It’s the end of October and the honeymoon is over. No matter how much you loved your roommate five weeks ago, the dirty socks on the floor and the glass of milk-turned-yogurt on the bookshelf have a way of betraying the reality: married life is hard.

There was a time not so long ago when you enjoyed the blissful life of bachelorhood in your parents’ house. But a real mattress with a desk more than two feet away is just one of the minor sacrifices of the college experience. The real loss is that of your single status.

Initially, the University takes it upon itself to work as a matchmaker. Remember that roommate survey you filled out? The one where you said you went to bed between 10pm and midnight? Those ridiculously deflated numbers may have fallen by the wayside upon arrival on the Farm, but they were the rationale by which you were paired with your year-long soul mate.

Although the freshman matchmakers do their best, nearly every resulting couple has a few stories that will go down in infamy. When I arrived at Larkin 206 for the first time, I found an open suitcase, a clothes-strewn floor and a bed with a single, twisted sheet draped over half of it. My lucky international roommate had “moved in” to our room several days before freshman orientation.

I was willing to take the untouched corner of the room, but there were bigger and better stories ahead. The milk-turned-yogurt mentioned above made its appearance mid-way through October, and by then I’d become accustomed to the 8 a.m. calls from her parents on Sunday mornings (off-peak rates trump time difference every time — and this was in the days before cell phones, mind you).

Sharing a bedroom — if a 10x10 square in Stern counts as such — with another living, breathing, mess-creating person is certainly stressful, but there are many positive aspects to the roommate-marriage. For starters, couple-hood may be the best teacher you encounter at Stanford. You soon learn that “clean” has a wide variety of definitions, ranging from “no clothes on the floor” to “fully vacuumed.” “Bedtime” and “quiet” also mean different things to different people, running the gamut from midnight to 5 a.m., dead silent to low-volume heavy metal.

In addition to learning your spouse’s native language, your unique union also gives you the opportunity to observe a large number of basic psychological phenomena. Some confused souls simply cannot discern the difference between your dresser and theirs, while others, myself included, have an affinity for order closely resembling mild OCD. If you think this is an overstatement, just ask my sophomore roommate what happened after she moved my candle from its place in the middle of our coffee table — for the tenth time.

But these difficulties can be negotiated. Keeping your favorite shirt in the backseat of your car or sleeping with earplugs and an eye-mask are small concessions compared to those required of the end-all-be-all roommate challenge of the Sexile. This situation raises the painful truth that, at least after five beers and a tough week of mid-terms, someone else is more important to your significant other than you. It also means you get to spend the night in the lounge.

With the wisdom and experience gained from your freshman year liaison, the University trusts you have the maturity to choose your future partners. This freedom, of course, brings with it a new set of issues, as most drawmates are not just acquaintances but good friends. Thus, there is much more at stake; whoever said it was better to be friends first has clearly never lived with someone.

For starters, the space you share is usually even smaller than your former Wilbur cube. Whether you’re sharing the quint in Bob or the classic two-room triple, more people in less space means more issues more often. And in case you’re fantasizing about next year in 680, neither room of the two-room double has it easy (walking in versus being walked in on — take your pick).

In addition to the lack of physical space, good friends who live together also have less emotional space. This may be a bigger issue for girls, but it is unquestionably harder to escape the daily social drama when part of its root cause sleeps in the twin above you.

When the lack of physical and emotional space doesn’t disrupt the union, a few risk-takers have even been known to take on an infamous relationship strain: offspring. In the middle of sophomore year, my friends Mike and Phil made the ambitious decision to purchase two guinea pigs. Named “Mipe” and “Phim,” the hybrid-named pets were golden children — until Mike went abroad junior year, Phil decided he couldn’t take care of them on his own and a third party had to take them to the pound. (Phil couldn’t bring himself to do it).

Aside from not adopting pets (which are, by the way, technically not allowed in Stanford dorms), there are a few things you can do to avoid drama. As someone who still owns the futon I bought at the end of freshman year, I highly recommend making individual purchases when you co-decorate. It may be easier and cheaper to split the cost now, but it will be much harder in June when you’re arguing over the microwave.

I would also recommend drawing up a pre-nup, in which everyone voices and writes down expectations for cleaning, common purchases, etc. The process may seem a bit tedious now, but just ask Paul McCartney: it’s worth it in the long run.

Of course, for all of its struggles, the roommate-marriage has many redeeming qualities. No one will ever know you as well as the person who sees you not only when you first wake up but also after back-to-back all-nighters. To this day, I get nostalgic when I smell the perfume worn by my roommate from junior year or the cinnamon-vanilla candles my last roommate loved. For every time I complained, “You never take out the trash!” there were countless times when they made me laugh, let me cry and listened patiently to my latest male drama. One even woke up at 7 a.m. to do my make-up before my first big interview. If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.

Lisa Mendelman is currently enjoying the blissful peace of single life on the roommate front. Email her at lisame@stanford.edu.