idiosyncratic selves, being simultaneously predictable and regularly surprising. It’s fun to build a model of someone over time, through the repeated modulations of their regular life, punctuated by vertiginous moments of rawness and profundity. Living with men, I get to learn them in a way that society otherwise does not give me real permission to know them, or them to be known. I like to think this has been a two-way street — that I have been seen by my male housemates in a way I haven’t been seen by other men in my life, even lovers; and that these men in turn have benefitted from seeing and being seen by me, as well.

I’ve lived with seven men since my early 20s. None of those living arrangements have been romantic, or sexual, which isn’t especially surprising to me. I love dating men, and I love living with men; but it’s a simple fact that romancing someone and sharing daily life with someone are two different modes of love, modes that humans have mostly attempted to mash together into one relational container, to mixed results. So far, an appealing “both, please!” option hasn’t presented himself yet.

It’s thrilling to be witnessed by people different from yourself — even if it can also be mortifying. Being observable as your unremarkable, daily self introduces a sort of excited state of wanting both more attention and less, and one way to resolve that is to practice witnessing someone else for a while, inhabiting their space, giving attention to their way of being, and before you know it, your world has expanded.

I have deeply loved these men. Whether builders, scientists, poets or political consultants, they’ve each shared a wonderful blend of steadfastness and whimsy. But I think what I love most of all about sharing a space with men is male intimacy. I rarely get to experience men’s unguarded selves, even from my close male friends, most of whom now live hundreds of miles away. Male intimacy feels precious and rare, and that makes it interesting. It feels like a gift every time it’s shared. When you share space, this kind of intimacy is not even shared consciously most of the time, and that also makes it fun. It’s fun to witness people as their real, unvarnished,

version of this script is happening for me, now. My house is converting to a single family home, and for the first time in my adult life I find myself not only unsure where I should live next, I’m attempting to do so without the presence of friends or friendly future housemate referrals to make those choices with. It’s an odd, displaced moment, feeling a real excitement for stepping over this threshold, just me and myself — recognizing that I didn’t exactly choose this situation, but I am participating in it.

This script is remarkably socially durable. I haven’t felt direct oppression from it, like many others have. But I have felt, my whole adulthood, the itchy, persistent loneliness of not especially caring about this particular playbook, and an awareness of the economic perks and social ease I’m missing out on by not pursuing it.

American society has undergone seismic shifts in the last century, but despite them all, our dominant social script for what it looks like to be a Mature Adult in America remains strong. The signifiers are solid, the trajectory more or less assumed: In early adulthood, we live alone (if we can afford it), or maybe with friends (how fun! Extra perk, save money). Over time, those of us who lived alone couple up into domestic romantic partnership, and those of us who lived in groups do the same, or — as we grow our income and develop our own aesthetic taste and living standards and lose some of our social energy — we seek out our own place. This is understood as a temporary step, until we meet our comrades in romantic partnership. And there we stay, unless or until we and our partner decide two people is not enough people, and then we get more, in the form of kids. (Or, we split, re-entering narrative limbo until we safely recombine again.)

I’m far from alone — by the numbers, Millennials are getting married later, having children later, buying homes later or not at all. But we haven’t yet been able to enduringly, meaningfully complicate this social narrative for what living differently might look like. The alternative choices we collectively make, the variegated stories we tell each other, still feel like they are working very hard upstream

Homeownership, romantic coupling, children…the single-family house, filled with a single family, is still the default sign of “normal” adulthood, and with it, assumed maturity and success. Most other arrangements, even if joyous for those in them, are looked at as a compromise, a dalliance, or a necessity — an admission that something, somewhere along the line, didn’t quite work out right.