How to Talk to People - What Makes a House a Home

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

What motivated two families to engage in the organized chaos of shared living and how did they learn to talk through, and shape, new expectations for their family life at home? In this episode of How to Talk to People, we hear from Deborah Tepley and Luke Jackson, who remember when they first asked their best friends to buy a house with them. The Flemings—soon to be expecting their first child—didn’t hesitate to say yes. Their real estate agent and extended families warned against the decision, but the families shared a vision of a home where the values of community could flourish in practice.  This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Julie Beck. Editing by Jocelyn Frank. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smerciak. Special thanks to A.C. Valdez. The executive producer of Audio is Claudine Ebeid; the managing editor of Audio is Andrea Valdez. Be part of the How to Talk to People family. Write to us at [e-mail]. To support this podcast, and get unlimited access to all of The Atlantic’s journalism, become a subscriber. Music by Alexandra Woodward (“A Little Tip”), Arthur Benson (“Organized Chaos,” “Charmed Encounter”), Bomull (“Latte”), and Tellsonic (“The Whistle Funk”).  Click here to listen to more full-length episodes in The Atlantic’s How To series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We all take on different roles every day. Parent, chef, driver. That's why the fully electric Volvo XC40 Recharge is designed to be as versatile as you are. Contact your local retailer or visit bavocares.com slash us. This is Rusty, I'm just a pink fan. That's what it works. You never do now. Hello! How's it going? It's fine. Yeah, she's awesome.

Well, let's start super basic. Can you describe for me where we are right now? This is Deborah, and we are currently in our shared home at 4-8-3, should I say the address? Is that weird? Sorry, I'm in the wrong place. Stop, right there. What are some common misconceptions about your home life that you find yourself having to explain to people?

We're not swingers. I think a lot of people, we say like, oh yeah, we live with another couple. They're like, oh, like, they live in the basement. No one's banished to the basement. And then there's like a whole slew of questions about, you know, how does that work? I'm Julie Bat, a senior editor at The Atlantic. And I'm Becca Rashee, producer of the How To Series.

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Anyway. Do you want me to hit and grab your coats too? I first reported on their shared living setup back in 2019 in an article called The Case for Buying a House with Friends. But this was the first time we'd met in person. If this is, I'll just leave these mic stands right here. When Julie and I walked into their house, I felt a sort of ease and playfulness and their shared living setup. Their decor was simple and airy with cream walls and dark accents and two light

grey couches where we recorded for the next few hours. It was really cozy and honestly amazingly clean, considering two young kids lived there. One named Mary Haley and the other named Pax. Julie complimented us on how clean our room was. How clean. What the guys were like, did she go to our room? Did you just never get into our room?

But as down to earth as they are, their home life is actually kind of quietly radical. That's really Deborah's room, if you'd like to see her. It's all well and good to live with friends when you're young, but the concept of settling down can be a strong motivator in adulthood. And single family homes are called that name for a reason, because the expectation is a single family will live in them, as limiting as that may be. So this all started a few years ago at a New Year's brunch. The four friends who had met at church, they were enjoying some champagne, having some laughs, and then kind of out of nowhere,

Luke proposed that they should all buy a house together. And all four of them were down. They were excited to try a more communal way of living. We are currently in our shared home, which is in Petworth in the Northwest Quadrant of Washington, DC. And this is Luke. We are in our living room, which is great.

