On room/suitemates: You four have got to get along together for an extended period (all year? till semester break?), and honesty in a friendly context is all important there. There’s only so much a person can take – how much depends on the person – and when he/she gets to that point, it takes the form of an eruption. It’s better to let the pressure off in a controlled fashion. Consider getting a four-woman heart-to-heart going some evening, and talking out the problems, and why they’re distrbing. (And be open to the possibility that you too have a mannerism or two that gratees on them as much as what they do grates on you.) I’m certain that Ms. Smellie would be much happer knowing that she has to improve personal hygiene, said in friendship by her roomies, than spending four years ostracized by most of the people she meets and not knowing why.
And compromise is key here. You’re four folks from four different places, with different life styles – and you have to find a modus vivendi that will keep you from clawing out each other’s throats sometime between now and May. You’re not compromising principles; you’re adjusting habits to make living together pleasant rather than stressful. (BTW, consider that as preparation for marriage; you won’t believe the strange things your husband thinks are perfectly normal until about a week after the honeymoon, when his and your agendas will clash bigtime, and on something you never thought of, no matter how thoroughly you talked it out!)
On Bobotim: Your body, your choices. But there are elements of who you are that you have never confronted – trust me; I know myself pretty well, and I keep finding them at age 54! Contrary to comments above, I think he intends to respect your limits, but you both found yourself afflicted with a bad case of the hots, and reacted accordingly.
One of the larger problems I have with conservative Christian teachings is that there seems to be an underlying assumption that God made a major mistake creating us with sexuality. Apparently, by their theories we should have been like baboons, with women having buttocks that turn blue when they’re fertile and neither sex having any interest in sex the rest of the time.
In one of his books C.S. Lewis points out that a piece of God’s intricate design is in having something physical underlie and support the spiritual virtue that it is related to. Humans are built to be in couples, loving comforting, intimate twosomes. Always-on sexual desire makes one want that bond, helps to sustain it when he/she’s being totally insufferable, ensures that couples stay together and loving – and of course provides for the continuation of humanity for another generation as well.
But, as you’ve discovered, it’s fairly easy to activate that turn-on mechanism, even in circumstances where what you wanted was something slightly different – being held by someone familiar when you’re 3,000 miles away from home for the first time and a touch homesick being a reasonable “something slightly different.”
Don’t be judging yourself – that’s how a loving God built you to react when in intimate circumstances with an attractive young man. (BTW, Paul is good reading on temptation, but remember that he was something of a gynophobe, and it shows in his writings, inspired or not.)
The idea of talking frankly by e-mail or IM with Bobotim is not a bad one – and your being honest with yourself that you enjoyed it and in some ways want to do it again (despite having exceeded your self-set limts) is a good thing. (My point from last month about finding a sympathetic faculty member to talk with remains a good one – somewhere on that campus is somebody who recognizes that healthy young college students are going to have sexual desires and who is equipped to help them deal with them within the limits they set as good Christian young people.)
And, my friend, this is only the start of eye-openers – you’ve got four years of learning new and different things about life and about yourself. Have fun! 