How to Talk to People - How to Talk to People: What Makes a House a Home

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

What motivated two families to engage in the organized chaos of shared living and how did they learn to talk through, and shape, new expectations for their family life at home? In this episode of How to Talk to People, we hear from Deborah Tepley and Luke Jackson, who remember when they first asked their best friends to buy a house with them. The Flemings—soon to be expecting their first child—didn’t hesitate to say yes. Their real estate agent and extended families warned against the decision, but the families shared a vision of a home where the values of community could flourish in practice.  This episode was produced by Rebecca Rashid and is hosted by Julie Beck. Editing by Jocelyn Frank. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smerciak. Special thanks to A.C. Valdez. The executive producer of Audio is Claudine Ebeid; the managing editor of Audio is Andrea Valdez. Be part of the How to Talk to People family. Write to us at [e-mail]. To support this podcast, and get unlimited access to all of The Atlantic’s journalism, become a subscriber. Music by Alexandra Woodward (“A Little Tip”), Arthur Benson (“Organized Chaos,” “Charmed Encounter”), Bomull (“Latte”), and Tellsonic (“The Whistle Funk”).  Also: If you have any comments or suggestions about the show, submit feedback at theatlantic.com/listener-survey. We'd love to hear from you. Click here to listen to more full-length episodes in The Atlantic’s How To series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid. And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure that they're using their new tools to change our institutions. their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats. We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think

about what might happen next. The new season of Autocracy in America, available now. Distrust the anticipation. That's what it works. You never do know. Hello. Hello. Come on in. Welcome. Thank you.

Thank you for having us. Yeah. Well, let's start super basic. Can you describe for me where we are right now? This is Debra, and we are currently in our shared home at 483. Should I say the address? Is that weird? Yeah.

Sorry. Maybe not. Stop. Strike that. What are some common misconceptions about your home life? that you find yourself having to explain to people. We're not swingers. I think a lot of people, when we say like, oh, yeah, we live with another couple,

they're like, oh, like, they live in the basement. No one's banished to the basement. And then there's like a whole slew of questions about, you know, how does that work? Hi, I'm Julie Beck, a senior editor at The Atlantic. And I'm Becca Rashid, producer of the how-to series. This is How to Talk to People. We'll do socks, it'll be so cozy. It's so nice to me too.

I know, so Julie and Becca. Yes. Deborah Teppley, Luke Jackson, and Bethany and T.J. Fleming kindly invited us into their home on a Monday afternoon. I don't know if you've talked next to you yet. I have not talked to you yet. I have not talked to you.

And this is my husband, Luke, who is making prep. Like the most opportune time. Anyway. Do you want me to hit you can grab your coats too? I first reported on their shared living setup back in 2019. in an article called The Case for Buying a House with Friends. But this was the first time we'd met in person. I'll just leave these mic stands right here.

When Julie and I walked into their house, I felt a sort of ease and playfulness in their shared living setup. Their decor was simple and airy, with cream walls and dark accents and two light gray couches where we recorded for the next few hours. It was really cozy and honestly amazingly clean considering two young kids lived there. One named Mary Haley and the other named Pax.

Julie complimented us on how clean our room was. How clean? Did she go into our room? Did she ever get into a tour? But as down to Earth as they are, their home life is actually kind of quietly radical. That's really Deborah's room? It's all well and good to live with friends when you're young, but the concept of settling down can be a strong motivator in adulthood.

And single-family homes are called. that name for a reason, because the expectation is a single family will live in them, as limiting as that may be. So this all started a few years ago at a New Year's brunch. The four friends who had met at church, they were enjoying some champagne, having some laughs, and then kind of out of nowhere, Luke proposed that they should all buy a house together. And all four of them were down. They were excited to try a more communal way of living.

We are currently in our shared home, which is in Petworth, in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. And this is Luke. We are in our living room, which is great. And this is T.J. and I would just add that it's a bright, sunny day outside. And we can see many of the plants we've planted. I don't have anything to add. Okay, great. So after many logistical conversations and plenty of financial spreadsheets, they now have a group mortgage and split the costs of their homes.