And this is TJ. And I would just add that it's a bright sunny day outside and we can see many of the plants we've planted. I don't have an AP to add. Okay, great. So, after many logistical conversations and plenty of financial spreadsheets, they now have a group mortgage and split the cost of their home 50-50 between the two couples. While visiting with these families, I found myself wondering whether how we define

what makes a house a home, maybe what limits us. I feel like our culture can pressure adults to orient family life exclusively around a romantic partner and children, but it's not always immediately clear to me how to build community in a different way, and what that looks like. Yeah, I think that's always, you know, oh, so like you're renting together or and I'm like, no, no, no, we bought a house with other people like people assume that we regret it. I think people are very curious about the logistics of the arrangement. They're curious about the kids and how that works. Before offering that information to someone,

I do think about it. Like, do I want to have this conversation? Because it's going to raise a lot of questions. And so that is something I actually do consider before sharing about our shared living situation. How much energy do you have to explain yourself today? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Do you think it's just that are sort of American ideal of one family,

one home like my home is my castle vibes is so strong that they're like they must be in the basement. They couldn't possibly be upstairs. That's what I think. Yeah, is that people think about what their life at home looks like and they assume that ours must be some recognizable version of that. Yeah, the message of the American dream of buying your own house and the national association of realtors has been really successful in making sure everyone believes that's for them. We still get most of those benefits. It's just we share it.

Yeah, and I think that is a difference for either renting together one household renting to another is that there's not the same sense of shared ownership. There's also, I think, maybe a power differential of one household owns a house and one is renting, but we're all in it. So something breaks or if something needs to be repaired, we're all invested. We all really care about the outcome. And I think that actually helps us to avoid conflict

because we're all so invested in this property and we love this house. And whose idea was it first to buy a house together? I had been pitching Luke on living in community for a couple of years. I grew up in a big family and I really love living with other people. I loved living with roommates. And so I kept sending him different articles or

podcasts about different people who were in grouphouse situations. And Luke had never had a roommate other than a family member before he married me. And so he said, absolutely not. And then one day he came home after listening to a podcast or a sermon that I had sent to him and said, I not. And then one day, he came home after listening to a podcaster, a sermon that I had sent to him and said, I think I might be open to this. That being said, no one was more surprised than me when Luke popped the question at New Year's brunch to TJ and Bethany. So you were both married at the time of the New Year's brunch.

And did you feel any pressure as married couples for your home life to look a certain way? I think culturally, I think you just assume you get married, you buy a home, you know, have a family and live like an independent nuclear kind of family unit. And so I think like that, had always been my assumption of like what our married life would look like. But as Debra and I were sort of talking about buying a home and what might that look like and and this was definitely not one of the default options. What would people say when you told them that you were thinking of doing this? Like what kind of pushback would you get? When we talked about it with other

people, everyone thought it was a bad idea, including our real estate agent who actually sat down with us after we pitched the idea and said, you shouldn't do this. This is a bad idea. And his rationale was, it's hard enough for two people to agree on a house that they want to buy together. I can't even imagine working with four people to find the perfect house, but we actually did find it pretty quickly.

I think most people were worried about the worst-case scenarios. What if it doesn't work? You're all on the mortgage. What happens when someone has kids, if it doesn't work, how are you guys gonna be able to split amically? I got a lot of questions about what does discipline look like? Do they even like kids? What if they don't like your kids?

Those are things that I was nervous about, but I feel like it you know, it's lookin' Deborah. They're gonna love our kids, and if I am going to like, parent for the first time in front of anyone, like, I would want it to be lookin' Deborah, you know? What was it that you wanted from your home life that wouldn't be met by the traditional, single-family home arrangement. And what did you hope that this would provide instead?

You know, all four of us have full-time jobs. And so when you're living in community, like we split groceries, we divide up like who's cooking and win. And you know, there's a lot of talk out there about, you know, the domestic labor falls to one partner in a relationship. And so we divide that among four people. And neither of us on our own would have purchased this house, like financially speaking.

We got to buy a larger property in a neighborhood that we were more excited about living in. So I think I maybe approached this least practically of any of us. So after being married to Deborah for three or four years when we started this process, I had kind of become aware of how living even just with this spouse is challenging, but encouraged me to grow, to be gentler, to be kinder, to be less self-centered. And so I was sort of thinking, like, wow, if just like living with just Ebra has done

that, imagine like adding more people to the mix. I don't know if that's panned out quite. But the way that I thought it would. Doubleed inside. Doubleed inside. But, Luke, you become gentler and softer. Thank you. You're welcome. That's reassuring to hear.

