There are multitudes of ways to make new friends at the University — one way is to befriend the boys your roommates date. This kind of friendship is crucial to have, yet as I will explore later in this article, it has almost certain complications.
At first, you almost have to be friends with the boyfriends because they’re around your apartment all the time. They see your “natural” look in the mornings while you are curled up on the couch wearing your “Spongebob Squarepants” boxers, watching season two of “Entourage” very hung-over with a towel on your head. They invade the living room, usurp the TV, mess up the kitchen and slow down your internet connection. Yet their presences are a lovable invasion because, of course, the boys make your friends happy, and it’s always beneficial to have a man around the house when a lethal spider with fangs leaps from the shadows and you are otherwise rendered defenseless. They are also naturally talented opponents with which to engage in intense tournaments of Mario Tennis.
Another enjoyable (and perhaps a bit sadistic) aspect of friendship with the roommates’ love interests is you can amuse yourself by playing the roommate and the boyfriend off of each other. This is especially fun when the roommate and her boyfriend are fighting already. Siding with the boyfriend is always key in this game because it effectively annoys the roommate and makes the boyfriend your new BFF, which makes his frequent presence around the apartment all the more enjoyable.
Teaming up with the boyfriend to make fun of the roommate or to play pranks on her is also entertaining. For example, encouraging the boyfriend to speed away while the roommate has just left the car to throw something away in the apartment dumpster. Disclosing embarrassing information about the roommate to the boyfriend, like anecdotes of her dancing on stage at a bar or amusing incidents involving a keg stand and streaking the lawn can be dropped casually into conversation.
The boyfriends are also really good sources from which to obtain your own boy advice. If they are big and scary enough, you can also get them to beat up mean ex-boyfriends and random hookups of your own, whom you see at libraries and the Corner who just won’t go away damnit! Notice I have been writing this in the hypothetical second-person point of view for a reason.
But the heartbreaking part about being buddies with the roommates’ lovers is that, once their relationship ends, your friendship with the boyfriends may also. If the boyfriend dumps the roommate, it is practically the law of friendship that you have to hate him and pointedly ignore him in public or, at most, give him a cold, courtesy wave.
If the roommate was the one doing the breaking up, however, you are obligated to give him the pitying “Heyyyy … are you okay?” greeting which usually ends with an awkward “I’ll see you around,” after which the boyfriend runs home crying, and you feel really bad, partly because you no longer have a worthy challenger for Mario Tennis.
Another uncomfortable situation is when you know the roommate is going to dump the boyfriend before he himself has realized his fate, and when you see his smiling, innocent face around Grounds, you cannot warn him. In these situations, it’s tricky to decide where your allegiance should lie. Should you try to convince the roommate that the boyfriend isn’t that bad, even though, granted, he is kind of needy, but other than that he’s a good guy? Or must you remain loyal to the roommate at all times because she is the long-lost sister you never had? These conundrums can vex the best of us well-meaning roommates who hold the friends’ boyfriends dear to their hearts only because they have become almost like brothers themselves.
Sometimes after the period of awkwardness passes and the roommate and her ex-boyfriend become friends, you can reunite in platonic splendor and reminisce about the inside jokes and that time he and your roommate helped you home one night when you were too drunk to stand up. This is the ideal situation, because it’s never worth losing a friend, no matter how uncomfortable the situation used to be. Especially if the old boyfriend has really cute roommates.
Mary’s column runs bi-weekly on Wednesdays. She can be reached at mbaroch@cavalierdaily.com.
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