50-50 between the two couples. While visiting with these families, I found myself wondering whether how we define what makes a house a home maybe what limits us. I feel like our culture can pressure adults to orient family life exclusively around a romantic partner and children, but it's not always immediately clear to me how to build community in a different way and what that looks like.

Yeah, I think that's always, you know, Oh, so like you're renting together or and I'm like, no, no, no, we bought a house with other people. Like, people assume that we regret it. I think people are very curious about the logistics of the arrangement. They're curious about the kids and how that works. Before offering that information to someone, I do think about it. Like, do I want to have this conversation because it's going to raise a lot of questions? And so that is something I actually do consider before sharing about our shared living situation.

How much energy do you have to explain yourself? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Do you think it's just that our sort of American ideal of one family, one home, like my home is my castle vibes is so strong that they're like, they must be in the basement. They couldn't possibly be upstairs. That's what I think, yeah, is that people think about what their life at home looks like

and they assume that ours must be like some recognizable version of that. Yeah, you know, the message of like the American dream of like buying your own house. house and like the National Association of Realtors has been really successful in making sure everyone believes that's for them. Yeah, we still get most of those benefits. It's just we kind of, we share it. Yeah. And I think that is a difference. Either renting together, one household renting to another is that there's not the same sense of shared ownership. There's also, I think, maybe a power differential of one household owns the house and one is renting. But we're all in it, you know, so something breaks or if something needs to be repaired, we're all invested. We all really

care about the outcome. And I think that actually helps us to avoid conflict because we're also invested in this property and we love this house. And whose idea was it first to buy a house together? I had been pitching Luke on living in community for a couple of years. I grew up in a big family and I really love living with other people. I loved living with roommates. And so I kept sending him different articles or podcasts about different people who were in group house situations. And And Luke had never had a roommate other than a family member before he married me. And so he said, absolutely not. And then one day he came home after listening to a podcast or a sermon that I had sent to him and said, I think I might be open to this.

That being said, no one was more surprised than me when Luke popped the question at New Year's brunch to T.J. and Bethany. So you were both married at the time of the New Year's brunch. Yeah. And did you feel any pressure as married couples for your home life to look a certain woman? way? I think culturally, I think you just assume you get married, you buy a home, you know, have a family and live like an independent nuclear kind of family unit. And so I think like that had always been my assumption of like what our married life would look like. But as Debra and I were sort of talking about buying a home and what might that look like and this was definitely

not one of the default options. What would people say when you told them that you were thinking of doing this? Like, what kind of pushback would you get? When we talked about it with other people, everyone thought it was a bad idea, including our real estate agent who actually sat down with us after we pitched the idea and said, you shouldn't do this. This is a bad idea. And, you know, his rationale was it's hard enough for two people to agree on a house that they want to buy together. I can't even imagine working with four people to find the perfect house. But we actually did find it pretty quickly. I think most people were worried about the worst case scenarios. What if it doesn't work, you're all on the mortgage. What happens, you know, when someone has kids? If it doesn't work,

how are you guys going to be able to split amicably? I got a lot of questions about what does discipline look like and like, do they even like kids? What if they don't like your kids? Those are things that I was like nervous about, but I feel like, you know, it's looking Deborah. They're going to love our kids. And if I am going to like parent for the first time in front of any like I would want it to be Luke and Deborah, you know. What was it that you wanted from your home life that wouldn't be met by the traditional single family home arrangement? And what did you hope that this would provide instead? You know, all four of us have full-time jobs. And so when you're living in community,

like we split groceries. We divide up like who's cooking and when. And, you know, there's a lot to talk out there about, you know, the domestic labor falls to one partner in a relationship. And so we divide that among four people. And neither of us on our own would have purchased this house, like financially speaking. Like we got to buy a larger property in a neighborhood that we were more excited about living in. So, yeah. I think I maybe approached this at least practically of any of us. So I, after being married to Deborah for, you know, three or four years when we started this process, I had kind of become aware of how, like, living even just with a spouse is challenging, but encouraged me to grow, to be gentler, to be kinder, to be less self-centered.

