Am I The Jerk for Kicking my Roommate Out After he Called my Husband a Dictator?
Me (F25) and my husband (M28) moved out of my parent’s place after about 6 months of being married. We decided to move to a college town that my husband had lived in for a few years prior to our marriage. i visited the area with him before staying with my parents for a while and loved the scenery at the time; the closeness of the beach, traffic was bearable, and the general vibe was nice. my husband also introduced me to a friend of his (M26) who, at the time, was nice and respectful, but as we understand with first impressions they don’t always hold true regarding the character of a person.
Before we moved back into this college town, we had asked our friend for help as a cosigner on our lease. at the time i had no job and my husband had the opportunity to doordash with a stable income flow in the college town as opposed to when we lived with my parents. Our friend has a stable job that helped even out the financial requirements (2 1/2 months worth of rent) to secure the apartment and was willing to help us. overtime as we were preparing for the move, he talked to me and my husband about moving in, since his name was on the lease and he didn’t want to renew his previous lease once it ended. As much as we wanted our own time as a newly married couple and the initial plan was to take him off the lease once we move in, we also empathized with our friend and his situation.
To give some clarity on the details of our (former) friend, he has Asperger’s and ADHD, while also being a very traumatized adult/kid in his younger years. he has trust issues, was coddled as a child by his parent(s) and even still until he was 24 and counting. He also had issues with saving and flaunted his finances around for leisure and helping people who don’t need the money, which was something me and my husband had discussed with him often. At the time of meeting him for the first time, he showed himself as being more mature mentally and emotionally, and we never saw him as being incapable of anything. He is a very hard worker and very detailed, thorough and organized. My husband met him at the same student housing complex that he lived in, which also played a part in our decision to help him: terrible management, terrible roommates, mold in places you wouldn’t expect, roaches etc you get the idea. after further discussion of boundaries and expectations, we allowed him to stay on the lease.
The first 3 months of being in our new apartment were great. We had no issues with our friend, he was finishing out his lease at student housing and we spent time getting to know him and his family better. the issues, unfortunately, started when our friend got a puppy and brought him over to our apartment. to clarify, the issue was never the puppy, it was our friend/roommate’s behavior towards his puppy: Neglectfulness in spending time with his puppy, irregular feeding routines, irregular sleep routines, not training his puppy and relying on everyone else to do the work for him. the months that followed were nothing short of unbearable. No matter the advice we gave him, the effort we put in for his puppy, his behavior showed he couldn’t care less about his pet unless he spent more time with others and ignored himself. It’s funny what attention and proper care does to an animal, but I digress.
as the months got worse, we took matters into our own hands and filed an anonymous noise complaint, thinking it would solve the issue since our roommate believed none of our neighbors would complain about his puppy; a hypocritical statement on his part knowing he made it a habit of opening the apartment door at times to yell explicit remarks at barking dogs or crying babies in neighboring apartments, which took at least 7 times for my husband to tell him to stop before he acknowledged his request. needless to say, this didn’t resolve his negligence. meals were skipped, dog walks were ignored and made excuses for, and to top it all off he became more crude and nasty in discussions with him regarding day to day life. We finally broke and gave an ultimatum: give us complete ownership of his dog, or two other familial options to give his dog to. We stated that our friendship with him is breaking due to the way he treats his puppy and how often he puts responsibility of his puppy onto me and my husband, while also stating our intentions regarding ownership of his dog had nothing to do with wanting to take him, but everything to do with giving his dog the best life that he himself refused to give his dog over the span of 7 months. He gave his dog to a family member of his and needless to say, his puppy now lives his best life; no skipped meals, time spent with family (he still neglects his dog and doesn’t make the effort to visit his dog), he’s housebroken etc.
Matters continued getting worse since his puppy left. Our roommate became more secretive, kept to himself, lied to us and his family, and didn’t stop inserting perverted remarks and ideas in conversation even after telling him to stop. his family had asked my husband to look through his medication bottle to make sure he took his meds, since his family suspected he wasn’t taking them properly and to our disbelief, he hadn’t been taking them properly, if at all. a week passed, and he became more distant and continued lying until we left for an early vacation to house sit for my parents. while me and my husband have been here, our roommate asked to call and talk to us and became avoidant even on the topic of calling to talk. My husband, justified in his frustration, called his behavior out and expressed how he felt things were between us and him. he stated he would call in the morning after, to only be found with my husband being blocked on everything by him. I myself wasn’t blocked until i tried calling, as he though it was my husband using my phone when it was me calling, and thankfully not on every platform to talk some sense and reason into him.
Although my husband ran out of chances with his now former friend, I wanted to give one more chance and messaged stating that i want to try and understand why he is behaving the way he has been, to only be lied to more, my husband being called a dictator and somehow my husband was “playing god with his life” and trying to make himself appear as an “underdog hero that was taking the blows while he was there and now it would be on me” since he decided to move out after all of this. Both me and my husband made attempts to help him save and stop giving away money to those who don’t need it, tried showing how he can take care of his dog, enforced boundaries established from day one, and we cared about his health and tried to help navigate his extreme caffeine intake (nearly 1k+ mg of caffeine daily), but no middle ground was found and I was blocked moments after laying down reason on the table. Not only did he move out, but we held him to it. His family also stated to us they understand our situation and empathized with us more than our former roommate.
TL;DR Former Friend/Roommate doesn’t like to be told what to do when its for his own benefit and called my husband a manipulative dictator when we were trying to help him with saving money, treat his dog better, and take care of his health.
Edit: His lease for the student apartment was going to expire on July. We let him move in early in April so he lived with us 3 months earlier without having to split rent with us until his lease ended. regarding the help with securing the lease, we only asked him to be a cosigner due to the 2 1/2 month rent requirement. a lot of apartments allow the primary lease holder (my husband) to put someone on as a cosigner to secure the apartment and take the cosigner off with consent. we’ve been in the apartment since December, former roommate moved in with us in April (rent free as mentioned) he paid rent in July-August and that was it from him. the roommates he had from student housing would steal from him so we let him move in earlier than initially agreed upon due to his other lease.