SHE'S stunned that he already forgot their first quarrel over housecleaning. He's amused to learn that she organizes her closet by color. She wants wood floors. He's thinking new windows.
It's work to settle into a new home with a loved one. But Stacy and Shawn Strand say they will persevere, not because they are dewy-eyed newlyweds. They aren't. They are brother and sister, and at this point in their lives, both have decided that a sibling would make the best roommate, at least for a while.
Likewise, Aaron Giroux of Irvine wouldn't take on a mortgage with just anyone. But sign with his brother? Absolutely. And would sisters El McElney and Alice Greenwood feel comfortable sharing an apartment with anyone else in their Lake Forest retirement community?
"No, no, no. I couldn't," McElney says.
Years -- sometimes decades -- after moving out of the family house, some siblings find themselves under the same roof again, usually driven by inflated real estate prices or a simple desire for companionship. In many cases, they quickly realize that living with an adult sibling can be better than rooming with a friend. Or not.
Marvin D. Todd, a Sacramento-based therapist specializing in sibling counseling and author of "Linked for Life: How Our Siblings Affect Our Lives," sees more positives than negatives. "With siblings, more than with anyone else, we have a shared history," he says. "They can be a natural pair."
Those who can live together are probably benefiting from a relationship forged in childhood, he says, when parents encouraged problem solving and avoided playing judge and jury every time the kids squabbled.
"My experience has been that when siblings get along, you can always look to the parents," Todd says.
Even when they do get along, however, siblings will face problems unique to adulthood, says Shelley Eriksen, associate professor of sociology and human development at Cal State Long Beach.
"One of the challenges of living with a sibling is that it can become kind of a bubble," she says. "It can limit your network outside the family group. That's not inevitable, but that certainly can be a hazard."
Siblings also might be less likely to respect personal space and more likely to report bad behavior.
"It's more of a challenge -- being able to have a private space where you don't feel like the eyes of the family are upon you," Eriksen says. "It's different than with a friend. You don't worry about a friend who's going to tell your mother about some goings-on."