And so I was sort of thinking, like, wow, if just like living with just Deborah has done that, imagine, like, adding more people to the mix. I don't know if that's panned out quite. But the way that I thought it would doubleed in size. Doubleed in size. Luke, you become gentler and softer. Thank you. You're welcome.

That's reassuring to hear. So I actually think it makes us better people and encourages us to grow less self-centered to live in community like this. I would say I think that people often assume that we made this decision for financial reasons. And I think it was more of a missional kind of the desire to live in community and to live with T.J. and Bethany. And I thought I would be a bigger person. Like you imagine I'll be like really altruistic. And I think a lot of times I'm not. And I really have appreciated their grace and forgiveness towards me when I'm not a big person or when I don't when I'm actually like my behavior is very poor. And so there's a lot of opportunities for grace and forgiveness. And I've been the recipient of that time and time again. Yeah, I also just think it's a lot of fun. I really feel like we're not communicating how much fun we have together. Someone's always around to, like, talk to or hang out with.

You know, Julie, I'm at the age where many of my friends have serious romantic partners and a lot of them even have kids. So the time for casual hangouts is understandably limited. And if we schedule something, we can make it work. but there has been a noticeable shift in the ease of just meeting up and hanging out spontaneously. Yeah, that is something that I worry about a little bit, being in a long-term relationship myself and also having just been through a pandemic where we like mostly only hung out with each other for a few years. I don't want us to be super insular in our relationship.

And that does happen. Like married people are a lot less likely than single people to hang out with their friends and neighbors. and research shows that holds true across race, age, and socioeconomic status. So even though I don't think we're going to necessarily invite another couple to move in with us right now, I am trying to be more deliberate about spending more time with my friends regularly. Because as much as we love each other, like I don't want our love for each other to pull us away from our friendships. And culturally, sometimes it feels like it's not even very adult to want to live with your friends forever. So although it's my ideal scenario to have a huge L-shaped IKEA sectional couch where my partner, along with my 10 friends can sit together, it doesn't always feel the most realistic when it comes to a long-term living situation where I can actually live with those sort of chosen family members of mine and make a home with them.

I mean, especially once you reach certain milestones, like if you do choose to get married or if you do choose to have kids, the ex-examination. the expectation just kind of gets even stronger that you're going to live with just your nuclear family, like just your partner and your kids. Right. And the cultural and social pressures around this are just one part of the equation. In the case of these two families, they had to lay out and untangle their individual expectations and fears too. So going into this, that's what you were hoping for from it. What were you afraid of? Oh, that's a good question. We wrote all those things down. This was a suggestion from our realtor. He was like, before you guys start on this process, write down all your fears, fold them up on pieces of paper, put them in a bowl and just like pull them out one by one and talk about it. And so that's what we did. What else do you all remember about the bowl conversation? Well, we all cried. I remember that as we were reading these responses.

One of my responses was they would regret having bought a house with us, like a year in or two years in. And I just thought about how bad that would feel. I mean, I think fundamentally it was about rejection, right? Like, wow, they're going to live with me and they're going to figure out what I'm really like. And they're going to be like, wow, wish we had done a hard pass like six months ago kind of thing. Similar to any relationship where something's going to change, you, I think, worry about like, will I lose this friend, you know, Or will things not be as fun or will they be way different? And, you know, that was, I guess, one of my fears.

We talked a lot about, like, what happens if somebody really goes off the rails? Several of us have had mental illness in the family and have family members, like, suddenly, you know, go through a mental health crisis and change. God forbid, what if one of us gets divorced or what if I remember the mental health one being one that we all cried about? Yeah. What do y'all remember? remember about move-in day and the sort of weeks and months following that. Bethany was very pregnant. Oh, my gosh.

