WARNING : long post so skim if you want
I’ve had a pretty tumultuous semester with my current roommate and I’m looking for just some advice or discussion on whether i handled the situation in an okay way. So basically my roommate and I started out as high school friends. This girl had many problems with some of my other friends in high school but never with me and once we got to college, we actually because closer friends for our first semester of freshman year because she was a familiar face.
We decided to live together for sophomore year during this time but following in the proceeding semester and over summer, we noticeably distanced.
Once the semester started, things seemed to be okay. We got along fine. I decorated my side of the room and got a fan and carpet to make the room more comfortable for us. She ended up spending some time getting to know my boyfriend to the point that they became friends and she said multiple times that she did not have a problem with him staying over some nights but this peace did not last.
I’m an extremely busy person. I work three nights a week and spend the remainder of my time filling my schedule with work, the gym, and seeing my friends and boyfriend. I do not do work in my room because i get easily distracted so i often go to a local cafe or campus study area to do work. For that reason i was rarely in our room except to sleep. She on the other hand spent the majority of her time doing work in our room and went home nearly every weekend. She seemed mildly bothered by my busy schedule by this and tension seemed to increase but at this point i was living a happy and productive college life. The only time there was any discussion was when she asked if my boyfriend wouldn’t come over when she was doing work in the room which i promptly understood and changed to make sure we didn’t bother her after apologizing and thanking her for her honesty.
Eventually one weekend after my boyfriend having not even been in my room for a few weeks on a Friday night that i knew she was going out and on my boyfriend and I’s 6 month anniversary. We were hanging out in my room and he ended up staying over. Because she wasn’t there and it was a Friday i didnt See this as a big deal. The next morning i woke up to go to a shoot early in the morning and my boyfriend stayed asleep.
When i returned my boyfriend and roommate were calming chilling and doing work together. I found out she had asked him to breakfast and to continue to hang out with her throughout the day despite him asking numerous times if she wanted the room to herself which made me happy. We all ended up hangin out together for a while until at the end of the afternoon she began to suddenlyl behave very hostilely. I asked her repeatedly if we should leave or if we were nothing her and she said no but continued to behave this way. i asked her if she was okay and she said no. I asked if there was anything i could do and she said “well it’s you” i asked her what i did wrong and she told Me she didn’t want to talk about it. A few minutes later i asked her if we were bothering her by spending the day in there or if we were annoying her and she said “kind of, we can talk about it later, i never see you, i just think it’s self absorbed.”
“I’m being self absorbed?”
“Yes”
Then we had to leave to go somewhere. I was in distress the entire night but didn’t reallt know what to do. The next morning we talked over breakfast. When the issue was addressed at the end of the meal she told me she did not want my boyfriend coming over or sleeping over and she was not okay with him having spent the day there. The told me this was an issue she had been upset about for a while and she was beginning to resent me but that she was very good at faking being happy so i probably didn’t notice. if my boyfriend and i had problems spending too much time together she shouldn’t have to suffer from it.” She also said that she wanted to see me more but not with him in our room so if that meant she wouldn’t see me so be it. I apologized profusely but remained somewhat confused about the entire encounter. I knew i didn’t spend enough time with her but my boyfriend and i rarely spent time in there. That day we had repeatedly asked her if she wanted some space or the room to herself and She refused.
The next weekend she went home without telling me. I was supposed to have a friend visit the weekend following that so i asked her if that was still okay and she she was rude about the fact that i even bothered to ask. Then that weekend decided to go home as well.
Following this incident things between us remained tense and strange. I avoided the room more than i had before because of the tension there. When i was there i frequently over accommodated to her needs and went out of my way to try to make her happy out of fear of her getting angry with me. We rarely hung out after this and if we did it was incredibly tense and awkward for me and between us. During finals, i did not see her for a week because i often spent the night at friends or my boyfriends or just came back very quietly around 3 am from late night studying because i could not handle the addition stress on top of exams. It came to the point that things were just so uncomfortable between us. I wanted to address it but there was no way for me to address our problems without literallt jusy insulting her as a person. Especially because the tension was mainly centered around my constant efforts to make her happy and not have her get mad at me for little things.
Over break i was relieved to be able to escape this situation for a while despite the fact that we are from the same hometown. At home, some of my friends ended up asking me what was going on because she had told them she was unhappy with our situation and that we don’t hang out. Reluctantly i explained the story and they all promptly told me that i should change rooms, that i did not deserve to live in this kind of stressful environment.
I looked into swapping but it didn’t seem possible within a reasonable amount of time. Luckily i found out near to the end of the break that there was a girl looking to direct swap into the exact dorm I’m in. She had a single and even after i explained the situation, was still willing to swap with me.
At this point, i just had to tell my current roommate about the decision. There was no way i could have brought it up to her sooner because of the swap fell through, i feared the living situation would get even more unbearable than it already was. So i called her and told her i was moving out this upcoming weekend. At first she was totally calm and said it was the best decision for both of us and that she totally understood and was not mad. Then, about 10 minutes later she called me back and just yelled at me over and over again about how i went behind her back and was giving her a random roommate and was a shy horrible person and should have told her about the entire process sooner. I apologized repeatedly and told her that at this point the decision was made and there was nothing i could do. There was no way i could have told her sooner because i didn’t even know this was an actual possibility until literallt that day l etc. She clearly did not see my perspective to the situation at all and told me that i was such a terrible shy person for just leaving to go spend time with my boyfriend in my new room and having never come forward to her about being unhappy. Though it’s true that i never confronted her, again there was no way for me to do so without insulting her and making everything worse.
I ended up hanging up the phone with a final apology. I moved all of my belongings out of the room the next day to avoid confrontation later on with her and her parents.
At this point I’m just wondering if i actually am a horrible person and handled this situation terribly? How should i proceed with her?