We are staring down into the dark maw of the toilet drain, a hole in the floor of a bathroom whose cream tiles and unnecessarily ornate wall sconces evoke a Palm Springs Olive Garden. It’s the one toilet in our brown box of a New Mexican adobe, a house dressed up by the former owners like a pig in lipstick. As we—the three friends and I who bought this house and its three-acre orchard together—discovered during the three-plus years we have lived here, behind every carpet, wall, and toilet was something broken.
In the kitchen, when we tore out layers of cement and stucco to raise the ceiling, 1,500 pounds of dirt poured down on us and we found a meat cleaver in the wall. Below the bathroom, tree roots ate into the old clay pipes and we had to cut the roots back again and again with a writhing metal drain snake. And still the toilet overflowed constantly. Shit was coming to the surface.
The reality is—physically and metaphorically, both when it comes to owning a house and being in relationships with other humans—you don’t know what lies beneath. You don’t know what roots are already established that will refuse to stop growing. You don’t know how hard it will be until you just do it. And sometimes, despite best intentions, you can never fix what’s wrong with the plumbing. You may have to replace all the pipes—and it might not be worth it.
In 2021, I took out a mortgage on a house near Santa Fe, NM, and in good faith agreed that my friends owned it, too. We shared the down payment, each paying $7,000. We didn’t get a formal partnership document signed until two years later, when a fourth partner joined. And now I have decided I want to leave. We are in the middle of, effectively, a divorce.
I went into this experiment in community because I no longer wanted to do life alone—the big, hard stuff, and the day-to-day mundane stuff. The pandemic shone an uncomfortably bright light onto the shadows of my life, illuminating the places where I was struggling. In 2020 I was 37, single, living alone, and deeply lonely. I had a successful career that was starting to feel less like a life calling and more just a thing to do to make money. I was trying polyamory as a way to deal with my commitment phobia, even though my heart was longing for partnership.
But it wasn’t just that marriage and kids had eluded me. I didn’t really want them, at least in any traditional way. I didn’t have a roadmap for how to build a life with others that didn’t follow our society’s prescribed formula of success: get married, buy the family home, have children, pass on generational wealth. Over pandemic Zoom calls I shared this sentiment with many friends, and I could hear the longing from just about everyone—married or not—to live closer to one another, buy property, live in nature, pool resources. However, no one could figure out how to actually do it or wanted to take the risk.
Of course, communal living is happening all over the world. As humans, we have lived together in tribes or villages for the majority of human existence and still do in many cultures. And there are beautiful examples of intentional communities of all kinds, many started in the 1960s and ’70s as a backlash to the status quo. Now, again, many of us are longing to step out of the machine of late-stage capitalism and confining mainstream definitions of relational and financial success.
Even though I am leaving a community that didn’t work for me, I still absolutely believe in unconventional ways of sharing life, sharing resources, and providing support, love, and care for one another. In fact, I think it’s vital. In a time of deep loneliness and isolation—which fuel fear and anger—it is a radical act to choose to be together, especially when our economic systems are not friendly to shared resources and communal land/property partnerships.
There were so many beautiful moments of togetherness in the last three years. Sunsets in the orchard, eating peaches right off the trees. Quiet mornings all writing together on the couch as the dogs snored in between our legs. Birthdays, Christmases, trash TV, being sick together, and healing each other through heartbreak and grief and deep existential questioning.
The safety and support of our community allowed me to grow into a version of myself who understands much more fully who I am and what I want. I jumped full force into something that wasn’t ultimately right, and even though it is wrenchingly hard to leave, I would do it again.
I can understand why my closest friends—scattered throughout the country—were wary when I told them I was going to saddle my money, credit, and life to a married couple I’d known less than a year who were in the midst of big shifts in their own relationship. In 2020 I was finally coming out of a heartbreak over a man who I had fallen wildly in love with during the three months he—wanderer, nomad, rock climber—spent in Santa Fe.
“This is it,” I thought. “I moved to the desert, I have my dream job, I met the love of my life. I can finally have what society tells me will make me happy.”
Of course, it’s fairly delusional to imagine an entire future with a man you’ve known for three months, but that was my disorganized attachment style talking—and also a deep and very real desire to share life with someone.
