Alicia (names have been changed), a single mother, waited a year and a half after her divorce before even entertaining the idea of romance. "In my mind," she says, "it was like, I'm never dating again." Like many women in her situation, she was adjusting to downsizing her home, navigating co-parenting, and catering to the emotional needs of her young children.
She met Frank, another single parent, shortly after moving into the same apartment complex, and the two began a friendship that revolved around their kids' playdates and neighborhood hangs, meetups on the playground, grilling in the courtyard, that sort of thing. There was nothing flirtatious between them, though Alicia admits she sometimes wondered why that was the case.
"I think I got to the point where my defenses were down, and my judgment wasn't fully intact," she explains. "I had just turned 40 and resigned myself to the fact that I wasn't going to meet someone unless it was a neighbor or through a friend."
Her situation with Frank changed quickly, however, when he moved out of the apartment complex. He called to ask her out on a date the very next day. "He said that he'd been attracted to me since we first met," Alicia says. "And that he'd just been nervous to make a move because we were neighbors."
She agreed to the date, and immediately, the sparks began to fly. One kidless night turned into three, and by the next weekend, Frank suggested that he and Alicia take the kids on a weekend trip to the Florida Keys. "The next thing I knew," Alicia adds, "I was in a full-throttle relationship."
The two began spending all their time together, with and without kids. Frank love-bombed Alicia with sweet words and affection, saying they were soul mates, that she was the best woman he'd ever met, and that he couldn't stand to be apart from her in their separate homes. Within four weeks, he said, "I love you."
"It didn't seem like a red flag at the time," Alicia says. "I justified in my head that it seemed like a natural progression of our friendship. We knew each other."
At the time, Frank had moved into a dilapidated houseboat that his brother purchased for him, insisting that he was planning to restore the vessel and that the "pirate's life" had been a lifelong dream. Despite those claims, he stayed at Alicia's place most nights. "We were in the honeymoon phase," she says. "He was so delightful at that point."
Two weeks into living on his houseboat, Frank sat Alicia down and suggested that he and his child move in with her and her kids. "He told me he wanted to do the finances right and that he wanted to be a family."
They were together all the time anyway, she says, so Alicia enthusiastically agreed. Within days of the conversation, Frank sent his first month's rent, packed his things, and moved in. "That's when things quickly turned sour," she says.
According to Alicia, her formerly loving and romantic boyfriend peeled a mask off once they were officially under the same roof. He became controlling, verbally abusive, and adversarial. At one point, there was confusion with his child's visitation schedule, and Frank's ex-wife confronted Alicia, saying, "You idiot. He's just using you. He's on Hinge. He's on all the apps."
Alicia dismissed the comment as the aggression of an angry ex, but she and Frank continued to fight on and off. During a particularly bad blowup, Frank allegedly said, "I'm using you for a place for my son to stay because I can't take him to the sailboat." Later, when they made up, he claimed it was only said in anger.
The cycle of fighting and making up went on for six months, but Frank stopped making financial contributions to the home after that first payment. "He kept telling me he was waiting on a big payment from a client, saying he was owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, but right now, money was tight." She let it go but admits now that she should have been dubious. "When you're in it, it's so easy to make excuses, especially with someone who is very manipulative."
The final straw came, however, when Frank's verbal abuse morphed into physical. Alicia kicked him out for good and didn't look back, even when he reignited the love bombing, saying things like, "We're soulmates. We need each other."
The romantic messages ended abruptly, she said, the day he moved in with a new woman.
So what the actual fuck happened here? It turns out that there's an incredibly non-politcally correct name for it (at least in popular slang). According to the Urban Dictionary, a "person who jumps into a relationship to have a place to live" is called a "hobosexual." The term is offensive, but yes, it's a thing.
When she made it to the other side, Alicia found support from friends who suffered similar experiences. In total, she says she's compared notes with more than a dozen women who had romantic relationships with men who turned out to be looking for free room and board. She also discovered a Facebook group called "Arewedatingthesameguy-MIAMI," where similar warnings are a common theme. "I thought I'd imagined every possible nightmare scenario or red flag. You put up all these walls and barriers to protect yourself, and this was just something that never would have crossed my mind."
We all know that rent and cost of living is out of control in Miami, and it's bad enough when our situationships live rent-free in our minds. Let's keep the home sacred until you know your lover isn't just after your great apartment. And most importantly, stay safe out there.