So I actually think it makes us better people. It encourages us to grow less self-centered to live in community like this. I would say, I think that people often assume that we made this decision for financial reasons. But I think it was more of a missional kind of the desire to live in community and to live with TJ and Bethany. And I thought I would be a bigger person.

Like you imagine I'll be like really altruistic. And I think a lot of times I'm not. And I really have appreciated their grace and forgiveness towards me when I'm not a big person, or when I don't, when I'm actually, like my behavior is very poor. And so there's a lot of opportunities for grace and forgiveness.

And I've been the recipient of that time and time again. Yeah, I also just think it's a lot of fun. I really feel like we're not communicating how much fun we have together. And someone's always around to like talk to or hang out with. [♪ music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in of my friends have serious romantic partners and a lot of them even have kids. So the time for a casual hangouts is understandably limited. And if we schedule something, we can make it work. But there has been a noticeable shift in the ease of just meeting up

and hanging out spontaneously. Yeah, that is something that I worry about a little bit being in a long-term relationship myself and also having just been through a pandemic where we like mostly only hung out with each other for a few years. I don't want us to be super insular in our relationship and that does happen. Like married people are a lot less likely than single people to hang out with their friends and neighbors and research shows that holds true across race, age, and socioeconomic status.

So even though I don't think we're going to necessarily invite another couple to move in with us right now, I am trying to be more deliberate about spending more time with my friends regularly because as much as we love each other, I don't want our love for each other to pull us away from our friendships. And culturally sometimes it feels like it's not even very adult to want to live with your friends forever. So, although it's my ideal scenario to have a huge, L-shaped Ikea sectional couch where my partner, along with my 10 friends, can sit together, it doesn't always feel the most

realistic when it comes to a long-term living situation, where I can actually live with those sort of chosen family members of mine and make a home with them. I mean, especially once you reach certain milestones, like if you do choose to get married or if you do choose to have kids, the expectation just kind of gets even stronger that you're going to live with just your nuclear family, like just your partner and your kids. Right, and the cultural and social pressures around this are just one part of the equation. In the case of these two families, they had to lay out and untangle

their individual expectations and fears too. Hmm. So going into this, that's what you were hoping for from it. What were you afraid of? Oh, that's a good question. We wrote all those things down. This was a suggestion from our realtor. He was like, before you guys start on this process, write down all your fears, fold them up on pieces of paper, put them in a bowl, and just like

pull them out one by one, and talk about it. And so that's what we did. What else do you all remember about the bowl conversation? Well, we all cried. I remember that as we were reading these responses, one of my responses was they would regret having bought a house with us like a year and or two years in. And I just thought about how bad that would feel. I mean, I think like fundamentally it was about rejection, right? Like, wow, they're going to live with me and they're going to figure out what I'm really like. And they're going to be like, wow, wish we had done a hard pass like six months ago kind of thing.

Similar to any relationship where something's going to change, I think worry about like, will I lose this friend, you know, or will things not be as fun or will they be way different and you know, that was I guess one of my fears. We talked a lot about like what happens if somebody really goes off the rails. Several of us have had mental illness in the family and have family members. Suddenly, you know, go through a mental health crisis and change. God forbid, what if one of us gets divorced? Or what if I remember the mental health one being one that we all cried about?

Yeah. Yeah. What do you all remember about moving day and the sort of weeks and months following that? Bethany was very pregnant. Oh my gosh, I was seven months pregnant. But I do remember during that time, we would all take family walks late at night, and I would like be, you know, nothing fit, so I would ridiculous. And we could never walk really fast, and so they were like, just really like, walking very, very slowly. We all walked at my pace so that we could talk. We did it every night. I remember that being a really fun time. Like we all had something that we were anticipating kind of together, getting the nursery ready

and talking through like, oh, you win as, you know, Bethany's mom coming, Winnest TJ's mom coming, when they go to the hospital, like, what are we gonna do? Just being a really like fun period when we all were kind of looking forward to very Haley's arrival and like waiting with Bated Breath. How did you both decide the role that you wanted Luke and Deborah to play in your children's lives? Oh, what a really sweet question.

