My girlfriend and I are both moving off campus, starting this summer and for the rest of college. Both of us have had roommates, so “sleeping over” hasn’t really been an option. Now that we will have single rooms, I know she’s going to want to sleep over all the time. Sometimes I just want to hang out with my guy friends without her there. How can I establish some type of boundary without making her feel bad?

This is a really sticky issue. On the one hand, having the newfound freedom of your own room gives you more control over your life, like when you turn the lights off, how clean you keep your room (very clean, right mom?), what music you listen to and so on. But it also propels you a little further into adulthood; you will have your own apartment (okay, with roommates) and no RAs or a hall full of friends to help you deal with your life. Moving off campus is a big decision, in and of itself, but navigating relationships outside of the dorms is also going to force you and your girlfriend to make some personal decisions.

It’s great that you recognize your need for space and want to address this issue now, before you move and have to deal with the situation. Talking with your girlfriend before you move in to your apartments will help the situation enormously. If you are feeling anxious about moving and the dynamics of your relationship, then having a conversation now, on the front end, will help set the tone for how things will be when you move. I realize that having that conversation can be difficult, and you run the risk of hurting your girlfriend’s feelings, but if you don’t say anything, you may end up resenting her and putting a great deal of strain on your relationship.

Open communication is critical to a successful, lasting relationship – whether with a friend or a significant other. By realizing that this could be an issue and wanting to address it before it becomes a problem, you’ve already shown that you care about her feelings. Helping her to realize that you have both of your best interests at heart may take some work, but in the end, your relationship will potentially get stronger if you are honest. If you were to wait and say nothing, you risk getting into the situation you described with her wanting to sleep over all of the time. Once it has happened, changing things becomes much more difficult and you may feel stuck. When you feel like you’re losing control, you may take your frustrations out on her for other reasons, even silly reasons, because you don’t know how to fix the situation. Dealing with this upfront will give you the chance to set the boundaries you want and help you to avoid a confrontation later.

All this growing up stuff is fun, huh? There is no one right way to approach this situation, but talking openly with your girlfriend is a good place to start.

Questions?

How many times have you had a question about your body or your health that you felt weird asking a friend or someone older? Especially when it’s about sex? Jill Ringold, who received her master’s degree in Public Health and is a certified health education specialist, is the health educator in the Office of Health Promotion and Wellness. And she’s here to help answer those questions that you really want to ask. If you want to submit a question, please send it to health@studlife.com or via our anonymous portal on the Student Life website (www.studlife.com).

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This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2004 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.