“Ohh a girl!” He said gleefully and clapped his hands in an over enthusiastic but kind of cute way. I’d moved into a massive share-house in London with six what-the-hell-was-I-thinking… men. Thank goodness a lovely German girl moved in a week later because I wasn’t sure how much testosterone and Top Gear I could take.

Living with guys is great, they’re less emotional than girls, you can grunt hello or totally ignore them after work – they won’t even notice or bitch about you. They’re easy to please and straight down the line “Take out the bin, I’ll iron your shirt – DEAL?”

I was fresh out of a breakup and I’d say clingy to a degree – I was desperate for a close friendship again and had just left anyone who knew me with a wine shred of evidence in the southern hemisphere of this cruel hearted world. Sorry, backing out of heartbreak mode now.

So I befriended one of the boys in the house – the one that had Sherlock Holmesly worked out I was indeed a girl due to the smell of ‘clean’ coming from my room. And it was great; we got drunk, we ate brunch, I had someone to email at work (because all of Melbourne was asleep shhhh). We shared a sarcastic sense of humour and a love of drunk and Friday night pizza.

Then one night, he made a pass at me, I slapped him away – the hand, not the face – I’m a gin-drinking lady thank you. And that’s when is all the Kings horses and all the Kings men couldn’t put our London share-house back together again.

The balance of friendship in the house had been destroyed. I’d love to have just swept it under the bed-bug-rug. And we did. Ooohh for all of about two weeks but things just weren’t the same – it was suddenly different, it was snappy, it was terse and don’t stand-so-close-to-me-when-I’m-cooking awkward. It culminated into a huge fight one night when I returned home, few wines to the wobbly, loudly declaring I hated London for the umpteenth-tower-bridge-time he got soberly door slamming involved. I don’t know how it escalated that quickly I was still trying to see whose food in the fridge I could drunkenly eat without anyone noticing.

Then it got worse, far internet-nastily worse. He cut me off cable – it was a bursting into tears bandwidth of an affair. I hated he’d cut me off from my Skype, my parents and my only window to home. My favourite part of all this was shouting “YOU’RE NOT GOD OF THE INTERNET” from the top of my stairs. IP’s were unblocked – apologies were made and two weeks later he didn’t even tell me – he just… moved out.

With guys and girls there’s always going to be some tension living together but far worse when you get too close. I see how a lot of this was my fault – being in that needy, new city, vulnerable broken heart time I should have gone out and found girlfriends instead, but when you’re craving that male company, nothing else will suffice.

So live with six men, live with your best friend, but by mushy-peas-please, keep that safe distance apart.

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