From Flatmate to Fiancé: SpareRoom Success Stories
Elisha shares how she and her fiancé, Kieran, met through SpareRoom.
After I finished uni, I moved into a house of girls in Earlsfield, London. We were a close group of friends and loved living together, but as our late twenties approached, people naturally began moving out to live with partners. Eventually, it was just my best friend, Sophie, and me left in the house. By 2019, we needed to fill the remaining two rooms, so we listed them on SpareRoom and started inviting people over for viewings.
Out of everyone we met, two girls were clear front-runners - similar age with lots in common - so we offered the rooms to them first. When they dropped out at the last minute, we had to go with our ‘back-up’ option: Keiran (now my fiancé) and his best friend, Dom. The only reason we hadn’t chosen them originally was because neither of us had lived with boys before. Looking back, it was one of many ‘sliding doors’ moments that could have stopped Kieran and me from ever meeting.
“Shared living helps you to get to know people in a completely different way. If anything, it proved to me that you should remain open to the people that you live with as you never know who you might meet!”
As it turned out, living with the boys was a great decision. In fact, they were actually a lot cleaner than girls we’d lived with. And because they were both new to the area, unlike Sophie and I, they were keen to explore and would often find new places to eat or pubs for us to try, which gave us a whole new perspective on a place we’d lived for years. Like us, they were also really into cooking and loved having a chilled evening in.
We all got on well, but Kieran and I grew especially close. About six months in, we took a trip to Whitstable, where we finally admitted we had feelings for each other. I was hesitant at first - what would it mean for our friendship or for the house dynamic? He wasn’t my type on paper, and I wasn’t his. I work in theatre and the arts; Kieran’s in IT. I’d always dated creative types, and I was still on a dating hiatus after a disappointing summer. But he was completely certain that none of that mattered - which was honestly quite romantic. He said we should just go for it. So we did.
Thankfully, our housemates were very supportive and even excited for us. We made a real effort not to be overly PDA in the house. We went on a lot of walks! And then, to make our relationship hard-launch even more dramatic, London went into lockdown three weeks later. Our other housemates moved out, and Kierian and I stayed, paying reduced rent. If we thought dating while house-sharing might be tricky, doing it through lockdown was a whole new level.
“I never in a million years thought that a house viewing would lead to me meeting my future husband, until he walked through my front door.”
As we’d had six months of becoming friends, and many late nights chatting on the sofa about our lives over red wine and whiskey, there were no surprises when it came to living together under such intense circumstances. If anything, it solidified that we were good mates to begin with. It worked out so well in fact, that by early 2021 we moved out together and Kieran proposed a few years later. We’re getting married in May 2026! We live in Surrey now, but we knew we wanted a London wedding because that’s where it all began.
We always joke that SpareRoom was our ‘Tinder’, but the irony is, we probably never would have matched on a dating app. Meeting through SpareRoom is far more organic as it introduces you to people you might never have considered - in a platonic way, too. Living together helps you to get to know people in a completely different way. If anything, it proved to me that you should remain open to the people that you live with as you never know who you might meet! I never in a million years thought that a house viewing would lead to me meeting my future husband, until he walked through my front door.