Were we the bad roommates? My sister and I have been living with a friend in uni halls for about 7 weeks. We’re all adults and students at the same university. Lately, we've had two big fallouts with her and feel like we’re constantly walking on eggshells in our own home. We genuinely don’t know if we did something wrong or if she’s just difficult to live with.

In the beginning, things were fine. She used some of our food without asking, but we didn’t say anything since we were also sharing meals. We did most of the cooking and planning, and she didn’t always contribute ingredients, but we let it go. She also left dirty dishes that my sister would end up cleaning just to use the kitchen. Still, we tried to keep the peace.

The first major issue happened when she angrily confronted me for not doing the rubbish, even though we’d all taken turns and the bin was small so it needed frequent emptying. She later said she felt “threatened” by us and almost moved out. This was during a time my sister had a seizure and I’d spent the night in the hospital, so we were exhausted and emotionally drained. Still, we apologized and tried to work things out.

After a few weeks of peace, she started acting distant and cold again—avoiding us, locking her door, and refusing to speak. One day, she snapped about two crumbs in the sink and said her friend was coming over. She didn’t even say hi first. This made us feel guilty and paranoid, so we became even cleaner, vacuuming daily and tidying everything—including her mess.

Eventually, we got fed up and moved to a “respite room” provided by the university so we could have some space. We took a few of our belongings with us (including hand soap and a toilet roll), and cleaned the whole flat before we left. She later messaged asking what was going on, accusing us of taking her things and saying she didn’t know what she did wrong.

When we finally had a group meeting with the halls manager, she said her issues were that:

We didn’t communicate properly (we messaged instead of talking face to face), We kept her up at night using the bathroom, and We didn’t greet her guests. We felt these were unfair or exaggerated. She also claimed we slammed doors and stomped, but our flat is just small and noisy. Meanwhile, she was often loud, had guests over without warning, left crumbs and pubes around, played loud music, didn’t always flush, and generally didn’t pull her weight with chores. We tolerated a lot and didn’t complain—just tried to keep the peace.

Even at the meeting, we didn’t get to express our side and just had to defend ourselves against false or petty claims. In the end, we were just relieved to move out, but we’re still questioning if we were the problem. We’ve always been open to feedback and cleaned up more than our share, but she made us feel like we were the villains.

So—were we actually bad roommates, or were we just incompatible?

Btw I made this shorter with chat gpt so a few things may have changed