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What do I do about my friend cementing a relationship I know will make him miserable?
Chop Logic
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Unless you've already told him you don't care, he need never know it is actually because you don't like them together.
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Another person moving into an apartment is not a individual decision. If you really truly don't care about it (and you probably need to think about how true that is, perhaps while waiting to use the bathroom) then let it slide.
Your friend being in a relationship you don't like isn't something you can fix. Even if it were horrible, you won't be able to convince them of anything but that you're against them. This is one of those "They have to want to change" things. It sucks but I've never seen it work.
But that's the only say you get in the matter. You don't get to have interventions with your friend just cause his girlfriend is boring. He's an adult and unless she's planning to harm him or is cheating on him, then stay out of it. You're free to express your opinion that she sucks, but if you press it too hard, you'll lose a friend.
As to approaching your friend about how you think his girlfriend sucks, I think a better tactic would be to have an honest conversation with him where you simply ask how he feels about her and where he sees it going. So far it kind of sounds like you're basing everything on hearsay and off hand comments. Get him to talk about how he feels, and if he says he wants to dump her, support him in that, and if he wants to to stay together, then respect his decision.
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Maybe, maybe, maybe you can ask him why he changed his mind about her moving in, when he was set on telling her no before.
It's this and the comment about going to break up with her then after talking, not doing it that has me worried.
But I'd rather not say anything without further proof.
'His girlfriend is boring!' doesn't really qualify.
Leave it be, and be there for him if the relationship does eventually crater.
That's true enough, and I definitely concur with all of the prior advice regarding her moving in as it relates to potential living problems / rent payment problems.
EDIT: I just would want to really stress the caveat of everything @azith28 said: I would not recommend telling him what you happen to think of his girlfriend, at least not as you expressed it here. Whatever conversation you have, it probably should not have his SO as a focal point - just your concerns about being caught-up in a bad situation if for some reason his relationship with the girl ends (and be prepared for a defensive response).
It depends on the laws in your jurisdiction, but you may want to look into it because it may be like it is here, and someone moving into the apartment is not just the renters decision either.
Anyone wanting to make a rented apartment their full-time residence here also needs landlord approval (whether that person gets added to the lease or not), and it's up to the landlord to decide whether they want to do a full background and financial check or not before giving that approval.
Might be something else to look into if you really don't want this to happen.
With the apartment though, you absolutely have a say. If she's going to be moving in, that has real repercussions on you. An easy out may be bringing up that if she is going to move in, she needs to move in as a joint tenant - that means paying 1/3 of the rent, being on the lease, etc. That right there is a major commitment that may shake your friend out of it. It also means she doesn't just 'go' if they break up.
There is also a good chance that your landlord will refuse to re-write your lease w/ the same expiration or will up your rent significantly. I would bet you money that your landlord wouldn't approve of him subletting to additional tenants, and your lease probably has explicit language against that. Getting caught subletting can mean all three of you get evicted. That's a big deal.
Also, if your landlord wants to raise the cost / extend the lease, you have an out because if they bail, you're still going to be on the hook. Taking a position of 'I don't really want this, I'm not hanging my ass out for your girlfriend, so do it right or not at all' is a reasonable position.
While true, I wouldn't start spewing legalese and comment on his girlfriend if he wants to stay friends with this guy. The only case where I don't see resentment breeding is if one of them moves. Girlfriends notoriously destroy otherwise good friendships/roommates in these type of situations. This is classic.
It's not wrong to give your friend advice or share your perspective, whether it's your business or not.
It IS wrong to think you know better than your friend and believe it is your duty to save your friend from a situation that you have personally interpreted as bad.
I've also found that these situations usually work themselves out. It's often difficult - especially with regard to relationships - to prove to someone that some action they are/aren't taking are going to make them miserable. Sometimes, you have to let your friends and loved ones be miserable so they can learn and recover.
"People who aren't on the lease can't live here" isn't exactly legalese
If the goal is not to have her stay, yeah just get the constable to kick her out after a three-month eviction process. If the goal is to sensitively navigate the situation, getting your way, while not antagonizing your friend, don't threaten legal action against him (which is the same as going to the lease). My friends don't usually like that sort of thing.
Now that I think about it there's also the chance, considering how much the friend seems to be a pushover with his girlfriend (no offense), that he actually wants Chop Logic to be assertive and refuse to let her move in, so that he can avoid the situation and have Chop to "blame." Part of being a best friend is taking the heat from the girlfriend sometimes IMO...
If I were the OP, I'd go at it with all guns blazing. Otherwise, you risk looking like someone who just doesn't like her and is grasping for reasons not to live with her each time they get shot down.
1) He feel uncomfortable potentially being the third wheel in a living situation and/or also being put in the middle of relationship-type arguments.
