Should an exuberant extrovert roommate with a good friend who is a very quiet introvert?

If roommates have very different personality traits, such as a party animal extrovert and a quiet introvert, they may have difficulties getting along, as you can imagine!  (It can work though – Being aware of the differences and being sensitive to the other person’s different personality can help that a lot.  It never helps when the extrovert, with good intentions to help their introvert roommate to meet people and have fun, insists the introvert should – “come to the party!” or even worse, “let’s have a party!  You will love it!”.  (They won’t. They really really won’t.)

Other traits can cause difficulties too, such as a very conscientious tidy person rooming with a messy person low in conscientiousness. You can see how that would work out. Not.

Division of work is often a source of tension and conflict.  One roommate has spent half the day cleaning, and then the other cooks a dinner and leaves dirty dishes and pots in the sink – this is not a pretty picture!  Everyone has to do their share of the cleaning to a mutually agreed standard and all that needs to be hammered out and stuck to. People high in “agreeableness” tend to be good roommates, but if their roommate is low in agreeableness, this can be an unhappy situation for the more agreeable roommate.

A last point – roommates often have different  unspoken expectations. Not to go as far as Sheldon Cooper’s famous Roommate Agreement (in Big Bang Theory), but it is very helpful to clarify rent, other expenses, and other things too, like visitors (especially overnight guests) and cleaning responsibilities, ahead of time.