Ignoring the advice, or at least the worried looks, from family and friends, nine years ago my wife and I bought a house in Castle Rock with her brother. Everyone was alarmed, but shouldn’t have been surprised. My wife and I were engaged three weeks into dating and married eight months later. We’re quick to cohabitate.
And the benefits were substantial: At a healthy discount on what we planned to spend, we could get the neighborhood we wanted and three times the house. We had tapped into a realty secret — above $175,000, every dollar gets you $1.25 of value. And we were excited about the opportunity for our kids, grade-schoolers at the time, to form a tighter bond with a beloved uncle.
Still the risk of failure loomed large. None of us wanted to mess up a great family relationship, or lose our shirts on a forced home sale if differences became irreconcilable. The meltdown seemed inevitable to most. We were five years into it before my co-workers’ questions shifted from “How’s it going with Mark?” to “How’s Mark?”
Time has proved our genius. We saved a bundle of money, in mortgage, utilities and upkeep. The kids got variety in their male role models — the loving, bookish introvert whose only contributions to maintenance and upkeep are doing the dishes and vacuuming; and the hunter-woodsman man’s man who capably does-it-himself and has never called a pet by its name.
To boot, their mother’s lot improved too. Not only did the home-improvement projects on her list get done, so did the dishes. Neither were we men left out, always a playfriend ready to throw the football, and a deciding veto on the latest essential furnishing upgrade.
The decision to housepool was precipitated by sticker shock. Compared with the Minneapolis market we left behind, Denver prices were half again as much. We believed in the stay-at-home mom, but it wasn’t possible as a single-family owner.
Uncle Mark, too, is a believer in mom-on-demand services: dinner on the table, the kitchen put back together in his wake, and occasional match-making with a nice girl. He was also the one-man gang who finished the walkout basement that became his living quarters and built the spacious deck that is now our preferred entertaining space.
At various times we each felt like we were getting the short end of the stick; and yet the net result of all the imbalances is sound economics and a happy home.
So are we the vanguard of the new interfamily commune, the next stage of (Western) societal evolution where the extended family is brought under one roof to raise the children and halve the fixed costs of living?
That depends. How many men are compliant enough to suffer silently another man’s idiosyncrasies, slovenliness and testosterone? It takes a real man, a real flexible man, to zip his lip instead of defending his honor and running the risk of ripping the relationship asunder.
I’m afraid we have a one-of-a-kind situation, only possible with two milquetoast men who bend, always bending, always compromising the way no man should have to in his castle. Housepooling requires an unseemly amount of empathy and tolerance, in the one place where a man should be able to bluster freely and safely pretend to know everything of any consequence. I could never recommend it.
Marriage is all about a man’s greatest challenge: neutering his primal selfishness and forgoing his desire for constant accolades. If you’re intelligent enough to take the long view and see how these concessions are vastly outweighed by the benefits, you stay married. But now are you prepared to do it all over again — can you double your burden, and this time with another man?
“Save, for college and rainy days and retirement.” “If you don’t have the cash, you can’t afford it.” “Keep mom at home for your kids’ first 15 years.” My wife and I proudly preach this family financial gospel. But coming from someone with half-priced housing costs, it’s like reading a self-help manual written by a trust-fund baby.
Cheap words and deceptive parenting, if our housepooling — the only reason we can practice what we preach — will be impossible for our kids. If they have no chance of finding (or being) the flexible in-law, then not only must they accept red as the color of the modern family’s bottom line, they’ll be saddled with guilt for failing to live up to our impossible financial standards.
I’d sit them on the couch and warn them now, but I don’t want to risk offending my man-mate.
Post script: Mark began dating a Realtor. We should have seen it coming, broken it up before it was too late. Now he has his own place, and we are a traditional family once more. My wife is working part time.
Allan Harris is a finance manager and novelist. Reach him at apedroharris@yahoo.com.
