Dear Clare,
Over break, one of my roomies broke up with her boyfriend. They had been dating for a while and were together all of the time. Throughout their relationship, our friendship seemed to fizzle out because she always chose to be with him and would blow me off. Now that they aren't together anymore, she has been calling me and telling me how we can hang out a lot more next semester. How do I politely let her know that she shouldn't expect us to be best friends again after she ditched me without making the rooming situation bad? Help, Clare, what do I do?
Reasonable Roommate
Dear Reasonable (or, as I will soon show, Unreasonable),
Yours is a very good question, as I feel this is applicable to college students who are easily falling in and out of love/infatuation. You're not going to like my response here, but I think that you should give your roommate another chance. I'm not sure if you've ever been in "mad love" before (to quote a previous column), but observation has taught me a few things about friends in serious relationships, and guess what? I'm going to share them with you now! Hurrah!
True, you were absolutely second best when the dude was around. But you have to understand that your roommate being in love with this guy didn't mean that she stopped liking you or appreciating your friendship. It just means her priorities changed.
Especially toward the beginning of a serious relationship, when a couple is in the infatuation stage, the two people only want to be with each other and want to be together all of the time. It's not that they think their friends suck or are uninteresting — they are just so totally wrapped up in their new adoration that they fail to notice other people may be annoyed that they are getting pushed into the backseat.
I often excuse similarly behaving friends of this seemingly selfish behavior for three reasons. If someone is making me the second choice to some dude, I don't want to make him or her my priority. To quote the Facebook profiles of many disheartened and screwed-over girls: "Don't make someone a priority who makes you only an option." This theory can be applied to your case: if this roommate didn't want to hang out with you, then accept it and carry on. OK, she may not have been there for you during your hard break-up or failing chemistry grades, but deal with it. You survived without her help.
If you are still reading this and haven't gotten completely annoyed by my lack of empathy for your situation, I would love to carry on to the second reason you should forgive your neglectful pal. Going along with being only an option, you should also be the bigger person in this case. Your girl wasn't there for you and wasn't a fab friend; does that mean you should now retreat from hearing her sadness about her break-up? Don't do to her what she did to you. That only makes you both spiteful, which would exacerbate your living situation. Two wrongs don't make a right — be the bigger person and forgive.
If you still have a little spite in you, talk to your roommate about how hurt you were about her ditching you for a dude. This will actually get you points because she'll see what a great pal you really are by swallowing your pride and helping her out even though she was a self-interested snob. Ha, I must be a little crabby today because I'm going all out with the name-calling.
The third reason you should forgive and forget, my dear mad reader, is for purely selfish reasons: if you happen to enter the la-la land of love soon and act the same way your roommate did (you would act the same, I guarantee it), and then got your heart broken, you would want your girls there to support you. That's what being a friend is all about, right? To quote a cheesy song that radio diva Delilah plays much too frequently, "In good times, in bad times, I'll be on your side forevermore — that's what friends are for."
Thank you, Delilah! There apparently is no end to the cheesy quotes in my column, dear readers.
So, my little vengeful votary, the best way to avoid an awkward living situation is to stop being so pissy and forgive your friend for falling in love. And to all you people out there who are in mad love, do a little check on your own behavior to see when you last took a break from gushing about your lovely lad or lass and asked your buddies how their single lives are.
Good luck, my friend!
Clare
Dear Clare,
I'm a short guy and am really self-conscious about my height. I'm not a midget or anything, but I'm 5-foot-8 and really shy about talking to girls. What can I do to boost my confidence?
Sad Short Shy Guy
Dear Sad Short Shy,
Well, unless you want to invest in platform shoes (which would turn girls off more than your height, or lack of it), boosting your confidence is going to entail a psychological self-assessment and a change of self-image.
First of all, 5-foot-8 isn't that short! Though it may be two inches below the average male height of 5-foot-10, you're still taller than most girls, so consider yourself lucky in that respect! It's funny that the personal aspects we use to define ourselves are often unnoticed by those around us. For example, I always liked my blue eyes and thought that it was something people who knew me would notice. My ego about my baby blues suffered a severe blow when the guy I had been dating for a year and had known for four years told someone that I had brown eyes! Unbelievable! But it taught me a valuable lesson: how you define yourself isn't how others define you.
You are self-conscious because you are a little shorter, but your height wouldn't be something that a girl would notice right away — especially a girl who is shorter than you. Perhaps you have lovely eyes, white teeth, a sharp wit or crazy hair. Perhaps these are the characteristics that people focus on when they meet you or that they use to describe you. That being said, you really shouldn't let what you think is your main weakness overshadow who you really are — especially with height, which is something you have absolutely no control over!
Another way to help boost your self-confidence is to realize that people probably aren't paying that much attention to you in the first place. It sounds like I'm trying to further diminish your self-esteem, but I promise I'm not! My always-optimistic mother often tells me, "When you're 20, you think everyone is looking at you and you care. When you're 40, you think everyone is looking and you and you don't care. And when you're 60, you realize that no one was looking at you in the first place."
The lesson behind these wise words is that you don't need to be so self-conscious about yourself, especially when it comes to your appearance because not everyone is looking at you and judging all the time, though you think they are. People are too wrapped up in their own lives and clothes and hair to worry about some shorter dude that walked in the room, so don't worry about it!
Now, with this hopefully renewed self-confidence, my vertically challenged chum, I have a word of caution: don't get overly cocky. There is something called "little-man syndrome," also known as "Napoleon syndrome," that refers to shorter dudes who are extremely conceited macho meatheads to make up for their height. Arrogance is something people will take notice of and is a bigger turnoff to girls than missing a few inches on top.
I'm sorry there's really no quick fix here, buddy. You've got to do all the work and realize that your height isn't anything to be ashamed of!
Good luck, my friend!
Clare