I took it as fate that I met my future property partners—at an early pandemic barbecue—just days after I had found a Zillow listing for what seemed like the perfect property: 10 acres, three houses, plus a teepee. At the time I had started looking at properties, hoping I could convince my parents to go in with me. But my parents—who had moved to Santa Fe to be closer to me—didn’t want to live outside of the city and didn’t have the energy or desire to undertake the kind of scale of renovation and building I envisioned, with an eye toward an eventual artist residency.
My new friends came with me to see the property, and our dynamic was easy and comfortable. We didn’t get that property—it would take six more months to eventually find the One—but over margaritas, we all decided: What the hell, let’s join our lives together. I trusted them. There was clarity and care in their communication—with me and with each other. I trusted that their relationship wasn’t going to fall apart (and it didn’t).
But in my impatience to start living the life I wanted, I didn’t want to rock the boat with uncomfortable questions about the seriousness of what we were doing, how we planned on handling conflict, relationship changes, priority changes, financial decisions. I forged ahead trusting it would work out simply because we wanted it to.
My new friends wanted to buy a house, but, like so many millennials and members of Gen Z, they faced the realities of living paycheck to paycheck without the ability to save, and a history of renting and freelancing that tend to make mortgage companies balk. I had a good paying job with Meow Wolf, an immersive art company. When I moved to Santa Fe in 2018 for that job, I had bought a condo. I refinanced that condo and had some extra cash. Real estate is one of the few ways those of us not born into generational wealth can get into the game. You just have to, you know, get in.
I took out a mortgage, as well as about $150,000 in construction loans. We paid the mortgage equally, and I took on a higher amount of the loan payments. I know my partners felt stretched to the limits of their financial capacity. And yet there were always expenses arising that we had to cover: a new well pump, repairs to the gas heater, someone to prune the trees. Often we would share the costs, but sometimes I would just cover it.
The imbalance in financial power was always a silent factor. My partners were afraid I would get frustrated with something and take the property away from them since, in the eyes of the bank, it was mine. I was afraid they might not be able to afford the payments and there would be no recourse—I would simply be saddled with massive debt. We walked a tenuous tightrope of trust that never really found equilibrium.
The beauty and possibility of the property made the hard things worth it for a long time. The property was two separately deeded lots, totaling three acres. The front lot had an existing main house, a large garage, and a one-room studio built by the previous owners onto the exterior of the garage. There were two mobile home hook-up sites with electric, water, and gas, where we imagined building tiny houses or having vintage trailers. There were dozens of trees, from non-native towering sequoias to flowering black locust, lilac bushes, roses, and an acre-long orchard full of apple, pear, plum, cherry, and peach trees. The back lot of the property contained a large pond, mature cottonwood trees, and room to build more structures.
In a time of great uncertainty in the world, we felt grateful for the abundance of water and food available on this piece of land we were lucky to steward. Of course, it was never-ending work to try to keep all of the trees healthy and alive, cut back overgrowth, shore up fences, repair water lines, learn the intricacies and interpersonal dynamics of the community water system, not to mention clean up the poop from four dogs.
When the three of us first moved out to the property, two of us lived together in the main house, cooking together, shopping, cleaning, and more intentionally sharing life. The third lived in the studio. But the goal was always that each of us would have our own full houses and that a fourth partner would join us eventually. So we spent the first year converting the studio and garage into a house for me, and we bought a 1961 short bus to turn into a tiny house. Then we built a full detached bathroom for the trailers to use, renovated the main house kitchen, and rehabbed a 1960 Airstream trailer.
I loved building and working together to turn something ugly into something beautiful. I was also wildly impatient, running full steam toward the finish line on every project, even though everything took three times as long as we thought because we were teaching ourselves at the same time. At first I didn’t mind working more hours and spending more money because I had a salaried job, so I wasn’t worried about taking time away from freelance work. And I had more money to spend. I just kept track in a spreadsheet of equity I was accumulating in the property.
Eventually, though, I started feeling resentful. I wanted to be met with a full “fuck yes,” and that wasn’t available energetically or financially. I could either work less and accept a slower pace, or I could keep charging forward with unequal fervor. I sprinted and finished my house. But when I moved into it, I felt even more alone.
Over time, the closeness of my partners’ relationship—even as it shifted dynamics—ultimately made me feel like the third wheel. I never truly believed that my needs could be prioritized over a long-term couple’s allegiance to each other, even if that was my own wounds surfacing. And once another partner joined, it intensified my feeling of being on the outside. My deep longing was to be met in partnership, but I had ended up out of balance in terms of relationship hierarchy, as well as the money and power dynamic.
