This is my submission for the October 2021 Carnival of Aros, on the topic of “Friendship.”.

When it comes to aspirations about an asexual and aromantic lifestyle, I’ve come to realize over the last couple years that I’m already living the dream in many ways, with a social and cohabitation arrangement like something out of an ensemble fanfiction found family trope* – albeit it mostly by chance rather than design.

On the one hand, this is a great place to be in the moment, but it also brings with it anxiety about how long the dream can last, and if there’s anything I can do to maintain it into the future. However, I do at least have a few ideas about that.

First, before we get into speculation about causation, I think it’ll help to give a quick summary of some of the highlights of  my current friendship co-living situation:

• I currently rent the full upper floor of a duplex with 4 other friends all from the same friend group. W’eve been living at this current apartment for over 5 years now.
• We all know each from being part of the same college anime club almost a decade ago, and have stayed networked with other alumni from the same group via groupchat and lots of shared outings.
• Basically ever since I moved out of my first college dorms, I have almost always been living with friends from this group in some way, although the exact cast has varied over the years as various people moved in, moved out, or changed apartments. (We regularly announce to the group anytime someone needs a room or roommate, so there’s been several group share house iterations over the years). 
• As roommates with similar shared hobbies (anime, gaming, food), we’ll frequently have dinners together, watch new episode releases together, watch each other play games and comment, etc.
• As the possessor of the largest living room, we also become the prime choice for hosting group events for our larger social circle, so we regularly host dinners, movie nights, and pre- and post-outing debriefs (and it turns out maintaining an active social life is way easier when you don’t have to leave the house to do it).
• We also frequently go on joint vacations within this social circle and split hotel rooms, train fare, book tours or tickets together, road trip in someone’s car, etc. We literally spent hours a couple weeks ago nerding out about different options for potential long-distance train outings once the pandemic subsides enough.
• While I personally didn’t go to as many of these until the pandemic, the group has several times organized several thanksgiving/christmas/other holiday get togethers for folks who didn’t plan to return home for whatever reason (family overseas and too far to travel, family doesn’t do american holidays, not close with family, etc.).

While it’s something I’ve fallen into almost entirely by accident, it’s actually pretty close to my ideal living situation, as someone who doesn’t like living alone and also prefers interacting with people in established groups over having lots of 1:1 relationships. It’s not as formal as a queerplatonic partner or life partner kinda thing, but that works fine for me since I’m not sure how willing I personally am to commit to anything more formal at this stage of my life either.

As to how I got here, it’s a mix of good and bad things, but I’d say the main factors are being in a high rent area (bad), having shared hobbies and traditions (good), and having strong group networking infrastructure (also good).

High Rent

The first factor that makes my living situation work is the fact that I live in one of the most expensive housing markets in the US, which makes having housemates an absolute necessity for many people; and still quite advantageous to have even for those with higher incomes. The fact that trying to live alone is incredibly expensive here means that living with non-partners is much more normalized, and many more people are open to living with friends than they might be if they lived elsewhere.

This kind of housing inaccessibility isn’t a good thing for society overall, but the increased social acceptance of co-living with friends is one silver lining.

However, I also need to add the caveat that I am unusually fortunate in that both I and many of my friends are lucky enough to now have the privilege of having the income and savings needed to hit the sweet spot of being able to hold out for an ideal living situation with trusted friends; unfortunately the reality of high rent markets is that many people end up stuck in unpleasant living situations out of financial desperation in the same way that lack of financial resources traps many people abusive romantic relationships as well – and there’s even fewer social scripts for dealing with abusive housemates than there are for dealing with abusive partners.

Shared Interests and Traditions

One of the more positive things that helped make this kind of friendship group work is the fact that we all have shared interests, which gave us common subjects of conversation and engagement. 

Perhaps even more importantly, we also tend to have a lot of overlap in the kinds of events we like to go to, so it’s easy to keep up contact with people when we’re all constantly going to the same movie screenings and meetups and conventions. This repeated proximity lends itself well to establishing friendships in a similar way to how it’s easy to form friendships in school when you keep seeing the same classmates day after day.

In particular, there are a few annual conventions that we all reliably travel to in a pilgrimage-like fashion, (and which also involve lots of time sitting hotels and waiting in lines together with nothing to do but talk and get to know each other) which often offers a chance to reconnect and solidify relationships even with people we might not see as often. 

Group Networking

Finally, I think the last thing that helps make things work well for us as a friend group is having a very established, very active group chat. The way it came to be was almost a fluke, involving several switches in chat group platforms for the original college anime club which eventually resulted in a chat group that consisted mostly of recent alumni from the club but which was no longer used for new incoming members or official announcements , allowing it to evolve from an official organizational server into a more casual server for lots of friends to just keep in touch and continue organizing dinners and movie nights and game streams and whatnot.

As someone who isn’t great at 1:1 interactions, having a group chat where I can drop invitations to proposed outings, or ask for advice or help with specific things makes it much easier to connect with people, especially people who I might not otherwise always think to reach out to. It also makes for a great point of contact for rebuilding connections if any of us ever drifts off for a bit (like because of a temporary out of state move or you know, a global pandemic that prevents everyone from socializing for a year or more). 

The Formula Worked Twice

Just for comparison, I’ve also found it interesting that the only friend group that I’ve really stayed in contact with from high school follows similar lines – we originally got to know each other from the anime and game clubs (shared interest), kept in touch largely because we already had traditions of meeting at several annual anime conventions, even when we all scattered to different cities, and of doing small gift exchanges whenever we were back in our hometown for the holidays (shared traditions). Eventually one person in the group set up a chat group to organize D&D sessions, and while the D&D sessions eventually petered out, the shared space has allowed us to become more involved than we had been at any point after graduation (group infrastructure).

I don’t know if this model works for everyone, as it’s focused on group relationships (which may not work for people who do prefer that 1:1 style interaction), and because my particular hobby is one that lends itself especially well to shared events, topics, and spaces, which isn’t the case for all people. It also just requires a certain amount of luck and convenient circumstances. But since this kind of social group dynamic does seem to be something that some people seem to aspire to, I figured I’d just share that it can and does happen sometimes.

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*As a caveat, I don’t actually consider my current situation as a found family thing, in part because I actually already have a great relationship with my family of origin, in part because I don’t feel the need to conceptualize important friendships through a family lens, and in part because it’s more a medium-term result of circumstances than a long-term intentional relationship. But I realize that it does hit on a lot of tropes of what people like about found family tropes, especially of the ensemble fanfiction variety.