I was seven months pregnant. But I do remember during that time, we would all take family walks late at night, and I would, like, you know, nothing fit, so I was ridiculous. And Luke and Devere walk really fast, and so they were, like, just really, like, walking very, very slowly. We all walked at my pace so that we could talk. We did it every night. I remember that being an early fun time. Like we all had something that we were anticipating kind of together, getting the nursery ready and talking through like, oh, when is, you know, Bethany's mom coming, when is TJ's mom coming? When they go to the hospital, like, what are we

going to do? Just being a really, like, fun period when we all were kind of looking forward to Barry Haley's arrival and like waiting with bated breath. How did you both decide the role that you wanted Luke and Debra to play in your children's lives? Oh, what a really sweet question. I mean, well, Luke and Debra are the godparents to our children. That felt like a really obvious one. We want our children to experience like Luke and Debra and the kindness and the love that

they bring to our family. I mean, we're a family. Yeah, it's interesting living with kids because they have never known a day apart from us. And so it's just normal that they live with Uncle Luke and Debra. And, you know, Mary Haley at first called us, I was Dada and Luke was douche. Not sure how I ended up with that one. But we always joked, you know, that Mary Haley had a daddy and a Dada. But, you know, But yeah, I mean, it's just like we're just part of their normal life and they've never asked like, why do you live here? What were the discussions about parenting in this shared environment like?

I mean, I think we're all just like on the same page that Bethany and I were going to kind of parent our children how like we thought was right. And Deborah loves like a very neat space. So we have like a place in the corner. I also like a neat space. Bethanyi loves a very neat space. And I think it's really hard to do this if you don't have some kind of shared value system with another couple. Or I think you need at least some kind of shared faith system or shared non-faith system to do that. I mean, I think it's helpful for people who know like, hey, this is a strategy we're using when this happens.

We like decided early on like, you know, TJ and I will discipline our kids. And like Luke and Deborah, like, are there on? an uncle, you know, like they, like, uphold the roles. Like, they don't encourage the kids to break the roles, right? But TJ and I, like, provide the like discipline or consequences. I think that has also helped, just like that boundary. I wanted to ask also Luke and Debra, how did you feel about committing not to live just with another couple, but with someone else's kids? I think a lot of us who play the sort of ant or uncle role to our friends' kids, at least myself, I know, like, I dip in and I dip out. You know, I show up, I show them a movie, I pump them full of sugar, and I send them on their way to their parents.

But you signed on to be there for all of it all the time. T.J. and Bethany were up front that they were planning on having kids, like, from our very first conversation about this. So we always knew going in, you know, that this was what we were signing up for. But it is humbling that, like, we. actually do still have the option of dipping out. Maybe not quite to the same degree. You know, you can still hear the screaming from the bedroom, but we can actually, like, step away and have some privacy or let T.J. and Bethany deal with whatever is happening. I think we thought it would be a great adventure. And on the one hand, we did know what we were getting ourselves into. We'd been around

kids enough. But I don't think we had, like, an idealized or romanticized view of what it would be, like, to live with kids. We were not planning to have kids. We knew that. But I think we felt like this would be a good way to participate, like, in the life of kids. And our kids love them. We love their kids. We are crazy about them. They're very sweet. I think that has been, like, one of the great joys of living together is getting to parent with a community that I think we wouldn't have otherwise. I think a lot of people feel isolated in their house with their kids. And on the one hand, it is hard parenting in front of the audience, you know, and on the other. I'm so glad that we're like doing it together.

And so that has made a big difference. We have a two to one adult to child ratio in the house. And I think a lot of people would hear that and be pretty envious because it does, it provide more adults to not just in terms of safety and keeping an eye on things, but just kids are attention sponges, right? and it's nice to have more people in the house who can help, you know, kind of nurture them. And it's also really fun to hear the kids starting to use, you know, crazy words that I use or the Debra uses. And it's a privilege to get to be playing a role in, like, raising children without actually having had them. Do you eat together every night? We do whoever is here eats together.

