Is the Future of Domestic Happiness Buying a House With Your Best Friend?

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Six months ago, Ayesha Rascoe, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday and The Sunday Story, bought a house with her best friend, Jasmin Melvin, also a journalist. Rascoe and Melvin had met as undergraduates at Howard University, and then both landed internships at Reuters after graduation. Over 15 years of friendship, while building their careers and families, they’ve seen each other through a lot.

Both women had recently gotten divorced and had been struggling with the financial and logistical strains of single motherhood; Rascoe has three kids, aged 12, 9, and 8, and Melvin’s kids are 10 and 7. Rascoe explained, “Both me and Jasmin were trying to figure it out by ourselves. I was paying thousands of dollars for a nanny — more than my mortgage. These kids have to be watched! I was bringing in my mom and my sister when I could. Jasmin was not leaving the house, working at home and never going out. And it was like, Well, why don’t we try to do this together so we can help each other?”

So they embarked upon a new chapter as co-owners and co-parents, entering into a domestic partnership between friends the likes of which remains vanishingly rare, despite divorce rates steady at 50 percent, the price of real estate and child care increasing year over year, and a rapidly accumulating abundance of data showing that the heterosexual nuclear family continues to fall very short of an equal partnership. I know women who daydream about living with their best friends; a few times a year, an article about a commune of retired besties will predictably make the rounds. But what’s it like to actually do it? I spoke to Rascoe over Zoom about their blended household, financial risk, and what it feels like to live with someone who wants the best for you.

So, six months in, how’s it going? 

One difference that I notice is that Jasmin and I don’t have the power struggles that exist in a lot of heterosexual relationships. I know we all pretend that since it’s the 21st century, nobody thinks about these things anymore. But there are all these expectations on women and men that I think can make cohabitating and trying to raise a family together difficult.

I think still, most men are not raised to cater to women and their careers. But many women learn instinctively to be so grateful. You see stay-at-home moms where it’s like, “He pays for everything so I do everything for him.” As someone who was the main breadwinner, that was not my experience.

There remains a breadwinner’s double standard.

Absolutely. You are expected to immediately come home as a mother. You could be interviewing the president and it’s still like, “Why the house ain’t clean?” I will say, my ex was extremely hands-on. But I don’t think he could make sense of being the caregiver as a role that mattered as a man.

With Jasmin, there isn’t the romantic element of, “Do you love me? Do you still care for me?” We just divide up the tasks, right? Jasmin doesn’t want to cook, so I cook. She helps with homework — that’s not my thing. She’s more of a morning person. She’ll take them to school. I pick them up. She does the laundry; I do the groceries. Obviously we’re mindful of the other person’s needs.

Can you trust each other to remain pretty fair even when you have to play it by ear sometimes?

Yeah. It’s like, “Girl, go do your thing. I’ll stay here with the kids, and then tomorrow let me go do my thing.”

I first heard you and Jasmin talking about buying your house on the Brown Ambition podcast, and something you said stuck with me: that you weren’t especially interested in, or motivated by, making a perfect financial arrangement. Can you elaborate?

This isn’t a good setup if you’re the type of person who has to account for every dollar. Say I don’t get my full, maximum investment out of this house. That’s not something that really bothers me. I look at money as a way to get things that fulfill my life or that help me. Even if I don’t get all the money out of it, it’s like, But I had this time and this house where this worked for me, and that’s what I really paid for, right? I paid for peace of mind and a home. You want to get a good investment. But I feel like if it’s paid for, that’s water under the bridge, and we’re gonna keep it movin’. Obviously, you have to be responsible about saving for your retirement and all that. But I’m willing to pay a cost to have the life that I want. That’s more how I look at it versus Am I going to get every single dollar back?

I find it really interesting the way you frame this choice as something that will last as long as it lasts — and the fact that it might not last forever will not mean that it failed as a plan. I feel like the institution of marriage has conditioned us to think of “forever” as the only measure of success for adult choices. 

When we started talking about buying together, I was saying, “But what if I lose my job?” [Editor’s note: As of this month, NPR no longer receives any federal funding.] And she was like, “Girl, we’re not even gonna talk about that. We’re gonna think, like, What if you get a job over in L.A. and it’s amazing?” She was like, “Then we would sell the house and we would do what we had to do. Or if you found this wonderful man? Then we’ll figure it out.” We both want what’s best for each other, right? We’re not looking at this like it will be forever, necessarily, because our lives may change. But for right now, this is what we need.

It’s a risk I’m willing to take. But you know, everything in life is a risk. If I met a man and I fell in love, in two or three years I might marry this man, buy a house, join our whole lives together, and no one would think anything of it. If I met a man and had another baby, everyone would be like, “Yay!” And that’s not a risk?

I’ve known Jasmin for 15 years. If we end up selling this house, unwinding a house could have some difficulties, obviously, but it’s still not as complicated as unwinding a marriage and kids. Jasmin can’t come for my 401K. I’m not going to be paying her spousal support. You can just sell a house. Anyway, if I’m going to take a risk, let me take a risk on Jasmin. I know Jasmin like that.

What do your kids think about their housemates?

They’ve grown up with each other from the beginning, so they know each other like the backs of their hands. But it is an adjustment for them. And I mean: It’s five children in the house. We have the drama of, like, “Oh, this person is trying to be like me,” or “Why did they get something I didn’t get?” I think for me, what I love to see the most is that even though they argue like cats and dogs, they cannot stay away from each other. They are on each other. They’re with each other. They can spread out — there’s room! But they’re all laying on the couch together, arguing, kicking each other, and they’re still together. I think it’s great for them to be able to learn how to live with other people and to be thoughtful about other people.

What’s something unexpected about combining households with your best friend?

So you have this friendship. But when you live with them, you see them as the professional. You see them when they’re frustrated and trying to get work done. You see them as the mom. You see them trying to date, like, you see all these different sides of them. And I don’t mean to be cheesy, but you think, She really is a good person, right? Like, when I see her helping the kids with their homework, she’s so patient. I’m not good at that, you know? There was a dance recital and the kids needed to practice. Jasmin got up and, like, did the dance with them! I’ll see her out on a Saturday or Sunday morning practicing soccer with my daughter — I’ll see it on the security camera while I’m working inside — and I’m like, Look at my co-parent! You know, this is why this person is my best friend.

Follow Ayesha Rascoe and Jasmin Melvin’s co-habitation on their new shared Instagram account, @under1roofff.