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I rather agree with the comment about never moving in with your best friend. College dorms are one thing - roommates have very little actual responsibility in that context. However, moving into an apartment is quite another, and I happened to have someone who seemed to be under the impression I was the renter and she a paying guest, although we had co-leased the apartment. Part of it may be my fault, for I had known her for quite a long time, and I don't keep a good track of "who spent what". In a friendship, (so I believed) spending will equalize at some point, and there's no reason to make a deal about it.

However, as the first months of our lease wore on, I found that I was doing most of the paying for decorating, furniture shopping, and general setting up. Her ingenious argument was that "because she was never around" I ought to be the one to pay for the furniture. When I balked, she would accuse me of being cheap and unhelpful. Well, I did balk, and things went downhill. She refused to put furniture into the living room, and refused to let me do so.

Because it was a common space, she would veto everything I wanted to put into it, but never use any of the space herself. This girl was capable of depriving herself of comfort or happiness for the mere fact of being able to cause me some discomfort. She would play loud music in the corridors when I was working, insult my friends, and make scenes in front of them. Whenever I would get in late from a night of working (I keep odd hours) she would lay in wait for me with some minor grievance or other. She took great objection to my boyfriend, and blamed him for my "changing towards her." Nothing of the sort - I had been seeing him even when I lived with her in the dorms, and she seemed perfectly alright with it then.

Worst of all, the room she occupied had control of the airconditioner/heater, and she would keep the room at a hideously warm temperature (or horribly cold when she wasn't in) and forbid me from entering it to modify the temperature. I had no iea where all this was coming from - I tried to talk to her, but she would either counter with an unrelated grievance of her own, or simply refer vaguely to "how I had changed."

Be warned - living as apartment roommates might bring out things in your friend that you never thought existed. Even if it seems like the greatest idea in the world - don't do it. Little hidden jealousies, living quirks you never thought he/she had, and other such things can be fanned into a flame by the experience of living together. It is almost better to pick a roommate off Craigslist, or room with someone you know only distantly. You can start afresh, set new rules, and if things do go wrong, you have less invested emotionally in the relationship.

Cheerio, and good luck on hunting for/moving into apartments!