The one thing any upperclassmen or graduate will tell you is to never live with your best friend, especially during your first year. They preach that your friendship will be ruined, you will run into conflicts, and you’ll end up hating each other. I chose to live with my best friend from back home, and I am standing proof that this is all true. Living with your best-friend can honestly feel like a competition reality show sometimes. Jersey Shore and Big Brother, but with two people.
Of course, I got permission from my roommate to write this, and this isn’t an exposé, but your relationship does change when you live with a friend. Contrary to your beliefs, every night isn’t going to be like a sleepover. There’ll be times when even looking at each other makes you angry. As any close pair of friends will tell you, this is bound to happen.
You’ll hate that she plays music out loud when you’re trying to sleep, and she’ll hate the fact that you have 8 AM classes on her day off, but you work around it. Living with your best friend is a dance. Not a salsa, or a tango, but like one of those perfectly synchronized dance groups on America’s Got Talent. You have to learn how to stay out of each other’s ways and when to come together. I would take a bullet for my best-friend, but there are times where I am also the one pulling the trigger. One thing I noticed is that while everyone loved to claim that living with a friend is toxic to the relationship, they never reflected or offered any advice to make it work. I’m here to say that living with your friend is possible, and here are five facts to keep in mind whether your a freshman in a dorm or you’re looking for a roommate off-campus.
1) There Will Be Conflict*
It’s inevitable. You live in such a small space. Someone will want the shower, someone will need the lights off at a certain time, someone will want to have a friend over. Conflict is guaranteed. One thing my friend and I struggled with in the beginning was explaining and combating our disputes. I’m confrontational, and she claims she’s passive (I’m a Leo, and she’s a Scorpio, so something was bound to arise). Over time, we learned that it’s better to address our problems early on in a heart to heart, rather than letting it fester and boil into something completely irrational and hateful. Talk with your roommate, don’t be afraid of hurting your feelings or theirs. You have to be honest with them, and they have to be honest with you. If they give you criticism, or you give them criticism, make sure it’s respectful and warranted. I’ve found that it’s always more helpful to talk about things.
*In the style of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood,” but Daniel Day-Lewis plays a freshman girl in college instead of a money hungry tyrant.
2) You’ll have to make compromises.
Nobody likes compromises, ever. But if your friendship is important to you, then sometimes you have to turn off your eight-hour Netflix binge and turn off the lights if your roommate needs to be asleep. If you have to get earplugs or an eye mask because you’re a light sleeper, then so be it. If she has to set 12 alarms to wake up, then she has to do what she has to do. You can’t get upset over every little conflict or any small problem that arises. Making compromises and learning how to engage with other people is apart of maturing, and what better place to learn that than in college?
3) “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”
There’ll be some nights where you and your best-friend sit up talking all night (trying your best to pass The Bechdel Test), and there’ll be some nights when you guys can’t stand to look at each other. There’ll be good days, and there will be off days. Not everything will be a perfect Utopia, where you put on face masks and paint each other’s nails (although, I do make my roommate paint my nails every day). It’s not a sleepover, it’s not a three-day vacation, you’ll get sick of each other, but that doesn’t mean your friendship is ruined because of it. You don’t have to stop being friends just because you want a night alone, or because they do. Every day will be different than the one before, and you have to take that with a grain of salt.
4) You don’t have to do everything your roommate does
This one was the hardest for me to learn. I always invited my roommate out to do certain events with me, and sometimes she would turn me down. It’s not that she didn’t want to hang out with me, it’s that she wasn’t really interested in the event. I didn’t know that because we basically did nothing in high-school except eat food and play Mario Kart, but it was part of the learning experience. She has her friends, and I have mine. We don’t have to be in the same group, going to the same event, and spending every moment together. My roommate and I are polar opposites. If you walk into our room, it looks like that scene from Twitches where Tia and Tamara have entirely different sides of the room. There is a straight line separating our sides of the room. Our styles are different, our hairstyles are different, and our tastes in partners are different (thank God). Pretty much everything about us is different, and maybe that’s why we get along, but just know that you don’t have to have matching duvet sets, or hang out with the same six people that your roommate does.
5) You’ll learn so much
Not just in the sense of learning how to live with people, and how to chose your battles, but you are, in fact, living with an entirely new person. You’ve already chosen this person in your life as your friend, so the connection is already established. You’ll learn random facts about things you never thought you had to know, what classes you should avoid, what times you should show up in certain places. A large part of the things I learned about health, beauty, transit, and clothing came from my roommate. I had never lived with a girl before. I had no idea about what my skincare routine should be before I lived with my best friend. And the plus side to that is we are both totally comfortable in sharing products, food, and clothes. I know roommates who hardly acknowledge each other, but I couldn’t imagine not coming home, yelling something at my roommate, and hanging out with her in the room. It’s a risk, but if you chose to take it, it could pay off in more ways than one. Not only do you get to live with someone you’re comfortable around, but you get to share experiences with each other and learn from each other’s mistakes and successes.
Granted, not everything will always work out, and there’ll be moments where you feel like you should have opted for a random roommate, but doubt and regret can sometimes be apart of this process. The important thing to remember is not to give up, and if you realize that you guys aren’t compatible as roommates, then simply don’t live with each other the next year. You don’t have to stop being friends; you don’t have to avoid each other, just take a step back and realize that this particular situation does not work for your type of relationship. On the other hand, like in my case, if it works out, then it feels amazing, and you kind of feel like you’ve gained a sibling. The point is that there isn’t a specific formula to living with friends, there’s no cheat sheet or set of rules you must follow, but there are certain pieces of advice that can help make the transition easier. Either way, your relationship is bound to change, for better or for worse, but in the end, you have a better understanding of that person and the dynamic of the relationship.
( A very special shout-out to my lovely roommate for letting me write this. And also, I forgot to fill up the Brita, sorry. )