And the kids, too. Yep. Okay. What are some of the rituals and rhythms that you've established in your house kind of week to week? Initially, we did a weekly house meeting, and we still do house meetings, not quite weekly. And I think part of that is just like we don't have the need for them as frequently as we did at first. We got this idea from another group house in D.C. They said that they do a meeting every week, and they ask, first of all, what's working and what's not working.

Everyone goes around and has to respond to both questions. like just the little things that really can grade on you or things that might be upsetting to you that might just fester for a long time. And so I think that's been a good practice for us just sort of getting things out in the open. You know, it provides a forum for that. So it could be something very small like the dishwasher isn't getting emptied until like noon and that's not working for me. Or it could be something very large like, hey, I think I'm going to quit my job and go to nursing school. Like what do you guys think? You know, it could. That sounds like a real example. Well, there were plenty of not workings that were just related to life, not necessarily. That's true. Things will come out that are not related to the house or that are related to that person's spouse. That happens. At the weekly house meeting, we also talk through like weekly logistics, who's cooking, what days are they going to cook? Are we having anyone over?

Is there a night when somebody's going to be out of the house and, you know, T.J. and Bethany need help with child care or something like that? What are some conflict management strategies in your house? Do you have specific ways that you go about it? Having like a structure for regular communication is really helpful because you don't feel this pressure to bring something up in the moment when you may or may not be ready to talk about it. Like, oh, I know we're having like a meeting and so I can just bring it up there. Many of the lessons from marriage also apply.

Things like you can't. hold someone accountable to it if you didn't say it out loud. You also have to say what's working, right? And so, and that is something I think that I also have taken from T.J. and Bethany is you say what you're grateful for, right? Like say what is working. Say what I really appreciated it when you did this. Hey, we got, we got an espresso maker. That's really working for me. Yeah. Honestly, that question, what's working, what's not working is a really hard question to answer in part because you don't want to hurt people's feelings and, you know, know, it just really forces you to talk about things that you wouldn't talk about otherwise.

I think that has forced me to be a better communicator. I have learned a lot from watching T.J. and Bethany's marriage and just the way that they communicate. And so I think that's an added benefit of living with people is that you see their life so close up and personal. And you see the way that they resolve conflict and the way that they parent their kids and all those things. And so I feel like I've learned a lot. And I think I'm a better communicator because I've lived with T.J. Bethany. Yeah. I would second that. living in community challenges you to just be emotionally intelligent, right?

Is this like a me problem or is this actually somebody said something that was hurtful or they were just like not thinking about it or but how am I feeling and why? And is it something that I need other people to help me deal with or is it something that I can, you know, process on my own? Yeah. And I think it also living in community forces you to work out your own kind of marriage in community. And there's this a infamous. night where we all sat down to dinner. We sat down and I said, you know what, Luke and I are fighting and we need some time. And so we're going to go, like, work this out. We'll be back in 15 minutes. And Bethany said, T.J. and I are fighting too. And I think that T.J. and

we're both like we're fighting. Oh, no. Well, that maybe that was the problem. So we both split up into separate areas of the house and we came back after 50 minutes and like finished dinner together. But I have no right of election. That's hilarious. I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid. And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field

in advance of midterm elections later this year to make sure their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats. We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about what might happen next. The new season of Altocracy in America,

available now. We love each other, and that love actually, like, is based on a commitment, right? And that's, I think that commitment predates a mortgage. But a mortgage is a useful, you know, symbol of that as well, right? Like, we are all committed to this. Like, we are financially on the hook in other ways as well. And so, yeah, out of that commitment comes a desire to, like, well, let's, we need to make this work. Let's, we want to make this work.

