If she’s open to it, suggest these college survival habits:
Lily and I had the hardest conversation of our relationship that night. I had to say things I never wanted to say to someone I love.
"Lily, your kindness is the best thing about you," I said. "But you are confusing kindness with blindness. You think you’re seeing the best in people. But what you’re actually doing is refusing to see the truth because the truth is scary."
She didn't cry. That was new. She just stared at her hands.
"I don't know how to be suspicious," she admitted. "It feels like a disease. If I start doubting everyone, won't I become bitter? Like… like everyone else?" College Stories. My Girlfriend is too naive--- ...
And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? For people like Lily, naivety isn't stupidity. It's a willful, desperate act of hope. They believe that if they just trust hard enough, the world will be forced to be trustworthy.
But college isn't a conservatory for hope. It's a proving ground. And the lessons are often brutal.
College is where ideals get tested. Lena believed in the best versions of people; I believed in protecting those ideals from being exploited. Small incidents stacked up. A lab partner promised to be accountable and disappeared, leaving Lena to take the blame. A craigslist sale turned into a scam she shrugged off as “a lesson.” Each time, she forgave quickly and kept trusting. I became sharper—questioning, calculating, skeptical. I started correcting her in front of others, thinking my realism was necessary. She started to shrink.
I met Lena in the middle of sophomore-year chaos: a study group that turned into late-night pizza runs and an accidental partnership for a philosophy presentation. She laughed like she believed the world would always hand people second chances, and she asked questions—as if every answer might be a new window, not a wall. People called her naive; I called her honest. That difference grew into our story. If she’s open to it, suggest these college
Then there was her roommate, Sarah. Sarah was a nightmare in Ugg boots. She stole Lily’s Adderall. She borrowed Lily’s white cashmere sweater for a frat party and returned it two weeks later with a wine stain and a burned sleeve (from a curling iron, apparently). She left passive-aggressive sticky notes on the fridge: “Whoever ate my vegan cheese—I know who you are.”
Every time, Lily forgave her.
"Sarah said sorry," Lily would chirp. "And she smiled when she said it."
I tried to explain that a smile doesn’t equal sincerity. I tried to explain that some people smile while holding a knife behind their back. But Lily couldn’t compute that. Her moral framework was binary: People are good. If they do bad things, they must be sad. If they are sad, you help them. "But you are confusing kindness with blindness
She let Sarah borrow $300 for a "family emergency." That emergency turned out to be a VIP ticket to a music festival. When Lily finally asked for the money back, Sarah laughed and said, "Girl, I thought that was a gift."
Lily cried for three hours. But by dinner time, she was defending Sarah again. "Maybe her family really is struggling and she just needed a break."
I wanted to scream. Instead, I just held her, feeling a strange, hollow ache in my chest. I wasn’t holding a girlfriend anymore. I was holding a child who had wandered into an R-rated movie.
You can inform, protect, and advise. But if you try to control or lecture her, you’ll become the bad guy. College is where people learn from their own mistakes—sometimes expensive ones.