I mean, I will, Luke and Deborah are the Godparents to our children. That felt like a really obvious one. We want our children to experience like Luke and Deborah and the kindness and the love that they bring to our family. I mean, we're a family. It's interesting living with kids because they have never known a day apart from us.

And so it's just normal that they live with Uncle Luke and Deborah. And, you know, Mary Hallie at first called us, I was Dada and Luke was douche. That's such a brilliant up with that one. That's tough. But we always joke, you know, that Mary Haley had a daddy and a dadda. But yeah, I mean, it's just like we're just part of their normal life and they've never asked like, why do you live here? What were the discussions about parenting in this shared environment like?

I mean, I think we're all just like on the same page that Beth and I were gonna kind of parent our children, how like we thought was right. And Deborah loves like a very neat space. So we have like a place in the corner. I also like a neat space. Beth and you loves a very neat space. And I think it's really hard to do this if you don't have some kind of shared value system

with another couple or I think you need at least some kind of shared faith system or shared non-faith system to do that. I mean, I think it's helpful for people of know, like, hey, this is a strategy we're using when this happens. We like decided early on, like, you know, T.J. and I will discipline our kids and like, Luke and Deborah, like, are they're on uncle, you know, TJ and I will discipline our kids. And like, Luke and Deborah, like, are there on Uncle, you know? Like, they like uphold the roles,

like they don't encourage the kids to break the roles, right? But TJ and I, like, provide the, like, discipline or consequences. I think that has also helped, just like that boundary. I wanted to ask also Luke and Deborah, how did you feel about committing not to live just with another couple,

but with someone else's kids? I think a lot of us who play the sort of anteruncle role to our friends' kids, at least myself, I know, like I dip in and I dip out. You know, I show up, I show up on the movie, I pump and pull the sugar and I send them on their way to their parents. But you sign on to be there for all of it all the time

TJ and Bethany were upfront that they were planning on having kids like from our very first conversation about this So we always knew going in you know that this was what we were signing up for But it is Humbling that like we actually do still have the option of dipping out Maybe not quite to the same degree. You can still hear the screaming from the bedroom, but we can actually like step away and have some privacy or let TJ and Bethanine deal with

whatever is happening. I think we thought it would be a great adventure. And on the one hand, we did know we were getting ourselves into, we'd been around kids enough. But I don't think we had an idealizer or a fantasized view of what it would be like to live with kids. We were not planning to have kids, we knew that. But I think we felt like this would be a good way

to participate in the life of kids. And our kids loved them. We love their kids. We are crazy about them. They're very sweet. Yeah. I think that has like one of the great joys of living together. It's getting to parent with a community that I think we wouldn't have otherwise. Yeah. I think a lot of people feel isolated in their house with their kids and on the one hand it is hard parenting in front of an audience, you know, and on the other.

I'm so glad that we're like doing it together. And so that has made a big difference. We have a two to one adult to child ratio in the house. And I think a lot of people would hear that and be pretty envy us because it does. It provide more adults to not just in terms of safety and keeping an eye on things, but just kids are attention sponges, right? And it's nice to have more people in the house who can help kind of nurture them. And it's also really fun to hear the kids starting to use crazy words that I use for the debra uses. And it's a privilege to get to be playing a role in raising children

without actually having had them. Do you eat together every night? We do whoever is here eats together. And the kids too. Yeah? Okay. What are some of the rituals and rhythms that you've established in your house kind of week to week? Initially, we did a weekly house meeting, and we still do house meetings not quite weekly. And I think part of that is just like, we don't have the need for them as frequently as we did it first. We got this idea from another grouphouse in DC.