2) He is concerned about what effect this may have on the lease and/or housing situation, because he isn't comfortable lying to the landlord, as that is too much of a risk. They will need to get her on the lease, and that will open up another can of worms, as others have pointed out, about raising rent, needing to sign a new lease, etc. etc. etc.
3) He doesn't want to live with her, period. It's not an indictment against her as a person or her character, but he wouldn't choose her as a roommate under normal circumstances (maybe he doesn't like living with women? maybe he doesn't want to deal with more than one roommate at a time? etc.), and he feels pressured into living with her now.
All of these things are perfectly valid reasons for not wanting her to move in that go beyond, "Well I don't wanna" (which should be a good enough reason, anyway). Honestly, if this is really a big deal to you, a last resort might be saying that you will move out if she moves in, and they will have to deal with the rent together. It's a pretty big move, and might risk the friendship, but it's not like he would have been all that considerate of you if she moves in after telling him all of the reasons why you don't want her to move in.
P.S. - I'd stay away from all that "but she's so boring" business. The less personal you make it, the less chance things start getting emotionally defensive.
That's BS...there is no way he's genuinely worried about getting evicted because his roommate is clearly the one violating the lease. It's a convenient weasely excuse, and a weak transparent one at that. EVEN if they do get found out by the landlord somehow, which in my experience, is extremely unlikely, it is implicitly clear that the friend will take the fault for it, not the OP. Points (1) and (3) are valid though, and might go over well depending on his relationship with the friend. Again, girlfriend + existing roommates who are already your friends = recipe for disaster, IMO. It would be a diplomatic feat of Camp David proportions to get out of this situation with no grudges held or feelings hurt on either side.
I don't know about 'evicted', but if you break the lease, they get to rewrite it, and you get to pick whether to sign it again or live somewhere else. This is a slight exaggeration because in most districts you do have some protection (IANAL), but seriously, this is not a situation where they will punish people piecemeal. The lease is a joint agreement with everyone who signs it; if any of them break it, all of them break it. I have been part of situations where shitty roommates ditch out and the landlord goes after the people they can find, so "but I didn't violate the lease!" is unlikely to fly.
He should be, because it's a legitimate concern. Most of the time it's stipulated that everyone on the lease is responsible for following the rules. It's not like one of them hiding a pot plant in his closet without the other knowing because it's extremely unlikely he could claim ignorance that the girl is living there. If he allows it, he is complicit, and he's just as culpable unless his roommate is the only responsible party listed, and if that's the case the roommate doesn't have to give any fucks what chop says if he doesn't want to.
In my current apartment complex the lease says they can evict you on a dime for whatever the hell they want to. It's not true, I looked up the tenant laws for this state, but depending on the laws where he lives and what his lease says they could all very well get in big trouble for having a third move in without putting her on there.
Even if what you are saying were cut-and-dry true (which it clearly isn't), the point still stands. Let's say that only the friend and his gf get kicked out. Now the OP has to find a new roommate or even pay the full rent on his own. Regardless, the risk of problems arising in the future is the issue, not whether or not the specific consequences are super horrible. Right now the status quo works, and it's what they agreed upon when they signed the lease. Any change or risk of change to that situation is inherently a legitimate concern for him.
In reality evicting people is a huge pain in the ass, and only worth it to the landlord if the tenant stopped paying rent or is posing some serious risk to the property and/or other tenants.
In the extremely unlikely situation that his friend gets kicked out, it should be up to the landlord to find another tenant. He can't just post-hoc terminate the lease on the OP, and the fact that they're friends has absolutely zero legal bearing on the situation. There are laws in place to (in my mind) overly protect the tenant for this precise purpose. As a result, landlords nowadays are impotent and are bound by tedious processes to get the slightest bit of legal traction. This is also why many landlords are paranoid about which tenant they rent their place to, and write these pathetically aggressive forcible-feeble leases in a sad attempt to fight the lopsidedness of tenant/landlord rights. Get the wrong guy and you're fucked.
Having lived through every horrible housing situation imaginable (police raids at 3AM, ex-con drug dealer roommates, illegal girlfriend roommate add-ons, roomate houses two of his parents in his single occupancy room for more than a month, etc) I can tell you that it is far more likely that OP will beg the landlord to kick his friend out, than the landlord taking legal action against a rent paying OP for being vaguely complicit (because apparently not voluntarily telling the landlord is a crime???) In letting the gf stay.
I stand behind my original contention, telling his friend that he doesn't want the gf to stay because of the lease is a shitty point argued in bad faith by a shitty friend. Better to be honest about his real reasons, regardless of bullshit imagined "legal" concerns. Less effort in this thread needs to be directed at solving the non-problem of entirely fictional landlord problems, and more effort should be placed on the harder real problem of just actually communicating with his friend. This pussyfooting around will only serve to build tensions and slowly erode the trust in their friendship. For the love of God, do not bring up the lease.