And so how do we do that in a way that's like best for everybody? I think what's kind of remarkable to me about the commitment is that friendship culture in the U.S. and maybe elsewhere today is very anti-commitment, I think. And not always in a bad way necessarily, but I think friendship is defined in some ways by its voluntary nature. You don't have those formal commitments that you have in marriage that you have in nuclear family. family. And so there can become this sort of sense of, you know, I love you and you're my friend, but the highest truth is everybody needs to do what's best for themselves. And I think it is rare that you would put an obligation onto your friend or accept an obligation from your friend. Yeah, definitely. I think I'm setting healthy boundaries. Like, I need to do some self-care. Like,

that kind of language. I think we have a kind of shared moral framework that's based on our faith. And at least to my reading, like at the heart of Christianity is like actually other centered love, that I'm choosing what's best for you, not for me. And so I think that informs our shared living and our commitment to one another as well. And there are benefits for me. But like I also, I want to love and I want to serve you and your kids and Debra. And I think that really, really is like our starting place as a house. Yeah, again, there has to be a shared vision outside of yourself or else why else would you be doing it?

There's many days or weeks where you don't want to, you want to be somewhere out. I mean, this happens to me all the time just because of my personality. Like, I want to go move to Florida because it's cold. You know, it's like, you know, I can't tell you how many times I say that in the winter. But without that shared vision of something bigger outside of you, it's not going to last more than a year or two, because, like, there's going to be something else. You know, you're going to find a reason to escape. I think it's really easy to make community like a theoretical concept. What I've learned about community through living with others, including Luke and Deborah,

is that community is like a real, like, granular thing in real life, right? Like, it's the people you're with on a daily basis. How you interact with them, it's how intentional you are with them. and it doesn't actually come naturally. Building real community is like not an ideology. It's a practice. And that goes for our house, but that also goes with my other friendships. Like, I want to have lifelong friendships outside of this house. And I have to spend time with those people

or else we're not actually close. Can you all still imagine any scenarios where one of you would want to move out or two of you would want to move out? I mean, I guess if somebody got a job, a once in a lifetime opportunity somewhere else. Something that we have talked about is that as the kids get older, they are sharing a room right now. At some point,

they'll need to not share a room together. And so would we buy a different house? Would we maybe need to go our separate ways? Like what? Initially, when we decided to do this together, we signed a three-year contract. And now we essentially, now we're past that three-year mark,

and we have a retreat every year in May, where we talk about the future and sort of what the next year looks like and what our timeline is. And so I think we just have this opportunity to revisit that every year. There's kind of a running clock on a couple of our careers. And so, I mean, we've talked about that openly. It's not like an elephant in the room or something. And how do you think you guys would approach it if somebody did want to move out?

So this was one of the things that we made sure that we really ironed out before we actually bought the house together. We would have the house, you know, independently appraised. If there's one couple that wants to stay in the house, they would have an opportunity to actually buy the other couple out. If that's not possible or they didn't, you know, the other couple didn't want to, then we would either sell the house and just split the, I think right now our equity would just be 50-50. Well, we could also, you know, rent the house out and split the proceeds from the rent as well. So one of those options. Would you recommend your choice to other people? Absolutely.

Yeah. I think they need to go through the process. Yeah, I think so too. I think you really want to, you know, count the cost. You need to make sure you're doing it with the right people. I think as long as you know you can financially trust, I mean, trust them in general, but and trust them financially, like, that's a big part of it. I think you really have to think about like, okay, can we, you know, just sort of like

the picking things up and the dishes and all that, you know, that's really a big part of living with people. Yeah, 90% of what goes on, right, is very day-to-day and very mundane. the big questions only come up like so often. When someone puts microphones in your house and ask them to you. Right. You know, I married a strong introvert who would like to be in his man cave most of the time. Luke is not the only one bearing the burden of kind of my social needs,

that there's like a whole house of people to share that. And there's always someone up for doing something, you know, or hanging out. And so Mary Haley. Especially Mary Haley, who's four. And so, yeah, that part of it, the kind of social environment, is just such a benefit, a pro of living with other people. Becca, I agree with Debra. Like, I do think you need different people to fill different roles in your life.

