How my college room[m]ates helped change [m]y body image (x-post from r/NakedBuddiesStories)

My attitude toward nudity has evolved a lot over the years thanks to the friends I’ve made. I come from a conservative, somewhat sheltered upbringing, and I’ve always been a very self conscious person, especially when it came to my body. At the pool, I’m the guy who wouldn’t take off his shirt to go swimming. I mostly went to private schools growing up and didn’t get much of the gym changing room experience. But that was all about to change when I entered college.

My freshman year, I was thrown into a living situation with other guys, and for the first time, I saw how most guys my age acted. I was definitely the most straight laced of the group. I was a good student and they were partiers. Despite our very different personalities though we became good friends and I learned to start loosening up from them.

I quickly realized that other guys had a different attitude about their body. First of all, no one except for me wore clothes around the apartment, they just hung around in boxer shorts. (I never wore boxers before but I switched out all my briefs as soon as I could.) They had tons of stories about getting drunk and naked at parties / playing pranks on people, etc. Meanwhile, I was freaking out that someone might see me changing my clothes.

But things started to change gradually. I realized boxers were so much more comfortable than briefs. Then I started sleeping in my underwear and discovered it was amazing! (I don’t know how I ever wore pajamas.) Eventually, I stopped caring if someone saw me in my underwear. I wasn’t as comfortable as they all were, but I was improving.

Dorm life was a major step for me but pretty soon things were going to advanced rapidly. I was about to have a major experience that would change me from a shy person into a confident person. Being naked in front of other people was something I feared my whole life. It’s something I never thought I would willingly do, but being naked with a close friend really changes your perspective.

The whole series of events started somewhat as an accident. One summer, my roommate Tim and I planned a backpacking trip through Europe. We went from country to country riding trains, meeting new people and seeing the sights. Tim was still under the legal drinking age in the U.S. and he was on a mission to drink as much alcohol as he could. In some places, wine was even cheaper than water. Needless to say, he spent a lot of the trip drunk.

While In Italy, we decided to rent a bungalow for a couple days. At night, Tim headed out to get some drinks as usual and I of course decided to be boring and stay in. I settled into bed and went to sleep. Late that night, Tim came back to the bungalow and stumbled through the door. He was so drunk I can’t believe he found his way back home. He sat down on the floor and in very slurred speech started excitedly telling me about this group of “Brishish chicks” that were staying here.

Eventually he got tired and wanted to take a shower so he could go to bed, but that’s not what ended up happening. Without turning on any lights, he made his way to the bathroom. Then after a couple minutes, I hear this loud crash. I ran in to help and realized he had gotten all his clothes off before losing his balance and falling to the floor. “Are you naked?” He just started laughing and stumbling around trying to stand up again but he couldn’t.

Then the puking started. It went everywhere and smelled like pure alcohol. The next fifteen minutes or so was me trying to coax Tim toward the shower and him fighting every step of the way. He would try to regain his balance, fall over and roll around on the floor in the dark, laughing and puking. I think he might have just been messing with me the whole time because all of a sudden he got up, walked over to his bed and passed out. I left him there for the night, mopped up a little bit of puke with a towel and went back to bad.

When the sun came up that morning, everything was dead quiet. I looked over and saw Tim still passed out cold on his bed and he apparently hadn’t moved at all during the night. He was laying on top of the covers, face up and very out in the open. Not only was he still naked, he was in a position where you couldn’t avoid seeing everything he had. This was the first time I had ever seen someone in person naked and fully exposed like that. It almost looked fake, like my friend Tim was replaced with a renaissance painting overnight. (We had been visiting tons of museums and I think my brain was blurring what I was seeing with something that made more sense.) I didn’t realize that’s actually what people look like naturally. The scene was impressive with the dim light coming through the window and a “model” reclining on a bed. Everything was incredibly tranquil.

I didn’t want to leave my friend out in the open like that, so I got up and put a blanket over him. That caused him to wake up though. Now if it had been me in that situation, I would have been embarrassed and tried to keep covered while putting clothes on as fast as possible but Tim did something I didn’t expect. He pushed the blanket off of him, got up and went about his morning completely in the buff. That was incredible how he didn’t care what anyone else thought. He didn’t put on clothes until after he had his shower. That was confidence I didn’t have and it stuck with me.