They said that they do a meeting every week and they ask first of all, what's working and what's not working. Everyone goes around and has to respond to both questions. Just the little things that really can great on you or things that might be upsetting to you that might just fester for a long time. And so I think that's been a good practice for us

just sort of getting things out in the open. It provides a forum for that. So it could be something very small. The dishwasher isn't getting emptied into noon and that's a form for that. So it could be something very small. Like, the dishwasher isn't getting emptied into like noon and that's not working for me. Or it could be something very large like, hey, I'm think I'm gonna quit my job and go to nursing school.

Like, what do you guys think? You know, it could. That sounds like a real example. Well, you may. There were plenty of workings that were just related to life, not necessarily. That's true. Things will come out that are not related to the house or that are related to that person's

spouse. That happens. At the weekly house meeting, we also talk through like weekly logistics, who's cooking, what days are they going to cook? Are we having anyone over? Is there a night when somebody's going to be out of the house and, you know, teaching about the need to help with childcare or something like that? What are some conflict management strategies in your house?

Do you have specific ways that you go about it? Having like a structure for regular communication is really helpful because you don't feel this pressure to Bring something up in the moment when you may or may not be right to talk about it. Like, oh, I know we're having like a meeting and so I can just bring it up there. Many of the lessons from marriage also apply things like you can't hold someone accountable to it if you didn't say it out loud. You also have to say what's working, right? And so and that is something I think that I also have taken from teaching in Bethany is you say what you're grateful for, right? Like say what is working? Say what I really appreciated it when you did this. Hey, we got,

we got an espresso maker. That's really working for me. Honestly, that question, what's working, what's not working is a really hard question to answer in part because you don't want to hurt people's feelings. And, you know, it just really forces you to talk about things that you wouldn't talk about otherwise. I think that has forced me to be a better communicator. I have learned a lot from watching TJ and Bethany's marriage and just the way that they communicate. And so I think that's an added benefit of living with people is that you see their life so close up and personal and you see the way that they resolve conflict and the way that they parent their

kids and all those things. And so I feel like I've learned a lot and I think I'm a better communicator because I've loved with TJ Bethany. Yeah, I would second that living in community challenges you to just be emotionally intelligent, right? Is this like a me problem or is this actually somebody said something that was hurtful or they were just like not thinking about it? Or, but how am I feeling and why?

And is it something that I need other people to help me deal with? Or is it something that I can process on my own? Yeah, and I think it also living a community forces you to work out your own kind of marriage in community. And there's this infamous night where we all sat down to dinner. We sat down and I said, you know what?

Luke and I are fighting. And we need some time. And so we're going to go like work this out. We'll be back in 15 minutes. And Bethany said, TG and I are fighting too. And I think that TG and Luke were both like we're fighting. And so we split up in different areas of the house. And I think that T.J. and Lou were both like, we're finding. Oh no, well that made me so... We both split up into several areas of the house,

and we came back after 50 minutes and like finished dinner together, but I don't know where to like you about. That's hilarious. when you're on your side. Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company and Affiliates Club is so high. When you're on the road, you'll be glad you chose T-Mobile, the network that covers more highway miles with 5G than anyone. And when you're on the side of the road, with a flat tire or their dreaded check engine light, know that help will be there soon. Because AAA also chose T-Mobile to be their exclusive wireless partner, connecting their AAA-owned fleet of vehicles across the country.

See why the companies you trust depend on T-Mobile and learn more about our network at T-Mobile.com slash coverage. We love each other and that love actually is based on a commitment. I think that commitment predates a mortgage, but a mortgage is a useful symbol of that as well. We are all committed to this, like we are financially on the hook in other ways as well. And so, yeah, out of that commitment comes a desire to like, well, let's, we need to make this work. Let's, we want to make this work.

