psycho roomate! please help

[lostinconfusion]

I know this is a forum dedicated to the matters of the heart, but I have always found good advice here and I really need some help.

So....for the last 3.5 months I have been living with 2 girls in Italy on a study abroad program. They are both my friends from school, but one i have known forever(lets call her girl a) and the other i only became friends shortly before deciding to be roommates( this would be girl b). We are all architecture majors and me and girl b have now ended up in the same design class for a second semester in a row. Even last semester, when we were all still in NY, I have noticed an insane attitude change in girl b when it came to class interaction and outside of class. outside of class she's be nice and interesting, but in class she would get passively aggressively competitive, sneaking around trying to see what i am working on (when she could just ask). She thought i didn't noticed but i knew she was crawling out of her skin to compete with me, which I tried to ignore this because me and girl A have never had such a problem even though we have been in the same design class before.

Now, after living together it has gotten completely out of control. At the start of the semester, she was fine. But as soon as school kicked in to full force, she has been creepy and sneaky. always figuring out a way to pass behind my computer in the living room to see what i am doing ( again she could just ask). Every time I start doing work, she runs and gets her computer and does work too. She sets her alarm for 5 in morning to work, and then lies about having woken up early because she just feels so productive....My other roommate, girl A is also really creeped out, because although she is not in the same design class as us here, girl b is still watching her every move too. for example me and girl A share a room, and girl b has her own room. I was actually supposed to move in there a few weeks back, as part of our rotation cycle, but i let her have it because she kept saying how much she needs her private space. well now that she has it, she always sit in the edge of her bed, right by the door with a little crack open, and we can tell she is watching and listening to everything we do.....it's finals time, and we are all very frustrated , but having this issue of the creeper makes me and girl a even more frustrates and irritated.

I don't know what to do.... there are not that many weeks left till we get to go home, but she is getting worse and worse. How do we get her off our back without starting a fight??????? please help

[doppelgaenger]

Look; when you have roommates, you don't get very much privacy. You're sharing a flat or a dorm to cut rent costs; you're sacrificing privacy for cheaper costs. Your roommates sound pretty tolerable to me. At least they aren't stinking up your apartment or collecting trash on the counter, or breeding a cockroach colony. Trust me, it could be much worse.

Since you're all friends, just tell them that you need some privacy when you're using the computer. They should respect that. Other than that, you don't really have any right to be upset that the one girl is sitting in her room with the door open. Tough titties. Sounds to me like you're just all uptight and sick of living with other people. There's not really any issues at hand.

[Lipp]

Usually it ends up with either being inclusive or to live with the current exclusive conditions, if you get along well as friends its a cakewalk, if you all-but-entirely ignore one another it's doable, it's when you are acquaintances that you see enough to annoy yourself on one another but not enough to develop a healthy living situation and often end up ganging up and focusing on petty annoyances without the means to discuss it. I used to live with two unknown chinese girls a year ago, big mistake.

By the sounds of it the best path to be inclusive is the one that I would personally take - studio time. Working together, critiquing each other's designs and creating a small-group working atmosphere can do wonders in terms of sharing interests, understanding hardships and becoming comfortable.
She looks over your shoulder? Tell her to check out whether the mezzanine floor looks good or not. Door's slightly open and there's awkward silence? Put on some music (that's why they add speakers to provide low-volume static noise in office buildings that are too silent).

[lostinconfusion]

doppelgaenger,

you obviously didn't read what i wrote. A) i don't have problem with both my roommates, ans me and my other roommate who have a problem with the third person. B) we have both shared a room with at least one other person for most of our lives, so no we are not uptight and we share our room very well for months. B) the crazy one actually DOES create garbage and smell everywhere, we have just learned to deal with it because we knew before we moved in that she was very dirty. so that's not even the issue. C) obviously you have never had a person creeping around watching your every move, there is a fine line between her wanting her door open, and her sitting there watching and listening to us through a crack....

and
lipp

We used to talk about work, but like i said when things get tough she goes nuts. her attitude towards our work here is so bad. all she ever comments about is how she is wondering what others in our class are doing and how much she hates everything. i used to always share my work with her, but she always hides hers. the atmosphere she creates makes me depressed and not want to do work, so i stopped talking to her about work.....