Advice #1: Live With People You Aren't Attracted To

This is a post in an ongoing series of what it takes to live your life as a single, celibate, gay Mormon.


Live With People You Aren't Attracted To
This one can be really tough to do, but really helpful if you can pull it off. There have been a few times where I have had roomies that I was madly in love/lust with. It becomes a real distraction to your friendship, and a constant disruption to your daily life if you have undesired thoughts swimming through your head about them all the time.

A few years ago I was looking to rent out my spare bedroom for the summer. My previous roomie had just gotten married a few months earlier, and I was missing all of that extra money that he was paying me to live there. So, I posted the opening on the ward housing website. I had a guy call me, he and his friend were coming down to So Cal for the summer to work internships and were looking for a place. I was hesitant to let two people move in because my place isn't huge, but when they offered me an extra $300 per month I caved. Damn my greediness!

One of my roomies was extremely hot. I mean A&F model-hot. He was about 6'1" and had the most amazing physique I have ever seen in real life. Seriously. The guy could be America's Next Top Model. We'll call him Hottie McHotness.

There was no air conditioning in my house since I live so close to the beach, so during the hotter parts of the summer it can get a little warm in my place during the day. Every day when he got home from work he would strip down and walk around in his board shorts for the rest of the evening. It seriously was like a living A&F catalogue.

Anyway, with my place being small, and three adult males living there and needing to get ready for work in the morning, etc, the place kind of turned into an MTC-esque atmosphere. The door on the bathroom was never closed and people just came in and out as needed to get ready for work in the morning.

Let me set the stage. You walk in the bathroom door, the sink is immediately to your right. If you turn and face the sink, the toilet is to your left, and the shower on the other side of the toilet. The mirror above the sink is very large and gives you a wide angle view of the bathroom.

One morning, I'm standing over the sink, shaving, and Mr. McHotness comes walking in to take a shower. Normally he would walk around with a towel on, but that morning he adopted the practice of walking around the house completely naked. He walks in the bathroom stark naked, and turns to take a leak before he gets in the shower. I'm standing there in nothing more than a towel, shaving, and with a full-body, frontal nudity view of Mr. McHotness. I just about swallowed my own toungue along with my face. Yes, it was true, the parts of him that I had not yet seen turned out to be just as amazing as the parts I had. Now I don't know if he was a slow urinater or if time actually slowed down, but he seemed to stand there in all of his glory for about 12 hours.

I still can't get that image out of my head - and not because I'm writing about it in this blog. It randomly pops into my brain at the most inappropriate times.

We became really good friends over the summer. We had a lot of fun. But, as the summer wore on, my friendship and attraction to him started to turn into something more. I was really falling for this guy, and that was taking me to a place that I knew I didn't want to go. If he had turned out to be gay and had ever made a move, I can guarantee that I would have completely caved and my life would be very different right now - Mr. and Mr. McHotness. When I step back and try to take an eternal perspective of things, I know that is not what I really want. That relationship would satisfy a lot of things in my life, but not the most important ones.

It took me a very long time to get over him. I was devistated when he went back to BYU for his senior year, and like most straight guys, forgot about me completely. He didn't stay in touch. He didn't come back down the following summer like he said he would. It hurt a lot. I didn't just have a crush on the guy, I really felt strong bonds with him. I can honestly say I was in love with him. There is always a lot of pain and anguish associated with the breaking of you heart. It really, really sucks.

I don't know how practical this advice is, because sometimes you just don't have much of a choice with who your roommates are. But, given then opportunity to choose and if you are one who is travelling down Path #4, I highly recommend doing all you can to just have cool roommates that are your buddies, and not ones that you are physically attracted to.