Sex and Neighbors

[oublei.livejournal.com]

My boyfriend and I have been living at our current apartment since October. We have gotten very loud during those four months with no complaints from neighbors. The occasional loud sex is the only annoying thing we do; we are otherwise extremely quiet and respectful.

No complaints until last week where our neighbor underneath us began slamming on his ceiling at us while we were having sex. We weren't being vocal and the worst of the noise was a squeak from the bed when we switched positions. I assumed he had a bad day and wrote it off until it happened every time we had sex that week.

I figured it was maybe a squeaky board or something and we changed around rooms. Now that we are in the other bedroom, they have begun slamming on their ceiling even harder and screaming obscenities so loud we can hear them. The weird part is that the latter happened two minutes after we were done!

Honestly, I care more about the guy's ceiling than I do about him (he plays his stereo so loud it rattles our apartment, so he really has nothing to complain about). My boyfriend and I can't hear any noise we are making. What precautions can we take?

Comments

[goddessdeath.livejournal.com]

None, unless you're going to do it on padded carpeting. The guy is probably pissed because he's not getting any. You guys are being considerate. The only other suggestion is to go down and talk to him about it. He MUST be following the sound to whatever room is below where you're having sex because c'mon...that's ridiculous what he's doing. My boyfriend's former upstairs neighbors in his apartment used to have extremely loud sex, and we just thought it was funny. I mean, they did it A LOT, but so? He can move to another room and turn the TV on if it's THAT loud, you know?

[oublei.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad that you think that there's not much else we can do, because that's where I am at.

I feel bad because he is disabled (on crutches--maybe that's what he is hitting the ceiling with), but I guess I shouldn't.

The apartment managers will just laugh at him if he tries complaining! Ha. :]

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I'm severely disabled. It's no excuse for harassing neighbours. I'll take it as a kindness if people in this post could refrain from making assumptions of any sort about people with disabilities, by the way, such as the assumption below that someone on crutches is going to be on medication that will make them irritable.

Since your landlord sounds useless, is there a local council or similar you can complain to? In the UK, you could involve the council or the police for noise issues, and I believe the council also organise a neighbour conciliation service. He's being unreasonable in that he's playing very loud music and harassing you by banging on the ceiling when you're not being that loud, plus he sounds creepy, so I wouldn't go and talk to him if it were me. You could try banging on the floor when he puts his music on, and/or putting your own music on when you have sex, but I suspect that's more likely to escalate matters. This sounds sexist, but a man might have a better idea of whether that would work, as a woman I always find it harder to second-guess men when it's a question of dominance games of this sort, we get different social conditioning.

I've had flats where the neighbours had noisy sex, and I've had flats where the neighbours played their music too loud. Give me the first any day. There's a guy upstairs who likes taking out his guitar and singing soulfully while doing some basic strumming. It's not that loud, but it drives me round the bend and can be heard in both rooms of the flat. There's also a saxophonist in this block, but she or he is fairly good and has good taste in music, so I don't mind that, even when it's warm-up exercises being played. We're still trying to work out if it's the same guy with drastically different levels of skill for each instrument!