Nice piece! I enjoyed your thoughts on a lot of things, and it is interesting where women couldn’t be single before because the patriarchy, now it’s the economy.

I’m not sure it was ever feasible to have a low paying job in a high cost of living city AND live in a two bedroom house? With state mandated upzones on the horizon, we’re going to see a lot less houses in Seattle, Washington state, and elsewhere.

You could buy a rice cooker for $19.99 instead.

Just saying.

I love how people can rationalize anything.

@4, don’t be a jerk. This piece is nicely written, musings on relationships and housing, without being too heavy handed on agenda or ideology. $37k/yr is minimum wage in 2023 Seattle. Who cares where she went to college, she can write; dunking on someone’s college is dumb culture war nonsense.

An excellent article, well written.

@5,

But being a jerk is that guy's rai·son d'ê·tre! Would you dare ask a dog not to bark, a bird not to fly!? How might you discourage any conception it's very essence for being?!?

@1, agreed, this was wonderfully well-written article about youth, life, and choices.

In the Stranger’s early days, many of the crew lived together in a house, and later in the ‘90s, it was in no way unusual for the paper’s writers to live in communal houses. For us in Seattle’s general population, getting a solo apartment straight out of college was not ordinary, and for those of us who did, the apartment generally was not a “nice” one.

“I’m not sure it was ever feasible to have a low paying job in a high cost of living city AND live in a two bedroom house?”

No, it never was, and it’s not an option for this author now. If she really wants to live alone (as the very first line implies) then she can move to a less-expensive city, get a much higher-paying job, or both. If she wants to live partnered in a nice house, maybe she can land herself a rich sugar mama. Hey, it works for Jenny Durkan! ;-)

Whatever she decides, I hope she can find a way to live her life the way she wants.

@8: Yeah, that would be like asking you not to play (self-appointed) Thread Civility Cop. Or quote foreign phrases directly from translation apps. :-O

For us in Seattle’s general population, getting a solo apartment straight out of college was not ordinary, and for those of us who did, the apartment generally was not a “nice” one.

Will I live long enough to see a thoughtful article covering how we got here? By 'here' I mean the obsession with living alone and the expectation that life owes every young person in a big city an affordable one bedroom - solo. The trend towards "ewwwww a roommate" has been interesting to watch over the decades. My current financial stability can be partly traced back to years of sucking up a series of roommates over the years rather than shouldering rent alone.

@12, 100%. I made lifelong friends and met my now-husband in a post-college new-to-Seattle roommate situation. I think we’re going to regret this rush to subdivide every SFH to 1-2 bdrm units, and death of communal living by housing policy - rental regulation that pushes SFH landlords out of the market.

From the very first line, it sounds like she wants out of their current situation, but she has no idea how to leave it. She’s never lived alone, but wants to try. She’s had one partner for her entire adult life, but wants to explore another aspect of her sexuality. She wants to live in Seattle, but cannot afford it on her own. Everyone who is or was once a young adult knows all about one’s ambitions exceeding one’s abilities, and how frustrating that feels.

I hope she takes the advice offered above, and gets a great job with a much higher salary. Then she can consider her options and make her choices based on a better reality. I wish her all the best.

@17: the first place I rented in Seattle solo, on Alki, was a studio that was one half of a DADU duplex in the backyard of a large house. Any time the owner of the house used ANY water, the water pressure of my shower was reduced to a drip drip drip trickle. Drove me nuts! After paying rent, I'd have to stretch $30 until the next paycheck. Gave up on that and shared houses/2 bedrooms with a roommate until I was over 30. Roommates can suck but living paycheck to paycheck is worse.

@17, @18: I moved to Seattle immediately after my graduation from college. For a short while, I shared a 350 square foot Belltown apartment with my friend who’d grown up in Seattle, but after that, I could (barely) afford a room in an old house near the U-district. I finally got my own apartment on Capitol Hill when I was, as my kid sister kidded me, in my LATE twenties. I riposted she had gotten her own place first only because I’d paid so much toward her college tuition!

(BTW, that apartment was well worth the wait, I got it at the perfect time, and had I been living in a crappy apartment nearby, I could not have afforded to move in when I did.)