'AITA for not locking the door while my housemate was in the shower?' UPDATED

"AITA for not locking the door while my housemate was in the shower?"

Here's the original post:

I(22f) and my housemate "Lily" (22f) have been living together for a year and 4 months. Today I went to go hang out with my friends around 1PM. Lily was in the shower at the time so I knocked on the bathroom door and told her I was heading out to which she replied "okay" and I left.

When I got home she came down the stairs as soon as I was in the door and started shouting at me for not locking the door, saying anyone could have come in. She had already been in the shower for about 15 mins when I left so I figured she would only have been a couple more minutes and it never even occurred to me that someone would lock the door while in the shower anyway.

I told her that since we rarely get visitors that it was unlikely someone would have entered the house without permission in the few minutes she was in the bathroom. She said I clearly didn't respect her privacy and stormed off into her room and has been given me the silent treatment ever since (this happened yesterday).

I think she's overreacting but the fact that a usually chatty person has stopped talking to me is making me think I may be in the wrong. I asked my friends and they all think it's normal not to lock the door but they are all guys so idk if it's different. So AITA?

Edit: A lot of people are saying to always lock the door for safety. Usually she doesn't like the door locked as she goes outside to smoke a lot. When we first moved in I had to convince her to lock the door at night.

Edit 2: I think it may be important to clarify I have no problem with locking the door and will apologise later, I'm just concerned as she got more upset than I have ever seen her and I don't want this to damage our relationship. I am also going to make sure that we share all the boundaries we have so there are no more situations like this.

Edit 3: A couple of people have been confused by her attitude towards lock so I thought I would give some more context. If it were up to her the door would be unlocked all night while we are asleep so she wouldn't have to unlock it to go smoke. I have locked it when leaving while she is in the house before (earlier in our living together) and she got pissed at me for locking it while she is home

Since posting this I've overheard some of her calls and comments as she walks about and it seems like this is going to get a bit dramatic ( I've heard her talking to people about possibly getting me kicked out and also talking to what i presume is her boyfriend (I heard his name) about coming over and moving my stuff).

I thought my post was gonna be mundane so I wasn't going to do much editing of the post but if anyone is curious about what happens or has advice (The comments have taught me what i did was serious but i'm not sure I can be kicked out over it ) pls let me know.

Edit 4: May have caused some confusion in the comments. I have been reffering to it as the "front door" which to me it is. In all my groups we have always called the front door the one that you use however the door I mean is actually our back door into the garden.

The real front door is always locked and blocked by a bookshelf. I know this changes nothing I just didnt want to correct all my comments. After some new stuff I think I will make an update post soon when I know everything.

What do you think? Are you on her roommate's side or do you think the roommate is overreacting?

This is what top commenters had to say:

beansnack said:

YTA. Doesn’t matter what neighborhood you live in, you lock your door on your way out if you’re going to be gone for a while. Whether she was in her room watching netflix or especially naked in the bathroom

Confident-Dingo-5083 said:

NTA. If the door is never locked, why would this time be different? However, my two cents—I live in a high-crime city; I always keep my doors locked at all times. I think it's just the best/safest idea.

xeno0153 said:

YTA. I did my internship for a big city police department and one of my assignments was to look for trends in all the home burglaries in our district for the Watch Commander. You know what I found? In the 25-30 break-ins for the month, about 80% were during the day to homes that were unlocked.

Criminals don't smash through windows at 2 in the morning like movies would make you believe. They just walk right in when you make it easy for them! LOCK YOUR DOORS!!!!

SnooBooks007 said:

NTA. OK, so maybe it wasn't the best decision, but her reaction is a bit much.

Well, a day after her original post, OP shared this long and unexpected update:

I'd just like to thank everyone in the comments of my post for educating me on various safety issues I'd described which I will definitely be fixing ( locking the door all the time and I have already moved the bookshelf). Also thankyou for all the advice as you'll see I used a lot of it.

To catch up anyone who didn't read all the comments I added on the last post (there were so many), I got some of my friends to come over incase her and her bf tried anything. We picked apart the contracts we had and found that I was completely safe from being kicked out and that my housemate may have actually violated some terms.

Her bf did show up and they kept putting paint and boxes in my room but wouldn't speak to us and she just yelled insults as she had done when I tried to apologise. So it turns out this was a very different situation and as many of you had guessed it was not about the locks. I had to get up early and go to work this morning so all of the following crazy stuff happened in the past few hours.

I come home from work and immediately check my room as I'd been anxious about leaving it all day unsupervised (I have not yet got a lock). When I got there, my things were broken, covered in paint, ripped up etc. I took pictures and sent them straight to our landlord and emailed them to myself and friends so I had copies.

