Somewhat introverted, living in London, 23 M.
I've done all three, plus living with nonfriends. Living alone versus living with friends feels like a trade-off. Currently I live alone, and it's nice not to have to coordinate with anyone about cooking, cleaning, etc., or to ever have people around when I'd rather they not be, that sort of thing. When I was living with friends, if I'd been living alone I would have had almost no social interaction, and that would probably have made me unhappy-without-realising-it, but that's not currently a problem. On the other hand, living with friends means I get to spend more time with them; and sometimes I need a hug or a shoulder to cry on or advice that I don't want overheard, and that's much harder to get when I live alone.
Living with nonfriends or family combines the bad parts of both of those. Family is worse for reasons that I can't express very well and don't feel like going into. (Not that I have a bad relationship with them; I just don't have a particularly good one, either.)
What I want to get people to discuss here is obvious given the title. What has been their experience regarding who and specially how many people they live with, and how that impacted their motivation and happiness.
I don't want to peruse papers on happiness and productivity, because I'm particularly interested in anecdotal tales coming from a Lesswrong sample.
Three pieces of information seem relevant, so if that is okay with whoever comments, I'd ask people to tell us if they consider themselves introverts (recharge batteries by being alone) extroverts, or both. As well as their age and hometown.
The reason I want to have a fuller understanding of this is that I've slowly come to have a strong belief that the main problem with people I know who are suffering, or failing to achieve their goals, is living with fewer tribal affiliates than they "need". And that belief could very well be false or biased.
I'm equally interested in what people think in general about their friends' living situation: "Most of my friends who live with friends experience such and such emotion, but the ones who live with family experience such and such problems with motivation"
as I am in personal experiences.
Following a suggestion about creating topics like this before, I'll put my own case in the comments.