Welcome to the Rejected Housewives Suite!

“I don’t want to own a house by myself,” I said to my partner of four years as we discussed the benefits of owning property in Bozeman, Mont., our increasingly unaffordable mountain town. “We have to try to make this work.”

I was a 30-year-old writer; he was a carpenter and house framer, several years younger. We had been “trying to make it work” for the past year. We fought bitterly, took breaks, got back together. I moved out of our shared house, back in, and out again. Then, in June 2018, a reasonably priced house came on the market during one of our “Let’s try again” periods.

The house was spacious: three bedrooms, a two-car garage and a fenced-in backyard. The mortgage was manageable for two people, but not for me alone.

Which is why, after the final meeting with the real estate agent, we agreed to split the monthly payment down the middle. My credit was better, so I would be the only person on the actual paperwork, but I would have my partner’s financial contribution and his construction skills to ease the stress of solo homeownership — if we could make our relationship work.

Two months later, I closed on the house. Two days after that, we had one last fight and broke up for good, leaving me alone in the house with my cat.

For as long as I can remember, I have been told that romantic partnerships are the most important part of life. Having a partner comes before friendship and community, taking root as the central element of your life and pushing everything else to the side. Regardless of how full and rich the rest of your life may be, if you are not partnered, you are not complete.

This has been reiterated via the “sad single person” trope in my decades of media consumption: that character arc that only ends once they have found the partner of their dreams.

It has been pushed by my parents, who were always thrilled when I started dating someone, even if that person seemed to make my life somewhat worse. It’s always the first question my extended family asks, before inquiring about my career, my travels or my friends.

So when I found myself single again at 30, alone in a house with a looming mortgage payment and no idea where my furnace or irrigation system lived, I felt both desperately alone (familiar) and in over my head (unfamiliar).

The next week was a blur of anxiety: panic and sadness from the threat of my financial situation combined with the heartache of yet another failed relationship. I sat at my small kitchen table and wrote out a column of expenses next to a column of projected income. I knew what the numbers said before I added them up: I couldn’t afford the house alone.

My crew of girlfriends swooped in, assuring me it was for the best and politely requesting I not get back together with him. They helped photograph the house and write rental listings on local room-share sites. I curated the listings but didn’t post them, too overwhelmed from the breakup to think about interviewing tenants and writing a lease agreement. I checked my bank account and told myself I’d post the rental ad in the next week or two.

Despite feeling wretched, I decided to go ahead with my housewarming party, hoping the warmth, laughter and potluck dishes would help me feel less pathetic.

A few hours before the start of the party, my friend Dawn, who I knew from the climbing community, showed up at my door, looking distraught. I let her in, and she sat on the edge of my couch, twisting a silver bracelet around on her wrist.

“I was wondering,” she said, “if you were still planning to rent out a room?” And then it tumbled out: She was also ending her long-term relationship. Exhausted, stressed and deeply sad, she needed a place to live.

“Oh! Wow, sure, yeah,” I said, hesitating. Would I feel weird taking money from her? Would this change our friendship? “When would you like to move in?”

She glanced out the front window and pointed to her car in my driveway. “My stuff is actually all out there.”

After the other guests left later that night, Dawn and I lugged her boxes and bags upstairs. Once her car was unloaded, we stood in the kitchen, unsure of how we were supposed to interact as instant housemates — with me as her landlord.

“Well, good night,” I said, “I hope you feel, uh, OK about everything and I’m sorry about your relationship.”

Soon enough, Dawn and I settled into our newly single lives with blessed ease. We each bought Comfies (oversized — really oversized — fleece hoodies) and spent the winter as fleece blobs, projecting movies onto the wall and eating popcorn for dinner. We decorated a spindly Christmas tree and hosted holiday gatherings. The first year was like having a permanent sleepover, complete with cookouts, biking, trail-running and frequent guest appearances from our other girlfriends. Dawn’s rent money helped cover the mortgage, and the house, which had seemed too big, empty and intimidating, became a gathering place for our social group.

I had always appreciated the women in my community, but now I felt overcome with gratitude for them. Their company and support allowed me the time and space to process my conflicting feelings about the house. As a writer, I’d never had a job with a retirement plan, and buying the house felt like a necessary burden to secure a financial future for myself. The immense privilege of owning a home came with so much guilt and stress that I often wished it would just magically vanish.

The gutters needed cleaning, the lawn looked ragged, the fence was crooked, the sink dripped and the irrigation system was wonky. At some point during those first six months, my ex got engaged to someone else. A few days later after I learned that news, my furnace went out. At least by then I knew where to find it.

Throughout, Dawn helped keep things in perspective, always nearby with her phone to record commentary as I tried to fix a leaky faucet or locked myself out of my own room.

As summer ended and Dawn and I celebrated a year of living together, I knew the lawn was still more weeds than grass, and some appliance or another was inevitably broken. But I felt more confident cobbling it together.

One evening, Mackenzie, another close friend, came over. She had been planning her wedding, and I hadn’t seen much of her recently, but over takeout pizza and Betty Crocker brownies, she told us that she was ending her engagement. Was I open to renting out the other upstairs bedroom?

She bought a pink Comfy to complement Dawn’s leopard print and my plaid, and we helped each other compose Bumble messages and analyze the dates, good and bad. The sting of breakups, the drudgery of dating and the Sisyphean task of keeping the yard presentable was made better by living with two of my closest friends. While society might prize romantic relationships, our housemate life felt more loving and fulfilling than any relationship I’d ever been in.

Mackenzie and Dawn wrote each other notes on their bathroom mirror and developed a bond with a small spider who lived behind the door, naming him (it?) Eugene.

The three of us hosted brunches, pumpkin carving parties and yoga classes. We managed to store eight bikes in the garage, cursing the tangle of handlebars any time we tried to go mountain biking.

Over the next few years, my house continued to provide a soft landing for women who suddenly found themselves packing boxes in a blur of tears. When Mackenzie left to move in with her new partner, my closest friend, Hailey, was signing divorce papers during the turbulence of early lockdown life. She landed, stunned, surrounded by boxes in Mackenzie’s recently vacated room.

When Dawn moved closer to her work, Hailey moved into the big room (and bought a teal Comfy). Then Mackenzie went through another breakup and moved back into the smaller room. At some point in the group chat, someone christened the upstairs “the Rejected Housewives Suite.”

Although none of us aspired to be housewives in the first place, the name stuck. My house, once my impossible burden, had transformed into a place where other women came to relieve their impossible burdens. But the value went both ways. Our relationships might not have been viewed with the same intrinsic social value as those with long-term romantic partners, but they sustained and strengthened me during the loneliest, most stressful years of my adult life.

Three years later, I look back on those painful, chaotic years with gratitude. And I keep one room in the Rejected Housewives Suite open and furnished. Just in case.

Maggie Slepian is a writer in Bozeman, Mont.

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