The Sacred by Elizabeth Oldfield is a podcast I've been getting into recently. She strikes me as a really intelligent person and she brings on interesting guests to talk with. Her most recent episode is titled "Two Couples, One Roof" and goes into the experience that she and her husband have had living "intentionally" with another couple in the same house.
The themes of loneliness and community are ones that I've been thinking through recently. Last year the US Surgeon General declared loneliness to be a crisis and epidemic, and on an anecdotal level that rings true with what I've noticed. Because of that, one phenomenon I've been intellectually curious about is communal living like the kind that Oldfield discusses in this episode. To be clear, I'm aware that communal living is a radical idea, and as a strong introvert I'm aware of the difficulties that would come with it. For most people this is probably an idea they would never even consider and, to be sure, it probably wouldn't be a good fit for them. But that being said, my sense is that there are a minority of people this would be an option worth learning more about.
Although I've never experienced full-on communal living, our home has been an "open" one, where refugees and friends have lived in our basement for spans of 3-6 months each. While there are definitely challenges, these experiences have also opened my eyes to the benefits of proximity. Simply put, it is easier to get to know people and stay connected with them when they live nearby (or in the same space). We have never been able to stay as relationally connected to these individuals after they have moved out. The proximity principle is also true when it comes to people living on the same street. When you live in the same house or on the same street, you increase the amount of spontaneous chats and hangouts. You bump into people unexpectedly. It's easier to plan last-minute meals. You get a window into the small and random parts of another person's life, like what they eat for breakfast or what they watch on TV before they go to bed. Enough small and spontaneous interactions add up over time to develop a sort of closeness or intimacy that is hard to replicate otherwise. I'm sure many people who lived on campus or in dorms with other students in their university years got a taste of what I'm talking about.
If you're at all curious or have been thinking about similar themes, give the episode a listen. They get into some of the things I've mentioned here but are also honest about the difficulties too. They talk about resolving conflict, learning to be honest with one another, how they encourage each other and keep each other accountable in spiritual habits, even some of the very practical benefits like sharing a mortgage and sharing childcare, and other topics.