Auntie SparkNotes: I Told Two Different People I’d Be Their Roommate

Hey Auntie!

Small problem, and I freely admit it was a problem I kind of created myself.
You see, I’m a freshman in college. During my senior year of high school, I made an agreement with my friend. She was taking a gap year to travel a little, and at the university I decided on, it’s a requirement that all freshmen live on campus. But the agreement was, that when I was cut free from the shackles of university housing and she returned home, we would live with each other. It made sense, we felt like we could live together without driving each other crazy (we’ve never fought in the entire five years we’ve known each other!) and we both have this mutual trust that the other will be good for rent payments on a regular basis.

Of course there’s always a but. She came back over winter break and we talked once again about our housing situation for the next year. We agreed we should start looking at places. Then I didn’t hear from her for several weeks. The girl I’m living with now previously had plans for her own housing next year that then fell through, so she asked me if I’d like to live with her. I said yes, because I already know she makes a fantastic roommate, and I guess I was kind of assuming my friend was making other plans, without really talking to her. My mistake.

Anyway, I’m sure you can guess how this is turning out for me. Both of them are now showing me these apartments they’ve found and asking my opinions and I’m just kind of nodding my head and smiling trying to figure out what my next move is. In a perfect world, we’d all just move in together, but they’re both looking for different things (My friend, a good price, my roommate, a close proximity to our university.) I don’t want either of them to feel like they have to compromise for someone they’ve never met just because I stretched myself too thin. And I can’t decide what I want more—I’d really like a place closer to campus, but also my free-spending budget will be much smaller, so they’re both even options to me. Plus I really don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but it seems inevitable. Any advice?

Oh, yes. But first, Sparkler, I’m going to need you to do a little homework assignment.

Specifically, I need you to find a comfortable seat, grab an etiquette guide, and spend an afternoon reading the section on Being Reliable and Honoring Your Commitments.

Because judging by your letter, you are desperately in need of some serious, immediate, remedial instruction in how not to behave like a giant frosted flake. It’s incredible (and not in a good way) to see you framing this problem as a question of which living situation you’d most prefer, and utterly ignoring the part where somebody else will be getting mega-screwed as a result of your failure to communicate. This is a problem that affects more people than just you, and it’s one you created all by yourself.

In short: You done screwed up, kiddo.

Which I am telling you not to make you feel bad, but to make you realize that the question you need to be asking yourself isn’t how you choose the most personally desirable of two available roommate options. It’s how you do the right thing to rectify the mistake you made, with the least possible disruption to the lives of the two other people affected by it.

And in your case, barring some extreme/extenuating circumstance you haven’t mentioned, that means you honor the agreement you made with the friend who’s relying on you to keep your word—and you tell your current roommate that you double-booked yourself, and apologize profusely, as soon as humanly possible. (In the interest of saving some face, you may refer to this snafu as “a miscommunication,” rather than straight-up admitting that you bailed on a previous commitment without bothering to ask if it still stood.)

On the bright side, once you’ve responsibly extracted yourself from this particular housing-related pickle, you can still present everyone with the “perfect” solution of going threesies. Who knows? It might actually appeal to your friend’s priorities on its own merits, since three people can usually live more cheaply than two. Maybe a third roommate would save you enough money to get a less expensive place in a more desirable neighborhood. And for both your potential roommates, the opportunity to live with a friend who’s responsible, honorable, reliable, and considerate of everyone’s needs might well be a no-brainer… as long as you make sure you are that person, from here on out.

Got something to say? Tell us in the comments! And to get advice from Auntie, email her at advice@sparknotes.com.
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