The following article has been excerpted from The Naked Roommate, 2E  By: Harlan Cohen Tip #17 The Best Friend Roommate The Tip Do not live with your best friend from high school.

The Story
I made the mistake of living with one of my best friends from high school. We got along, but we got so sick of each other. We just got on each other’s nerves. It’s not like we ever threw down or anything like that—at the worst it was throwing a plate of French fries at him, but no punches. The biggest problem with living together was that it was harder to meet new people. We were always chilling in the room. It was way too easy to stay inside and do nothing. I did meet some new friends, but we shouldn’t have lived together our first year. It could have waited. Honestly, I do feel like I missed out.
--junior, DePaul University

Living with a best friend in college is like eating ten pounds of chocolate every day for ten months out of the year. What once made you happy can make you sick. (If you don’t like chocolate, please substitute ten pounds of your favorite candy or food.) No matter what you think about rooming with friends, there is definitely much more to lose than there is to gain (yes, it can work, but that’s not the point of college). Here’s why:

--Best Friends Don’t Try as Hard to Get Along. When you’ve known someone for most of your life, they don’t always try as hard to please. A best friend is more likely to leave the room messy, expel gas at will and abuse your stuff. The more comfortable the relationship, the more complacent the people in the situation tend to become. Cleaning, respecting each other’s space and things, and following rules become optional. Not that a stranger is guaranteed to respect your space and your things, but at least with a stranger, there isn’t much of a loss if you never speak to each other again after moving out.
--College Is About Making NEW Friends. Living with a best friend is not what college is all about. You know your friend. You’ll continue to know your friend. Living together is just a security blanket that can end up suffocating the relationship. Living apart helps you branch out and get to know each other’s new roommates (and their friends). Should you or your best friend want to hang out, you can always choose to be together. But it’s a choice. Living apart means keeping your best-friend relationship intact and allowing for some space to make new friends.
--Living With a Best Friend Means Missing Out. Being forced into a room with someone forces you to learn how to compromise, how to communicate, how to deal with conflict, and most important, gives you a deeper appreciation of another person’s culture, lifestyle, and family dynamics. Never again will you have the opportunity to see the inner workings of a stranger’s world (and you might never want to see the inner workings again). It’s a once, twice, three, four, or five or more times in a lifetime experience depending on how many roommates you have. Living with a best friend means missing out on living with someone you don’t know—and that means missing out. No question about it!

Bottom Line:

If you live with your best friend and hate it, you’ll lose a best friend. If you live with a stranger and hate it, you’ll lose someone you hate living with and never liked—not a loss.

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