you can choose your roommates, but you can't choose your roommates' roommates.

this is a touchy subject, but one i feel is necessary to address:

you can choose your roommates. 

this is true most of the time. (except in that one in fourteen times when one of your other roommates says yes to the one that invites herself to live with you and you don't have it in you to say no. and then you have chosen your roommates by default of not saying no, and thus) this is always true.

living in a house with many rooms has provided ample opportunity to live with a diverse group of people, not limited to those with the same faith and age, but also including ones with man-eating pet rabbits, color swatching designers from turkey, ones now dating, no wait, married to their high-school softball coaches, and coworkers (now experienced three times over). for the most part these have been respectful of space, good about cleaning up after themselves, timely payers of bills, and globally good people. 

what is also true, is that you cannot choose your roommates' roommates. i've had multiple engaged roommates now (of all faiths). i've also had seriously dating roommates (of all faiths). i've also been on both sides of the dating/single roommate equation. so why is it that i still get really bothered about the roommates "roommates" as i'm terming the word for boyfriend/sidekick/fiance/beau/whathaveyou? i think it comes from the fact that i choose to live with women, and not necessarily with men.
and i really don't like the assumption that because you are in love with your chosen "roommate" that all your female roommates must love him too and therefore he is welcome over all the time, for any length and at any hour. 

what's the difference? why the drama? 

really? have you never seen the dynamics change when it's a group of all women, versus a group of men and women? when you come home and you want to mindlessly watch something on tv or a movie? statistically speaking you are more likely to come home to one roommate watching a tv show or movie you can pretend to be interested in, and not really feel like you are interrupting anything WAY more often then you will want to really just sit and watch whatever lovers #1 #2 or (any number really) are watching and not feel like you are interrupting. same goes for making dinner in the kitchen in lovers company. same for reading a book on the couch. same for really anything when your house becomes a den for lovers where the only place you can actually feel like you are not interrupting is in the confines of your own room. and i didn't sign up to pay rent for only one room.

so what can you do besides get a chair/couch for your room? i'm not sure. it seems to me that most people should be aware of space constraints and pay attention to the impact that they have on common area usage. i think that when the couple are behaving as friends instead of as lovers, it's a lot easier. but how do you explain this to those co-habitating cloud 9? i think that ground rules are helpful such as letting the other roommates know about plans to use common areas for lovers activities, trying to keep lovers activities at the house with the least common denominator of other roommates, keeping things more casual - such as having a game night with the other roommates, or cooking dinner together but inviting the roommates or others. if you want a special night/afternoon/occasion plan it at a time when you are not going to inconvenience the other rent-paying members of the household.

i'm realistically acknowledging that there will be roommates in the future that will probably be somewhere between earth and cloud 9, and i think, i'm getting a little better at finding ways to cope.
however, sometimes i still can't believe the inattention and obliviousness of some women in lust/love, and their impact on other women.

i have also come to the conclusion that i do better with a roommate living situation number of less than 3. and definitely only can deal pleasantly with 1 set of lovers at a time...

DISCLAIMER: i had a non-roommate who i think gracefully made it through the dating-engagement-marriage pathway with the least amount of destruction and awkwardness. these lovers were extremely non-PDA all the time. they had their own identities outside of each other and it just seemed that they weren't in it for only the physicality of the relationship but the other fun parts too. so it was more laid back, and that was nice. i have no idea how it would of been had she been a roommate, but i feel like it probably would have been ok.