And so how do we do that in a way that's like best for everybody? I think what's kind of remarkable to me about the commitment is that friendship, culture in the US and maybe elsewhere today is very anti-commitment, I think, and not always in a bad way necessarily, but I think friendship is defined in some ways by its voluntary nature. You don't have those formal commitments that you have in marriage, that you have in nuclear family. And so there can become this sort of sense of, you know, I love you and you're my friend, but the highest truth is everybody needs to do what's best for themselves.

And I think it is rare that you would put an obligation onto your friend or accept an obligation from your friend. Yeah, definitely. I think I'm setting healthy boundaries. I need to do some self-care. Like that kind of language. I think we have a kind of shared moral framework that's based on our faith. And at least to my reading, like at the heart of Christianity is like actually a other centered love that I'm choosing what's best for you, not for me. And so I think that informs our shared living and our commitment to one another as well. And there are benefits for me. But like I also I want to love and I want to serve

you and your kids and Deborah. And I think that really is like our starting place as a house. Yeah, again, there has to be a shared vision outside of yourself or else, why else would you be doing it? There's many days or weeks where you don't want it. You want to be somewhere else. I mean, it's happens to me all the time just because of my personality. I want to go move to Florida, because it's cold.

It's like, I can't tell you how many times I say that in the winter, but without that shared vision of something bigger outside of you, it's not going to last more than a year, too, because there's going to be something out there. You're going to find a reason to escape. I think it's really easy to make community like a theoretical concept.

What I've learned about community through living with others, including Luke and Deborah, is that community is like a real like granular thing in real life, right? Like it's the people you're with on a daily basis. How you interact with them, it's how intentional you are with them, and it doesn't actually come naturally. Building real community is like not an ideology. It's a practice. And that goes for our house, but that also goes with my other friendships. I want to have

lifelong friendships outside of this house, and I have to spend time with those people, or else we're not actually close. Can you all still imagine any scenarios where one of you would want to move out or two of you would want to move out? I mean, I guess if somebody got a job once in a lifetime opportunity somewhere else, something that we have talked about is that as the kids get older, they are sharing a room right now. At some point, they'll need to not share a room together. And so would we buy a different house?

Would we maybe need to go our separate ways? Like what? Initially, when we decided to do this together, we signed a three year contract. And now we essentially, now we're past that three year mark and we have a retreat every year in May, where we talk about the future and sort of what the next year looks like

and what our timeline is. And so I think we just have this opportunity to revisit that every year There's kind of a running clock on a couple of our careers and so I mean we've we've talked about that openly It's not like a elephant in the room or something and how do you think you guys would approach it if somebody did want to move out? So this was one of the things that we made sure that we really ironed out before we actually bought the house together. We would have the house independently appraised

if there's one couple that wants to stay in the house, they would have an opportunity to actually buy the other couple out. If that's not possible or they didn't, the other couple didn't want to, then we would either sell the house and just split the I think right now Our equity would just be 50 50 well we could also you know rent the house out and split the proceeds from the rent as well So one of those options

Would you recommend your choice to other people? Absolutely. Yeah, I think they need to go through the process. Yeah, I think so too. I think you really want to count the cost. You need to make sure you're doing it with the right people. I think as long as you know you can financially trust them in general, but in trust them financially, that's a big part of it.

I think you really have to think about like,, can we just sort of like the picking things up and the dishears and all that, that's really a big part of living with people. Yeah, 90% of what goes on right is very day-to-day and very mundane. The big questions only come up so often. When someone puts microphones in your house and asks them to you. I married a strong introvert who would like to be in his man cave most of the time. Luke is not the only one bearing the burden of my social needs, that there's a whole house of people to share that, and there's always someone up for doing something.