And Joe, my partner, has actually expressed to me that he is grateful for my work friends like you. Because when I try to tell him stories from work, sometimes, like, he doesn't know all of the characters. He doesn't really understand, like, the media industry. And so he said, you know, I'm really glad. that you have these people to talk about this with. Yeah, it reminds me of a concept called the All or Nothing marriage, which comes from the psychologist Eli Finkel. And he's kind of theorizing that people just expect even more from their marriages than they used to. Like way back when, you know, it was basically a financial arrangement, right?

And then we wanted love on top of that. And now we even want like self-actualization. on top of that and to become our best selves through this relationship. And it could be very isolating if that one person is your sort of be-all and all. Yeah, you know, I grew up in a multi-generational house as a kid and my aunt and uncle would come over every weekend. And there were lots of people meeting my emotional needs as a kid, not just my parents. So whenever I saw just two parents and a kid at a dinner table at my friend's houses, I was always interested in the sort of stark difference with my family.

That was sort of a chaotic buffet-style mess of a dinner every weekend. It sounds fun. It was. But I realized it's just a totally different setup when one person or just two people are expected to fill in the gaps of what an extended family or an extended network of people can do. It is interesting. to me that in mainstream American culture, the romantic partner is expected to be your everything. Yeah, like help raise your kids and hear all of your work stories that they don't understand and help you around the house and they're your go-to person for every concert and movie and

anything that you do. It's just a lot for one relationship to hold. It's a lot of weight to ask for from anybody. And actually, it's been shown that relying on a variety of people, to meet different emotional needs can be better for people's well-being. To get back to your earlier question, you know, there's like just on our block on this side, there's like three or four shared living arrangements, intergenerational arrangements, whether it's family or otherwise. It's actually not that weird, you know.

If I want to suss out a friend to see if they'd be down for this, like how should I broach the conversation? I think you want to make it a compliment. Like I've been thinking about living in community and wanting to do that intentionally. And when I thought about that, you were someone that I thought, wow, you would be a great person to live in community with. I mean, I think I would suggest that people like, you got to talk to your spouse first. This is what I'm thinking. What do you think about that? How do you think that would impact our relationship?

What would be great about it? Not just what are you afraid of. What have you all learned about each other along the way? When you live together, you learn who is coming down the stairs before you see them. You learn kind of their footfall. You learn that TJ lets out a large sigh every morning as he comes down the stairs, first thing. So you have that level of intimacy with people. I'll take the more depressing approach.

Right on cue. Are you sure? Yeah. Yeah, everybody in the house is shocked. even when you change your living situation, you're still the same person, right? All of the same things that I struggled with, like, living with Deborah, like, hey, whoa, they're still true. Like, I'm still me for better or for worse, like positives and negatives. Like, I think there's always that temptation, like T.J. said, to escape, to like move somewhere else,

to, like, enter a new situation and then I'll be a new person. Like, no, you're going to enter a new situation and you're going to be the same you that you always have been. And so is that the right situation to move into or not? Yeah, I think I've just learned that Luke and Debra are better people than I even thought. I don't know. Like I can appreciate them at a deeper level than I could before we live together. And even though, like, yeah, I mean, we've had arguments or disagreements. And I still think they're some of the best, most generous people that I know.

it like amplifies the good. I like the idea of like, we got to like choose our family. I don't know. It's just brought a lot of joy. And Julie, there are signs that other models of living, other than single family homes, are also becoming normalized in our culture.

Yeah, because there's something about the nuclear family household that encourages people to turn inward away from the possibility of that broader community. But if you want to have those other layers of support in your life, then it takes some really intentional planning to resist the pull of that model of home life that is really held up as the building block of society. And maybe even a hint of rebellion.

Just a hint. That's all for this episode of How to Talk to People. This episode was produced by me, Becca Rashid, and hosted by Julie Beck. Editing by Jocelyn Frank. Fact check by Anna Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smerciak. Special thanks to A.C. Valdez. The executive producer of audio is Claudina Bade.

The managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdez. I'm Ann Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered. Don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid. And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year,

to make sure their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats. We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about what might happen next. The new season of Autocracy in America, available now.