt at personal growth.