My friends were there with me so I felt comfortable going to my housemates room and opening her door to ask her about it ( I was mad but I didn't step inside her room). She wasn't there but the boyfriend was.

He was crying and told me he was so sorry and he didn't realise what he was enabling her to do when he brought her the stuff. I asked him if he could maybe calmly explain it all to me and if he would be okay with me and my friend recording the conversation. He said yes.

Apparently this WAS planned although not exactly how it turned out. but first the context for why os needed. Again as many of you guessed, she did want the bf to move in but at first was just gonna ask if I was cool with it and that would be it, he moves in and we have a new roomie, until about a week ago.

She had friends over one night (I was home but upstairs in my room) and they were getting drunk and playing truth or dare. "Lily" somehow got to asking one of the other girls (who was interested in women) if she thought her or me was hotter and the friend said me.

From that point Lily was scared to have her bf move in with me still in the house incase he changed his mind about which one of us he liked. So she waited til she saw me getting ready to leave and hopped in the shower. She had assumed that I would have locked the door and would've been able to get mad at me about it again, assuming I would argue for the door being locked.

When this didn't happen she switched up her plan (as far as I'm aware her opinion on locking hasn't changed as according to her bf she was complaining about me always wanting the door locked last night). She asked him to bring over paint (gloss so it won't come out of anything easy) but didn't tell him what it was for ( he has texts between them that showed she never told him why).

She was also letting me overhear the conversation yesterday to try and scare me out. She was going to use the paint to wreck my room as she has done then say I did it to try and make me seem crazy and unsafe to live with (that's why the paint and boxes kept entering my room as she was hoping to be able to record me moving them out).

Her bf left in the morning as well to go to work but called in on his lunch break to catch her wrecking the room. They had a big fight and apparently have broken up. He was very confused so he tried to get in contact with her friends and one or two of them spilled all of this to him ( he showed me texts to prove that he had gotten these answers from people).

Apparently she has a past of doing things like this and is meant to be on medication but IDK if any of that is true as we can only know from what the friends told us. They also said she might like unlocked doors because she has once in the past "robbed" her own stuff and claimed someone broke in before confessing. Again this is all info from the friends so I can't be certain but I have photos of all the texts.

She is currently hiding out at her brother's place. The bf only knows this because after asking around to check if she is okay, her brother's wife told him she was with them. We asked the brother's wife if she knew anything about Lily's past but she said other than the occasional episode she has been told of she doesn't know and will ask the brother when she is home.

Knowing that this could be some kind of disorder I didn't want to put too much pressure on Lily so I texted her : "Hey Lily, I have seen what you have done to my room, I'm not going to get the police involved yet but can we talk and work something out.

Maybe you help me with replacing the stuff that is broken. Also I've done some research and you are right. I should lock the door when we can't be aware of it and I think we need to discuss a new locking routine".

She responded calling me various insults like freak, whore and the f slur (I'm straight but a lot of people mistake me as being lesbian as I'm a tomboy with only guy friends).

She says I'm trying to steal her bf to add to my "collection". She is also blowing up at the bf for betraying her and using her to get to me. The bf has told me and her that he has 0 interest in me and that until this afternoon he thought she was perfect and that he loves her.

She's not calming down, or even willing to talk without insults. I'm thinking of going to the police tomorrow but she is currently saying that she will tell everyone that the bf SA her. I told her if that was true I would 100% take her seriously but I needed her to say it to me calmly so I know I fully understand what she is saying.

She said it doesn't matter if it's true cause she knows he would have of it meant he could get to me. At this point the bf started crying again and said that he would never do anything to hurt her and that the two of them hadn't even slept together yet. So I don't want to escalate things any further incase she starts making serious accusations against anyone

( usually I would believe her straight away but her recent actions, her phrasing of "it doesn't matter if it's true" and just how heated she is, I don't want to jump to conclusions. I also think it's suspicious that she said she'd only do it if we talked to the police. And who knows she could start accusing me and my friends of things too).

The friends that ratted her out also warned that me and the bf should go places she can't find us as she has in the past assaulted them and tried to hit an ex with her car. The bf is going to hang out at his mates and while I won't be hiding anywhere, multiple friends will be staying with me over the next few nights as we try and work all this out.

Thank you to everyone who's read and honestly whether you said NTA or YTA or whatever most of it has been educating. If anything major happens I'll update more and from the sounds of her past it probably will but hopefully not. This has been a crazy experience and its not even over but I think a big lesson learned is safety first, lock the door.

Lock your doors, folks!