Want to see someone’s true colors? Travel with them.
Most people who have traveled with any regularity know that things can go from zero to complicated in under a minute. Traveling with a friend is one of the fastest ways to find out if they would make a good roommate or not. It’s not a guarantee, but you can at least get an idea of how you’d get along under one roof.
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Travel is, by nature, an activity that pushes people out of their comfort zones. If someone is out of their comfort zone and they have a personality trait that doesn’t mesh well with your own, you will know pretty quickly. Even a short weekend trip can test someone’s patience. Traffic, decisions on where to eat and stay and who brings what all come into play when you travel with someone, and you can get an opportunity to see if you’re compatible with that person. If at any point they get irritated with you (or you’re annoyed with them), make note of that. People are usually on their best behavior when the journey starts, so you can observe how they act around you.
Based on my one positive experience and a lot of negative ones, I’d plan a weekend road trip with any friend I was looking to share an apartment with so I’d know if we were compatible to live together in order to speed up the process and see if they were really someone I wanted to share a lease with. It’s easy to assume that since you’ve always gotten along well, you’d make great roommates.
My sister and a good friend of hers decided to live together once they started college. They had known each other since elementary school but had never traveled together before, so my sister had no idea how picky and passive-aggressive this friend of hers was until they started sharing the same apartment. Within a few months, her friend would get mad at her for something trivial and would leave Post-It notes here and there — on the kitchen counter or on my sister’s bedroom door — with whatever grievance she had that day.
Or my sister would come home and her friend would give her the silent treatment. In the end, they broke the lease because they couldn’t stand living together. My sister was tired of getting tickets for whatever rules she had broken, and her friend was tired of being mad at whatever pissed her off, so they called it quits. Unfortunately, their friendship was never the same after that. If they had done some traveling together beforehand, they probably would have found out that they weren’t compatible as roommates.
By contrast, I had a friend I had accidentally road tested when I went on a spontaneous trip with her and some friends. We shared a hotel room and got along great. She was positive and easygoing in spite of some of the pains that come along with any road trip. She was incredibly thoughtful and just went with the flow. She didn’t boss me or anyone else around or try to dominate conversations. It was great. We had zero fights or disagreements during the entire two years we were roommates. It was about time. I had been through a few roommates by then who were either unpredictable and moody or terrible at remembering to pay rent on time and clean up after themselves. I’ve got a bad habit of being a doormat so I’d avoid them or not say anything when I’d find out that my roommate had borrowed my clothes — and sometimes, my car — or that my leftover Kung Pao had mysteriously disappeared. If I had road tested roommates-to-be before I agreed to live with them, I would have spared myself about four years of being annoyed.
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This method can also be used if you’re looking for dependable travel buddies. My husband and I have done this a lot over the years by going on short cruises with friends. Sometimes we’d go with a group, and other times we’d travel with one or two people. Even though we don’t share a room with anyone, we can find out if we want to travel regularly with them. It’s pretty easy to know who’s not a good fit.
For example, a few years ago we went on a cruise with six other people, all couples. One of the couples seemed to be really fun and upbeat like everyone else, but after the day, we noticed a pattern that made us uncomfortable. We’d only just met the boyfriend, and he was really pleasant to be around, but his girlfriend — someone we were pretty good friends with before this trip — would get drunk and then annoyed with him over petty things and then get loud. She was rude and belligerent not only with her boyfriend, but with the server and other staff. She made at least four scenes during that trip. Once was when we were all walking around one of the islands, but the rest were when we were all at dinner. She kept ordering drinks and yelling at her boyfriend, especially when he tried to cut her off. Everyone was embarrassed by her and felt terrible for her boyfriend, and by the 4th day we knew we would never ask them to go with us on a trip again. It was a shame, because we really liked our friend’s boyfriend, to the point where we totally would have traveled with him in the future. In the end he dumped her and so did we.
On the flip side, we’ve traveled at least six times with a friend of ours who gambles so much on cruise ships that the cruise line comps him a trip and gives him a $500 credit every time he cruises. We’ve done the 5-hour road trip down to the port city the night before and stayed in a hotel suite with him, and once we were onboard we’d see him here and there when he wasn’t at the blackjack table.
He’s laid back and would do his own thing, and we would do ours. No one has ever felt obligated to meet for dinner or see a show, and there is no itinerary because we all left our scheduled lives and are just fine doing what we want. That first road test years before turned out to be a good friendship and guaranteed good travel experiences.
Because our travel usually involves airports and navigating around other countries, we don’t want to risk going with people who easily freak out, spend most of their time drunk, make it glaringly obvious that they are tourists, or only eat American-style food. Travel is unpredictable as it is, so we don’t want to add one more challenge. We like to go with the flow and try new things while not being drunk, so we’d rather travel with friends who are more like-minded, and for us, the only way to find out is using this method.
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If you want to do a road trip with a potential roommate, housemate, or travel buddy, I’d recommend that you start small — even a short weekend stay at an Airbnb or a day trip to the beach— because the last thing you want to do is to sign a lease with somebody who turns out to be a jerk. Or a drug dealer. Or a really loud snorer. Or a complainer. Or a really messy person. Or a cheapskate who always has excuses when it’s time to pay the tab. Because every annoying trait you find will come with them as soon as you move in together.
The road test method is not foolproof (is anything really foolproof?) but it should give you some idea of what to expect if you decide to sign a lease with your friend. Hopefully you’ll get enough of an idea to be able to make an informed decision. If you’re still on the fence after one trip, you can always take another. And another. At some point you’ll know.
Or they will. Because they might be road testing you too.