I genuinely don't understand how people stay together when they see themselves as "terrible fucking roommates". Feels like a completely different universe from the one I inhabit, where totally different properties of human relationships can exist which would never reach steady state in my filter bubble.

I sleep better alone. Wish I could at least most nights without it becoming an issue.

My dream house (kids aside—that makes an already infeasible dream even less realistic) would have my wife and me in separate bedrooms with our own separate bathroom and kitchen and a living space, then one or two shared rooms in between us.

You could probably achieve that by buying a duplex and lightly de-duplexing it to get a house with two complete living spaces which you can move between without having to go outside.

Separate bedrooms are common enough, bathrooms I can somewhat understand, but kitchens ? Why does your dream have this ?

Very different ideas of what and how to cook, where and how to store foods (especially, what goes in the fridge and what doesn't), and so on. Instead of one kitchen with both our stuff in it and little shared, we could have much more orderly separate ones with only a little duplication.

It'd be fine if only one of us ever cooked, and if either of us didn't find the other's methods and tools frustrating to use at best, but that's not the case, so here we are.

Examples: my ideal kitchen would contain a rice cooker and zero crock pots. Hers would have zero rice cookers and at least two crock pots. Mine would have at most two non-stick pans of any kind—really, I could live with just one—but several cast iron pieces, and some steel. Hers would have exclusively non-stick. I'd be entirely content with a single short built-in oven to save space. She'd want a full-size double oven. That sort of thing.

[EDIT] also, whether it's OK to leave any small appliances on the counter full-time or they must all go in cabinets when not in use. We finally, after years, compromised on the stand mixer and we're up to a 4-slice toaster now so it's just too damn big to store, but the rest...

For some reason I’m really curious to hear about the difference in refrigeration preferences.

One of us thinks that pretty much everything that's not refrigerated at the store doesn't belong in the refrigerator at home (onions, apples). The other disagrees.

you shouldn't put apples or onions in the fridge, they go bad faster. Apples also release ethylene gas which makes other produce rot faster.

One with dirty dishes laying everywhere, one neat and tidy.

I didn't want to go for the low blow, besides I hold out hope that mise-en-place and clean-as-you-go will catch on one day.

[EDIT] and actually I bet we'd both do a better job of keeping it clean, with separate kitchens.

Not the OP, but sometimes I wish that I had a separate kitchen so I could prep like I did back when we lived apart and had date nights. Candles, clean kitchen, and hot food that she hasn't been smelling for the last hour...

Buy a small duplex and knock down some walls. ;)

my wife and I aren’t much better at fucking roommates either...

Which is probably why we don’t have any right now.