What is Innocent Cohabitation and is it tropeworthy?

From its description, Innocent Cohabitation seems to be: people with compatible orientations live together (without being a couple) for any reason, including "they're just roommates". Seems like People Sit on Chairs?

The thing is, when you have two people of compatible orientation living together, the default societal assumption is that they are in a relationship of some kind. It's the aversions of this that are tropable, just like Platonic Life-Partners —At first glance, it appears like a relationship, but it's not.

Looking at the page, the image is misleading as Nick and Jess do have a romantic arc.

This Image Is Not an Example (although I strongly dislike the caption). The site readers who know New Girl are invariably vastly outnumbered by the ones who don't.

I'm thinking this may be an Evolving Trope? For a long time the implication was you deliberately choose to live with your family or someone you are planning to marry, so this is a deliberate subversion of that expectation. But with tougher housing markets platonic roomies are becoming the norm.

Edited by Synchronicity on May 10th 2021 at 11:41:47 AM

Also, in general people are more understanding of the idea that men and women can just be friends and never have feelings for each other. This trope thrives off that idea.

I agree. Consider a show like Three's Company, where the whole premise is the scandal and taboo of unmarried strangers of opposite sexes living together. The idea of men and women living together without sleeping with each other was considered crazy and impossible at one time.

Plus, living together creates an intimacy that affects the character's relationship even if they're not a couple.

That sounds right. I'm thinking if TV Tropes existed a few hundred years ago as ... Literature Tropes, there would be a trope about a young woman walking with a young man without a chaperone and no impropriety occurring. Because there's a societal/audience expectation of one.