I'm In Love With My Roommate-- Should I Tell Her?

I thought (foolishly) that living with her might help me let go of the feelings, but they only grew stronger.

Sophia Benoit

Mar 2, 2023

A BIG SWEETIE:

I am a second-year college student. At the beginning of my first year, I met a girl who lived down the hall from me in the dorms. We quickly became good friends. I realized my feelings for her a few months later, but she has a long-term, long-distance girlfriend. They have been together since high school, and the girlfriend lives very far away. I have met her girlfriend a few times. She seems awesome and they appear to be very much in love. Because of said girlfriend, I decided to say nothing and wait for my feelings to pass. My friend and I became very close as the year went by, and we decided to move in together at the start of our second year. I thought (foolishly) that living with her might help me let go of the feelings, but they only grew stronger.

And of course, she has become my best friend, and female friendships can be ~intimate~. Now we do everything together, sometimes sleep in the same bed. Everyone around us assumes we are dating and we have to assure them that we are just friends.

There have been quite a few times when I thought that maybe something was about to happen, but of course we stopped, and then it's awkward for a while.

I guess my question is-- which is less ethical:

1) Keeping this secret from my best friend and betraying her trust

2) Telling her about my feelings, giving her the unfair responsibility to deal with that weirdness even though we are living together, still betraying her trust

I've resorted to advice columns because I have lost my whole mind over this girl. Like, Edgar Allen Poe-style, started listening to Taylor Swift, can't eat sleep or breathe, crazy person in love with her. Nothing remotely similar to this has ever happened to me before and it all feels very dramatic!

You can submit your own question—or yell at me about how I’m wrong—by emailing me at 1followernodad@substack.com

How to Still Have Privacy When Sharing a Room with a Roommate | Roomsurf

SOPHIA:

First and foremost nothing you have done up until this point, and nothing that you posit doing is at all a betrayal of trust. It’s not like when you become friends with someone you make a solemn vow to never feel attracted to them. You have a crush on a person! It’s fine! It’s better than fine— it’s human and lovely and pure agony and total bullshit. It is certainly not wrong.

Also, I just want to put it out there that in college I moved in with people I had crushes on multiple times. It’s kind of the whole deal! It’s one of the only times in your life that that is even possible, in fact! Many, many people have done this. Please, know that you will very likely go on to live a happy, well-adjusted life full of meaning no matter the outcome here.

The theatrics you’re feeling over this are normal and truly What It Feels Like to Be Alive. Honestly, and I know this sounds banana pancakes, I would pay a good amount of money to go back to college and have a desperate, excruciating crush on someone for a week. Because wow post-college adulthood doesn’t have that depth of feeling very often.

My advice, is manifold here, but I encourage a couple things:

1) Luxuriate in this whenever you can. Enjoy how good Taylor Swift sounds and how deep Poe feels to you in this moment. One time I was in an uber on the way home from a party where my crush had flirted with me all night and then gone home with someone else and then Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games” came on and I think I felt more deeply than I ever have again in my life; like the adult equivalent of playing your ipod in the back of your mom’s minivan while it rains. (Obviously I had been drinking a little). I’m not suggesting you play things up or try to get stuck in these feelings. But I am suggesting that you embrace the excuse to be a little dramatic in the name of an unrequited crush. (In private, if you can help it. Not because the feelings are shameful but because no one needs to explain why they’ve cried while singing “Since U Been Gone” four weeks in a row at karaoke).

2) Give yourself a break. I know this is similar to the point above, but it’s really important. It probably should have been #1 if I’m looking back. Wish there were a way to make edits on an online document. Oh well. Anyway!! Please god, give yourself a break. Forgive yourself if you make things awkward or read too much into a lingering look/touch or spend an entire evening analyzing what a comment meant or if you get in a bad mood occasionally about this whole ordeal. It’s fine. It’s soooo fine.

Ok, now here’s the real question you asked and the one I’ve been avoiding a bit because I know no matter what I say some people are going to disagree with me and it makes me sad when other people are wrong1. Should you tell her?

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhh I don’t think so2.

Telling her is absolutely 1000% not wrong. And if, by the time you read this, you have already told her, that’s totally great! Communication is great. We love big talks. But I don’t know what telling her will actually give either of you.

For you, I think it would be great to have outlets for this. So if you have a safe third party who doesn’t know this person, like a friend or family member back home, please talk their ear off about the stabbing ache of unrequited love. (Also, feel free to send an email to me every single week complaining about it. I might not respond but who cares. Just get it out!) I just don’t think your roommate herself is a great outlet for this information. Firstly, because she’s likely to feel—understandably!!—a little awkward and guilty about the whole thing. Not because she is guilty of anything. Neither of you are. Just because it’s weird for someone to feel something for you and you not feel something back. Or if she does feel a little zing of something from time to time, she might feel like that’s unfair to her partner now that your feelings have been voiced.

What is most likely to happen if you two do discuss this is that the friendship changes, despite both of your best efforts for it not to. And I don’t think it needs to change. I think it’s possible for intimate female friendships to include a garnish of romance in them that you both enjoy but don’t act on, like when you get a fancy cocktail and it comes with a flower that is technically edible but who is eating the cocktail flower??

The only reason I think you should tell her is if you feel like you are starting to punish either her or her girlfriend for this situation. Things like making snarky comments, being negative about milestones, trying to angle for them to spend less time together, not being present when hanging out, being demonstratively bitter, etc. If you start doing that, you are no longer being a friend, so you have to step in and admit what’s up and own it and maybe get some space from each other.

But if you think you can handle being a friend who happens to really love this person and feel some romantic tinges, great. I’m not saying suck up all your feelings and ignore them— find outlets to talk about this, make more friends, be active in building a life that is not centered around your roommate. But I do think you can move through this.

HERE’S THE THING, though!!! I thought I’d save that for this big moment. This is a big takeaway. You ready for The Thing?

There is no prize at the end of your life for moving on from a crush as fast as possible.

There’s nothing waiting for you on the other side if you Get Over your feelings for another person expediently. Please do not pressure yourself to somehow unzip your body and reach down in your chest cavity and turn off the Liking Your Best Friend switch. It doesn’t exist. You may always feel some patina of desire for this person. Very rarely do people become totally undesirable to us. (Unless you find out they have a Punisher sticker on their car).

The depth of this will fade. I swear to god, it will fade. One day, that fact might even make you sad. (Maybe it does now). But the mariana trench of agony you’re in will not last. And I think your friendship can survive it. I think you have to give yourself grace and time and a life outside this person. I don’t think you need to give up this friendship or confess something like you sinned.

Oh yeah, and for your own sake, I would try to not sleep in the same bed as much. It’s too much of a mind fuck.

Jk anyone disagreeing with me makes me very scared that I have Messed Up Big Time!

No one can ever complain that advice columns always tell people to talk about things ever again!