Our trip ended about a week later and life went back to normal in the states. For me, seeing somebody naked was a big deal. I didn’t know if Tim was more comfortable around me or if he would have been like that with anybody but I saw our friendship in a different light. He was someone I trusted who could help me come out of my shell.

One day back in our apartment, I suddenly decided I would try the same thing Tim did on our trip. I had been sick in bed with the flu for a couple days, and I was just starting to recover. Whenever Tim got out of the shower, he tended to air dry for a long time, so he was walking around the apartment wearing a towel. He came in my room to check how things were going. I told him I was feeling a lot better and we talked for awhile about different stuff. Eventually we got into one or our usual stupid debates (we had opposite views on everything). He was done arguing and got up to leave but I jokingly grabbed his towel and told him he had to stay and defend his side. Tim just laughed and said something like, “I don’t care,” and walked out of his towel. I don’t know why it would surprise me that he would do that again but this time I couldn’t let it go. I hated that I was ashamed of being naked and he obviously wan’t.

All I can say is I’m glad I have really good friends who tolerate my weirdness. I got up out of bed, I was just wearing my boxers, and I walked into Tim’s room where he had already put on his boxers. I told him outright how I had never really been naked in front of anyone before, he did it all the time and I wanted to have that kind of attitude too. I put my hands on the waistband of my boxers. Tim basically said, “well, you can if you want to.” “You’re not going to regret it, are you? Once you’ve done it you can’t take it back.” He was right. I hesitated and looked down at my feet feeling really stupid. But then I just didn’t think about it. I just let my hands fall and the rest was gravity. Still staring at my feet, I saw my underwear hit the floor and crumple up at my ankles.

It didn’t seem real. The strangest part was how I thought I would feel “naked” but I didn’t. I guess I expected something really momentous to happen. Something I was so afraid of my whole life was immediately not that big of a deal. My clothes had just been a security blanket and I realized they weren’t that important once you thought about it. I stepped out of my underwear and noticed how great it felt. Why do we even need clothes when we’re already wearing the most comfortable outfit?!

I looked up and saw Tim was cautiously watching to see how I was going to react next. I’m sure it was like a train wreck he couldn’t look away from. When I noticed him, I felt nervous again. I was glad to see he wasn’t upset but he was also keeping his distance from the situation and I felt awkward about myself. That was when I learned about the weird shift nudity causes in a social dynamic. I think it was obvious to both of us what had to happen next. If you’re in a room with other people, either nobody should be naked, or everybody should be naked. I walked over and said something like, “come on it’s your turn”, while acting like I was going to pants him. “Okay, okay,” and he reluctantly took off his underwear himself. That made things balanced again. After a few minutes, it didn’t even register in my mind that we were naked. All I saw was that we were wearing the same clothes.

Considering the circumstances, Tim was really understanding and I appreciated that. We both sat down on the edge of his bed and talked like we normally would. To this day, I couldn’t tell you what the conversation was but my nerves had pretty much settled. Right then, Tim got a phone call from his family. He seized the opportunity to get out of that situation. He jumped up and answered the phone all while putting on boxers again. Immediately, I started to feel sick about what just happened. I thought maybe I ruined our friendship for good. But instead of running out the door, Tim casually walked over to where I left my underwear, picked them up off the floor and handed them to me. That let me know things were still ok.

In the end, I got naked with a friend for the first time and I didn’t regret it. I don’t know if it brought us any closer together, but it didn’t seem to hurt anything. Maybe it was a bonding experience because Tim and I stayed really close friends years after that. (We’re still friends but it’s difficult now that we live so far.) We had a ton more fun times, traveling together, partying, we even hung out naked a few other times. A couple times other friends of ours were involved. (I might tell those stories sometime if people are interested.)

So if you get the chance to bond with your close friends, I recommend going for it! It may change your whole outlook for the better.

Source: reddit.com/r/gonewildstories/comments/ialz74/how_my_college_roommates_helped_change_my_body