All we're trying to do is give the guy some options to deal with someone moving in whom he doesn't want to have move in with him.
@Chop Logic - As you can see from the responses, having an "intervention" with your friend re: his relationship is probably not a great approach. If he wants to be in a relationship, as long as it isn't abusive or something like that, that's his choice. If you want to talk to him about his relationship, then talk to him about his relationship, but don't make ridiculous ultimatums about who he can or can't date. Otherwise, at this point, the only thing you really have a say in is whether or not she moves in, since you live there already. And yes, it's perfectly fine to say that you don't like his girlfriend and that's why you don't want to live with her, although that approach may or may not make things worse depending upon your friend (e.g., if he's the type that would run and tell his gf while not breaking up with her and letting her move in anyway). Otherwise, you may well be SOL beyond moving out yourself.
Listen, you are being an asshole and also you are wrong in ways that could get someone into trouble. You should stop doing both things right now.
Sorry you've only lived in shitty college housing slums, but in the real world of grown-ups you are championing this sort of thing often does not fly. Hell, even in the "mature student" college housing I lived in they would cheerfully kick you out if they got complaints that someone else was living there with you and it turns out they weren't on the lease, or if you, say, got an indoor cat and someone noticed. These things happened to neighbors of mine while I was living there, and I lived all the way in the back away from the street and the rental office. Even if you don't have a landlord who peaks into your windows, neighbors talk and complaints are filed unless you live in a fucking slum.
Now, it's quite possible the OP doesn't actually care if his landlord finds out, and maybe it even says in his lease he's allowed to sublet. Maybe his roommate is responsible and already intends to involve the landlord in the process. We don't know. But it is really stupid and also against the rules of this subforum to sit here and argue that nothing could possibly go wrong by breaking the rules outlined in a lease, and really shitty to say that bringing it up makes him a bad friend when this could have very real and negative consequences for the OP. In the case that this is against the terms of his lease then it is a real concern and therefore worthy of being brought up. Stop posting like a smug asshole.
Ditching out is essentially not paying rent, which as I said, the only surefire way to get the landlord involved. But even then, what the landlord was trying to do is strongarm a naive roommate to pay the rest of the rent. He has absolutely no reason to kick a paying tenant out before the end of the lease. If it's a rented house and not just a room (which the OP did not indicate) then that might slightly change things.
At any rate, I'm annoyed at the dynamic of creating more problems for the OP where nowhere in his post did he indicate he was worried about the lease. I think if he had the vaguest concern that the landlord would be leery of this setup, he would have already mentioned it. These are just assumptions heaped upon assumptions with a hint of fantastical catastrophizing thrown in that is used as a platform to dispense theoretical advice to a hypothetical problem that needlessly escalates an already sensitive situation.
However, I do agree with the rest of the points made in this thread about how you should go about, you know, actually communicating with your friend.
Oh, string of utterly baseless ad hominems, I stand corrected.
I know I'm reiterating other people, but if you don't want to live with this girl you have to tell your roommate. She can't live their without your permission - if she tries, that's when you get the landlord involved regarding your lease. Either your friend will accept that or he will decide to move out, in which case its up to him to deal with his responsibilities under the lease agreement.
But if you really don't care about her living there and are only objecting to "protect" your roommate, well, that's not your job. You just need to make it clear that she must pay her share equally. That's when you want the landlord to know about the situation and discuss the implication on the lease - not to have an excuse to prevent the girl from moving in, but to cover your ass when she does.
I have to admit, I'm very curious what ended up happening.
Basically, she is moving in, our rents are going down. Our landord just raised the rent when we re-signed the lease, and now her moving in is going to take it right down to where it was before, so I am pretty happy about that.
I can't really tell how it's going to play out with her moving in, but if anything super dramatic/epic happens I'll let you guys know. Winter is coming, lots of indoor time.
I basically decided it wasn't worth being in the right but still sort of maybe kind of being a dick to my friend, if he wants her to move in, I ultimately don't mind, like this thread says I'm just worried about him.
unless I just don't get your metaphor DUDE.
Haha, I was referring to the ridiculous fear-mongering in this thread. You're good. Happy it seems to be working out!
This is a good attitude to have, I say. I recently had a friend who was dating a girl he SAID he realized he wasn't in love with along with all this other horrible stuff about their relationship, only for him to get back with her. Unfortunately, some people don't leave bad situations until they're sick and tired of being sick and tired. All we can do is support from a distance and hope they realize on their own and soon that the situation is terrible for them.