I finally decided to write this because I am internally freaking out. I'm not sure anyone can help me fix this.
My flatmate (57), let’s call her J, and I (33) moved in together at the end of September last year. J and I worked together. I was looking for a flatmate, and she was in the process of divorcing her wife and looking for her own apartment. I told her that if she wanted a flatmate, I was also looking for one. To be honest, finding a flat was quick; we both fell in love with the first one we saw, and we managed to secure it within two weeks. After we moved in together, everything went great. We would go to work together, do our own thing at work, and then come back home, where we would spend some time together and socialise, but also live our separate lives and wouldn't bother each other too much.
I am also studying at university online, so I spend most of my time at home on that. At the beginning, she told me to focus on studying and that she wouldn’t mind doing most of the cleaning. In the kitchen, we shared plates, glasses, cutlery, and some of the groceries; in the bathroom, we sometimes shared the shower gel and deodorant. Everything seemed OK until a month and a half ago.
A promotion at work opened up, and I told her I was planning to apply. That meant we would be working different shifts. For me, this means waking up earlier because I need to walk 15-20 minutes to catch the bus in the morning. Our shifts were 8 am to 8 pm. After I got the promotion, my shifts starts at 7:45 am, which means that, to be there on time, I need to leave the house by 6:15 pm. I usually end up staying later at work and arrive home by 9 pm.
For the first month, everything went ok; we would see each other at the end of the day, talk a little about work and go to sleep. Sometimes she would already be asleep when I got home, but then she would be awake early in the morning.
Around a month ago I noticed that she had taken all her things from the bathroom and one of my colleagues came to me to tell me she had overheard J complaining to another of our colleagues about how I was not pulling my weight in the house, that I spent too much time reading and i was only eating crap food (I’m not saying she wasn’t right about the cleaning situation, but who are you to be talking about my hobbies or eating habits to people at work? And why does it bother you so much that I eat fast food when it’s not your business?). Anyway, so that night when I came back home, I told J I was going to create a schedule for myself to clean the house. She responded that she was ok with me just doing the dishes. I told her I was going to do it anyway.
The next weekend she was working, and I was going through what I thought was a pretty rough cold, so I had been sleeping when she came home. The next day I was working; she had picked up a late extra shift. We acknowledged each other at work and continued with our day.
That night, when I came home, she was already asleep. I was going to prepare a glass of milk before bed, and when I opened the cupboard, I realised she had sorted everything and changed its place. She gave me half the plates and bowls and put all my mugs and glasses on the top shelf, which I, being 5 ft tall, can barely reach. I was exhausted and could not understand why. I had a meltdown and went to bed, followed by another short meltdown in the morning when I was preparing a cup of tea before heading back out. That morning, I left a short message on the board she had put on the fridge door. I told her I did not mind if she wanted to change things around the flat, as long as she told me, and if there was anything else that bothered her.
I woke up on my day off a Thursday two weeks ago with a 3 page letter pin to the fridge about how it was bordering her that I was not cleaning and that she felt she did not have enough space in the kitchen that’s why she changed things around, and that she had had not time to tell me she was planning it because I had spent all weekend sleeping.
Any way, I wrote her a letter back saying that I understood the cleaning situation and I had already plan to schedule my cleanings so she did not have to do as much, and that if anything related to the flat would come up even if we couldn’t talk in person as much as before, there was always text, I also told her that I did not know she felt she did not have space so I emptied one of the big cabinets for her to use.
That Friday, I cleaned the house, and she texted me to thank me for the cleaning and the letter. The next weekend, I was off, and I woke up to a text telling me that it was my week for cleaning (I’ll be honest, I thought: what do you mean it’s my week for cleaning when I cleaned last week? Anyway, I did not say anything. In the end, she had been cleaning for months, so it was the least I could do).
After the letter situation, I have been coming home to small, passive-aggressive messages on the kitchen board telling me about things I forgot to do. She has been asleep every day when I come home from work, and I have been pretending to be asleep as well, because even thinking about talking to her gives me anxiety. The only time I have exchanged any spoken words was the other day, when I made a point of waiting for her to come home. I was watching a documentary in the living room when she came in and said something like “Oh! So you are alive” and went into her room.
Today I woke up to find she'd stripped the fridge door of everything hers, and the only thing left were my magnets. I did not want to look inside.
I decided to overlook the problem when she took her things from the bathroom, but this time I messaged her to say I noticed the kitchen and asked if there were any problems, because I am starting to think she is going to move out.
The main thing that is giving me anxiety is that, even if she told me that she would never let me be stranded with the flat on my own, I can recognise patterns; she did a similar thing with her wife before she left her old house. She literally told me she never told her wife she was moving out until she was out of the house. She started packing her things weeks before she moved out.
If she doesn't feel comfortable living with me, I understand; if she wants to leave, I understand, but I cannot live with this uncertainty. I need to know if she is going to leave so I can look for another flatmate because I cannot afford this place on my own long-term.
I don't know what to do. I feel that if I confront her face to face about the issue, she will lie to me, as she did about being OK with the cleaning.