Differing priorities around communal spaces and privacy became amplified. I mourned the loss of closeness with the others and didn’t know how to ask for what I needed. Conflict around shared work, money, and values intensified, and I didn’t have robust enough tools to work through them effectively. As we all got deeper into places of disagreement, I felt like we fell into unhealthy communication patterns and fear so calcified there was no way through.
Now we are staring into a different unknown together. Though we have an agreement about how one of us might leave the property, it’s not clear if the other three will be able to get the money together to buy me out. They are terrified of losing their home, and I am terrified of losing thousands of dollars. The financial inequity that initially made me want to give more, take on more debt, now makes me contract into self-preservation.
I walk out to the pond, which in the summer is one of my favorite places on Earth. The surface is crowded with lily pads, and hummingbirds dip into the bursts of pink, yellow, and white flowers. I can sit for hours watching frogs climb from pad to pad and searching for the one turtle that sometimes hoists up on the log. I feel a deep sadness that this place will disappear to me soon. My dog, Gravy, sniffs in the leaves—remnants from fall when the massive cottonwood trees turn fiery yellow. Soon I will take Gravy with me to Los Angeles, where he won’t be able to run free with his little dog pack.
But as much as I feel deep peace and aliveness alone by the pond, the freedom I hoped to feel here at the property never came. I keep leaving New Mexico to feel more alive—to meet lovers, to train in sacred sexuality, to deepen my spiritual practice. Home has felt like a place where I must contract in order to fit in. I want wild love with all the closest people in my life. I want shared ritual, ceremony, intimacy, vision, and practice. I want a romantic primary partnership, and I want to learn to be in partnership inside of the community.
I made too many concessions against what I really wanted and needed, just so I wasn’t alone. Now I feel much more ready to be alone, together. I’ve learned to slow down and have the hard conversations first, even if it means the answer might be: wait for the right one.
Questions I Wish I Had Asked Before Entering into Shared Home Ownership:
1. What are our existing relationship dynamics? What hierarchies exist and how will we work within those? What happens if those dynamics change?
2. How much time is each of us able to contribute each week to the property? If someone is working more, do we want to pay them/give them equity? How do we plan on accounting for our time?
3. Will we have set chores/tasks that each of us takes responsibility for each week/month/year? How will we keep ourselves and each other accountable? What happens if we’re unable to do our chores?
4. What rituals/routines/ceremonies/celebrations are important to us? How often do we want to come together?
5. How do we want to view our living spaces? How much privacy do we each need? What spaces do we want to share communally? How do we share the caretaking of those spaces? What responsibility do we each have for the upkeep of our own spaces and communal spaces?
6. What happens when life happens? How do we plan for sickness, mental health crises, work changes, financial changes, or long-term travel away from the property? What will happen in the case of expenses beyond the budget of any of the members?
7. What are our views on sexuality? How do we want to communicate to one another about dates/lovers coming to the property? What boundaries might exist about hearing sex happening? How open will we be about nudity?
8. How important is it that we work together on projects? Can we set time each week to do things or is it better to work separately? How will we stay updated about project needs, progress, and timelines?
9. How do we each prefer to communicate? How can we compromise or support different needs?
10. What happens if someone wants to leave the property? (I highly recommend working with a lawyer to determine how equity is accrued and how a buyout will take place.)
11. What is the near-term, mid-term, and long-term vision for our property? Are any of these goals deal-breakers for anyone (i.e., if we don’t do XYZ, I won’t want to stay). What happens if this vision changes? How will we keep evolving over time?
12. How do we tend to show up in conflict? What are our triggers? What are any patterns we might have in relational dynamics? How can we support each other, challenge each other in helpful ways to grow, and work together to co-create a healthy community dynamic?
Money Stuff
If I were to do this experiment over again, I would look into options for a Tenants in Common mortgage. Though these are still pretty rare in the U.S., there are some banks that offer them. We also could have tried to find a private lender, establish a land trust, or establish a business entity like an LLC and have the LLC take out the mortgage.
For more information on financial models, I recommend taking the class Legal Basics for Forming Communities with Cliff Paulin, attorney at law, through the Foundation for Intentional Communities, ic.org.
Photos: Joanna Garner
