How to learn from this situation and let go?

I had this problem a year back and it has greatly disturbed me. I am the kind of person who dislikes conflicts and go out of my way to help others. I recently contacted this girl to be my housemate (for a 2 ba/ 1br) apartment through classifieds. I did everything in my capacity to be nice and friendly with this person but things got bad due to the following events

1. A good friend of mine urgently needed a place to stay for a month and was ready to share the rent and help clean the house. I couldn’t send her away like that and let her in. My housemate did not like this and every five days would ask me when my friend was leaving (in spite of me telling her clearly she will be gone in a month).She was also rude to my friend at times. This hurt me deeply but I chose to see things from her perspective and ignored everything. However, my housemate’s husband would visit her regularly (he was studying in the next state) and would stay for days/weeks and I was always very polite and respectful towards him.

2. She did not help clean the house even once for the first 5 months of our stay there. She would cook regularly and many times leave the kitchen and bathroom dirty and messy. I told her politely to help clean the house but she didn’t bother to do saying she has assignments and presentations. I ended up cleaning everything in spite of eating out and not using the kitchen at all. She cleaned the house just once during winter holidays when she had no other commitments. After that, with much pleading, I made her clean the house for 20 minutes every month for the last 5 months of our stay there.

3. Our neighbors (who were generous enough to share their extra couch with us) needed to use our vacuum cleaner for a day. I gave them and the vacuum cleaner stopped working properly. My housemate and I decided to get another one and she wanted something pricey. I couldn’t afford it and instead offered to get it repaired through our guarantee. But the store was closed due to holidays and I couldn’t get it repaired asap. My housemate was not very happy with all this and gave me a cold shoulder for an entire week. I was very deeply hurt by this and started thinking of moving out but finally decided to stay put. I eventually got the vacuum repaired but she went ahead and bought one for her personal use.

4. When it was time to move out, I started cleaning the bathroom. While I was cleaning, she started complaining about how she has to use the bathroom in the morning and how she only has to clean after using it and that she will be late to lab etc. I was stunned speechless as I had my thesis presentation the next day (plus had to fly out for an interview the next day) and hence was moving out that night. She was fully aware of this. On top of that, she was moving next door in the morning. I really didn’t know what to say so I just ignored her and finished cleaning the bathroom. In the meantime, she asked me to help clean two of the stove tops that were extremely dirty and rusted due to her cooking. I did this for 45 minutes, then vacuumed the living room and cleared the patio . I thought I finished my responsibility and left.

Next day evening, as I was finishing my thesis presentation and was about to submit it, I am getting a call from her asking me to pick up the shower rod( I had put it in the patio while cleaning and she took it by mistake to her house next door) from her that was to be given to the leasing office. I asked her why she couldn’t do it and she kept going on and on “You only left it outside, who told you to leave it outside”?

I finally lost my patience and pulled her up for her behavior. She denied everything and accused me of lying. She told me she was upset with me as I walked off without helping her clean the kitchen fully the night before. She went on and on about how bathroom, living room etc are easy to clean but kitchen is hard. She also told me that since she is a PhD student and I am a Masters student, PhD is tougher than masters and PhD grads have less time to clean the house. When I told her she was messy, she refused to accept it and said she was very neat and clean.I finally kept the phone down saying I don’t want to speak to a human like you. Next day, she got her husband to give me angry, death stares. I just ignored them and walked on.

I am racked with anxiety and guilt. I was under immense stress and really don’t know how else to have handled the situation better. I did everything in my capacity to help this person like cooking food and washing her dishes when she was ill, paying the rent when she was short on cash (she would pay me back), sharing my room with her when hers had bed bugs and many more. In short, I did my best to maintain peace in the house.

What could I have done better in this situation?

I'm sure this is all too common in house share situations. You did your best, but uncontrollable circumstances just complicated matters. You can't control what people think or do. You tried to get this person to see the error of their ways in the most diplomatic way possible. You gave them the chance to meet you in the middle.

There is a saying: "no good deed goes unpunished". I'm sure you are feeling this quite heavily in your heart right now. But please don't let this period of sheer ungratefulness and bitterness diminish what is clearly a very strong desire to be fair minded and pure hearted. People like you make this world a better place and while you won't always be shown the gratitude and respect you deserve for individual actions, overall your life will surely be richer from being true to who you are and what is right.

Unfortunately, your good intentions will often be (often unconscious) targets for exploitation. But you have learned a valuable lesson from this experience - that you can only expect so much of some people. It's not necessarily their fault. It's probably just the way they have been brought up so perhaps try to see them like you would a child who is still growing in awareness and rooting out the worst of their conditioning. There are a lot of these people around. Reflect virtuousness and reason back at them and help them to shine light on the darkness of their ignorance.

Be vigilant, but don't lose that generous sense of goodwill and keen sense of fair mindedness. Live it with defiance but also understanding. The world so desperately needs it. The world needs you.

Thank you for being who you were during that period. Thank you for your patience and level headedness. Even though I wasn't there, I feel the gratitude the other person should have.

That's a wonderful response Ephiphany.

Really I think you behaved very decently in the scenario and have nothing to feel guilty about. Your complaints were totally reasonable and it sounds like you tried your best to remain calm when detailing them. It is absolutely not your fault if she was unwilling to accept the fact that she was messy and not pulling her weight in the house.

The only thing to learn from the situation is that you find it hard living with certain types of housemates so in future hopefully you can have a better idea of the person you are moving in with. That's all really.