We're hanging out and so... Very haily. Especially very haily. Who's poor? And so, yeah, that part of it, the kind of social environment is just such a benefit, a pro-of-loving with other people. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪

I agree with Deborah. Like, I do think you need different people to fill different roles in your life. And Joe, my partner, has actually expressed to me that he is grateful for my work friends like you because when I try to tell him stories from work sometimes like he doesn't know all of the characters he doesn't really understand like the media industry and so he said you know I'm really glad that you have these people to talk about this with. Yeah it reminds me of a concept called the All-R-Nothing Marriage, which comes from

the psychologist Eli Finkl. And he's kind of theorizing that people just expect even more from their marriages than they used to. Like way back when, you know, it was basically a financial arrangement, right? And then we wanted love on top of that. And now we even want like self-actualization on top of that and to become our best selves through this relationship. And it could be very isolating if that one person is your sort of be all and all. Yeah, you know, I grew up in a

multi-generational house as a kid and my aunt and uncle would come over every weekend and there were lots of people meeting my emotional needs as a kid, not just my parents. So whenever I saw just two parents and a kid at a dinner table at my friends' houses, I was always interested in the sort of stark difference with my family that was sort of a chaotic, buffet-style mess of a dinner every weekend. That's fun. It was. But I realized it's just a totally different setup when one person or just two people are expected to fill in the gaps of what an extended family or an extended network of people can do. It is interesting to me that in mainstream American culture,

the romantic partners expected to be your everything. Yeah, like help raise your kids and hear all of your work stories that they don't understand, and help you around the house, and they're your go-to person for every concert and movie and anything that you do, it's just a lot for one relationship to hold. It's a lot of weight to ask for from anybody. And actually it's been shown that relying on a variety of people to meet different emotional needs can be better for people's

well-being. To get back to your earlier question, you know, there's like just on our block on this side, there's like three or four shared, you know, living arrangements, intergenerational arrangements, whether it's family or otherwise, it's actually not that weird, you know. Yeah. If I want to suss out a friend to see if they'd be down for this, like, how should I approach the conversation? I think you want to make it a compliment. Like I've been thinking about living in community and wanting to do that intentionally. And when I thought about that, you were someone that I thought, wow, you would be a great

person to live in community with. I mean, I think I would suggest that people, like you got to talk to your spouse first. This is what I'm thinking. What do you think about that? How do you think that would impact our relationship? What would be great about it? Not just what are you afraid of?

What have you all learned about each other along the way? When you live together, you learn who is coming down the stairs before you see them. You learn kind of their footfall, you learn that TJ lets out a large sigh every morning as he comes down the stairs. First thing, so you have that level of intimacy with people. I'll take the more depressing approach. Don't worry. Right on you. Are you sure? Yeah. Everybody in the house is shocked. Even when you change your living situation, you're still the same person, right? All of the same things that I struggled with, like living with Deborah, like, hey, whoa, they're still true.

Like, I'm still me for better or for worse, like positives and negatives. Like, I think there's always that temptation like TJ said to escape to like move somewhere else to like enter a new situation and then I'll be a new person. Like no, you're gonna enter a new situation and you're gonna be the same you that you always have been and so is that the right situation to move into or not. Yeah, I think I've just learned that Luke and Deborah are better people than I even thought. I don't know, I can appreciate them at a deeper level than I could before we lived together. Even though like, yeah, we've had arguments or disagreements and I still think they're

some of the best, most generous people that I know. It amplifies the good. I like the idea of like, we got to like choose our family. I don't know. It's just for our love, Joy. And Julie, there are signs that other models of living other than single-family homes are also becoming normalized in our culture. Yeah, because there's something about the nuclear family household that encourages people to turn inward away from the possibility of that broader community. But if you want to have those other layers of support in your life, then it takes some really intentional planning to resist the pull of that model of home life

that is really held up as the building block of society. And maybe even a hint of rebellion. Just a hint, just a hint. No. [♪ music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in background, music playing in hosted by Julie Beck, editing by Jocelyn Frank, fact check by Anna Alvarado, engineering by Rob Smersiek. Special thanks to AC Valdes. The executive producer of audio is Claudina Bade. The managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdes. you