Should You Actually Live With Your Best Friend?

By Danielle Wirsansky

Finding the right roommate for your college career is very important. It can be a very important factor that can make or break your experience in school. A good roommate helps you to flourish, supports you, helps you maintain a stress-free environment, and has a compatible living style with your own. A bad roommate, however, brings you down, stresses you out, adds drama to the mix, stops you from achieving your full potential, and has a lifestyle that just does not mix well with yours.

Many students, in pursuit of the best roommate possible, think that the best roommate for them might actually be their best friends. However, living with your best friend can have both its pros and cons. Sometimes it works out while other times it ends up in disaster, which is definitely something you want to avoid. So should you actually live with your best friend? Read on to learn some factors you should consider before making any final decisions.

Habits

The first thing you should consider before deciding to live with your best friend or not or each of your habits. Your best friend might be a truly lovely person. Outgoing, upbeat, and maybe they even share the same sense of humor as you. But maybe you are a slob and they cannot stand any mess in the kitchen. Or maybe it is the other way around—they are the slob and you cannot abide by anything being out of place or having any mess. While this might not affect a friendship because you are not spending all day, every day together while you cohabitate, it will definitely affect your relationship if you live together.

This is just one of several examples of habits that can make or break a best friend turned roommate relationship. Maybe they have a dog that barks through the night and you are a very light sleeper. Maybe you have a pet cat and your best friends comes to think that you do not empty the litter box often enough—though you are doing your best. Maybe you hate personal items being left in the living room while they hate dishes being left in the sink.

These might seem like little frustrations but when you live with someone, these little frustrations quickly and easily build up. And you do not want to lose your best friend over something so silly.

If your best friend and you have the same kind of lifestyle habits or you can overlook each other’s quirks without building resentment or you can even complement each other’s way of living, then living together might work very well for you. Take the time to get to know what living with your best friend might actually be like before you act on the idea.

Approachability

The next aspect of the relationship between yourself and your best friend that you must broach before deciding to live with them or not is how approachable they are. You might be really close, but can you approach them about an issue with the living situation? Do you feel comfortable to do so? Can each of your handle it and discuss any issues that arise maturely?

Maybe they have a temper and can escalate these kinds of situations into a confrontation. Maybe you really dislike confrontation and feel uncomfortable approaching anyone, even your best friend, about a situation that makes you uncomfortable. Maybe they are not the best communicators and have trouble expressing themselves about a situation or why it makes them uncomfortable while you are very sensitive and can take things that people say about you very personally and have a hard time getting over any comments.

If you guys can’t talk things out, smooth out an issue, or even approach each other when you have upset each other or done something wrong, then these are definitely issues that you should work on. However, living together might not be the best way to work to improve those issues with each other.

On the other hand, if you feel like you can go to your best friend about anything, that nothing either of you could say could perturb the other, and that each other’s feelings of safety and comfort are of the utmost importance to you, then being roommates just might work for you.

In the end, your relationship with your best friend is incredibly important. After all, this is your best friend you are talking about! You are already pretty lucky if you get to live in the same city or attend the same school as your best friend. You do not want to break a healthy relationship over something petty so really thinking it out and investigate so that your best friend in college is not just your best friend in college but instead, your best friend for life.