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<p>Exactly. I really don’t understand what some people are afraid of. Sure, it will be uncomfortable at the beginning, but it’s second nature after a short time.</p>
<p>I change in the bathroom or shower stall but i have a single now. i would say a closet is a little extreme but it is all about comfort levels. Some people can not shake the idea of changing with someone they only knew for a short period of time.</p>
<p>I usually put on underwear/bra in the shower and finished getting dressed in the room. The first few days I got dressed in the shower because I felt awkward. Eventually we were comfortable to say “hey don’t look for a sec” while we slipped on underwear/bras and finished getting dressed.</p>
<p>I think a lot of you are being really ridiculous. Obviously everyone is comfortable with different levels of modesty, and while some of you may have had team sports or gym experiences that have desensitized you, not everybody has. If someone isn’t comfortable, why is that a bad thing? Obviously they aren’t used to it yet, which is not uncommon and they will get used to it in time. That is perfectly normal. You don’t need to make people feel weird because they aren’t used to it yet. That’s silly.</p>
<p>I changed in the bathroom at first, my roommate doesn’t but given the environment she was raised in and the activities she has taken part in, it isn’t unusual for her to be changing in front of people. I was not brought up in an environment where it is normal or okay to be naked in front of people and I never had to change in a locker room for anything that didn’t have changing rooms. I was at a friends house once as a little kid and her mom had her start changing her clothes to go somewhere in front of me and said, “we’re all girls here” and I was mortified, that was the strangest thing in the world to me because that is just not how my family lived. We’re just more private people than some others I guess. After a couple weeks I got to a point where I was comfortable changing in front of my roommate as long as I put on my underwear in the bathroom after my shower, but it took me a while before I was comfortable with it. When she was a total stranger it was just too much.</p>
<p>The thing is that you should treat your roommates as family. This is the person you are going to live with for awhile. If you can change in front of them, then everything else is easy from there. You will make it a big deal only if you make it a big deal. </p>
<p>I had to live in the same room as my sister for four years during high school. We were pretty close. Sure, we liked having our own rooms but we just had to make the best out of the situation. Since we got ready at the same time, we had to change at the same time. I changed on one side and she changed on the other side. She saw me in in my boxers and I saw her in her bra and panties. It was really no big deal because nobody made it a big deal.</p>
<p>If I’m changing after a shower, I just get dressed in the shower, but most girls I know just use a towel or a robe and then go back to their rooms to change. If it’s not after a shower, I just turn the other way from my roommate and change. No big deal. I would never change in front of someone of the opposite sex, though (unless if was my boyfriend). </p>
<p>Out of curiosity, _Silence and insomniatic, where do you go to school and why were you rooming with people of the opposite sex? I mean, were they your bf/gf, or was it a dorm, or an apartment, or what?</p>
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<p>People in my family don’t change clothes in front of each other. =/ </p>
<p>I thought it was really strange when my roommate started changing in front of me. I do that in the bathroom or my closet.</p>
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<p>It was in a apartment. There are some dorm rooms that are coed.</p>
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<p>I would feel uncomfortable changing clothes and undergarments in front of somebody of the opposite sex who is not my girlfriend or wife. I shared a room with my sister and it was no problem if I just wanted to change my shirt or pants in front of her.</p>
<p>I change in lockers in gyms all the time. It’s really no big deal.</p>
<p>"People in my family don’t change clothes in front of each other. =/ "</p>
<p>Mine neither. I have a sister four years younger than me, we shared a room until I was in high school, and I have never, ever seen her changing clothes. I haven’t changed in front of her either. I started to without thinking when she was here for siblings weekend and she was mortified, we are 20 and 17 now (her birthday is earlier in the year than mine). It’s just not how we operate, we go to the bathroom to change. I’m sure when she goes away to school she’ll get used to it like I have, but she probably won’t be comfortable right away either.</p>
<p>Apparently when my roommate was little she used to shower with her mom. I thought that was the craziest thing I ever heard but I have since discovered it is not that uncommon for young children to shower with their same sex parent.</p>
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<p>I really don’t think it’s healthy if you have to go the bathroom all the time to change clothes. I couldn’t imagaine taking my clothes and undergarments every day to the bathroom and change. It’s just so inconvenient.</p>
<p>Were you and your sister close? What were you afraid of by seeing each other changing?</p>
<p>My sister and I are very close. We aren’t afraid, it’s just completely unnatural to us. That just isn’t how our family has ever operated. I have never, ever seen any member of my family naked, and nobody has ever seen me either except perhaps in emergency health situations-- I seem to remember having to be helped into a gown at the ER after falling from a horse,which wasn’t any big deal since obviously it was necessary and it was just my mother. It’s not like we sit there and stew about how afraid we are of being judged, it is just the most natural thing in the world for us to move somewhere private to change. I’m not sure our parents even changed our diapers in front of people past early infancy. Why is it unhealthy? Who cares? The bathroom is two steps away, that’s where we shower and brush our teeth anyway which is usually when we’d change. It was pretty easy for me to be flexible once I got to college and needed to be more flexible, it’s not like I came to school in terror of my roommate seeing my panties. It just wasn’t the way I was used to doing things and it took some adjustment, like any other natural habit.</p>
<p>I think it’s pretty weird to find taking four seconds to walk to a bathroom so inconvenient that you don’t care if you strip naked in front of someone, but I understand that it’s just a matter of what you are used to.</p>
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<p>I think it’s wierd because you shouldn’t have to do that in your own house. You aren’t stripping for a stranger, it’s in front of your sister.</p>
<p>Don’t really think it matters too much, if you want to be private, be private.</p>
<p>And in my family, stripping in front of your sister would be extremely bizarre. I don’t understand what is so complex about it-- if you’ve never done something before and your whole family for your whole life has done something the same way, why just because some other people behave differently should you not be more comfortable with the way you usually do things? Just because it’s nudity doesn’t make it something special, I don’t see changing habits as any different from any other habit. Some people brush their teeth in the shower. I think that’s weird as hell, too. I don’t really see the issues as that different. It’s not like I am not comfortable changing in front of people because it causes mental distress, it just seems to me like a very odd thing to do. Or it did, anyway, before I got to school and got used to it. It’s the norm here, it’s not in my parents’ house.</p>
<p>Everyone here has to go to a gym locker room.</p>
<p>You mean you aren’t supposed to jump in front of someone, while naked, and wiggle the goods in her face?
I didn’t get that memo.</p>
<p>^lol that is funny.</p>
<p>In all seriousness, it depends on the individual. If you’re shy, go to the bathroom. Easy.</p>
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Why? What’s sad about not necessarily wanting to taking your clothes off in front of some else you don’t know very well?
My closet is almost a separate room, it even has a light. I just found it easier to change where I keep my clothes. When I first got here, I did not know how comfortable my first roommate would be with my nakedness and we pretty much settled on getting dressed in our closets, even though at the end it was purely out of convenience. </p>
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My college has quite a few Gender Neutral floors scattered around Campus, and somehow they messed up the housing form last year, so you couldn’t specifically opt to live or not to live on a gender neutral floor. I didn’t really care, I just did not want to live on a single sex floor, so I guess I was paired up with my roommate and then we were placed on our floor by chance. I don’t really know nor care.
Anyhow she left because of medical reasons, and a friend of mine asked me if he could move in, seeing as he hated his then roommate. He was sort of my guarantee to being able to stay on my current floor so I agreed to him moving in, of all my other options I also thought that this would be best bet for a semester without any fights. </p>
<p>Oh btw, I go to Grinnell College.</p>