This may seem like an easy one to figure out and to avoid. You’d be surprised, though, how often it happens. To me.

Aren’t you married? Are you even qualified to give this kind of advice?

Jesus Christ. I wasn’t born married.

I’ve been in this scenario, twice actually, and managed to learn a thing or two. The following list of reasons why not to date your own neighbors is in no particular order of importance — it is in fact all very important if you want to avoid someone you slept with months ago knocking on your door at 1:00am:

• They’ll come over. Unannounced. (See above.) You cannot stop them, you can only stand perfectly still inside your apartment for 15 minutes until you’ve decided they’re probably not there anymore — but wait, they could be there…or they could come back — so you tiptoe silently to your bedroom (even though it’s only 7pm) where you spend the remainder of the night with the TV turned down real low. It could, and will, happen.

• It takes all the challenge out of stalking. For all parties involved. You don’t even have to drive over to someone’s house and sit awkwardly slumped down in your car in order to find out what they’re doing and with whom. You simply only have to stand outside their door or walk past their fucking house to see them in love with someone else. (Note: all internet stalking is fully acceptable and becomes quite gratifying when done so using said neighbor’s stolen wifi password.)

• Binoculars. Everyone’s got ’em, everyone’s using ’em. Not just you. Creeps.

• When you are dumb enough to date multiple people in the same building you simply become a whore. Unless you’re a man and then you become “worldly” or “distinguished.” In most cases, though, you’re just slutty.

• Once it’s over you no longer have that cute guy down the hall (or block) to call if you need something fixed.

But you might still be friends right?

Not fucking likely.

Are you sure, we had a good thing going. I’m sure he’d be happy to help me out.

Yeah. No. He’s not going to answer. Cause, well, you’re crazy.

• You might actually like him/her and they might like you but the feeling may or may not be mutual. Which means that you’ll be forever reminded of that when passing by their mailbox. (Note about mailboxes: if you’ve already had some sort of “relations” with one of your neighbors but can’t actually remember their name, check out the name on their mailbox. Thank me later.)

• Neither of you are likely moving anytime soon. You may think this shit’s temporary but even a year becomes pretty fucking long when the guy you had a thing with lives, I don’t know, RIGHT THERE.

What if they live way down the block or on another floor?

Have you learned nothing here? “Way down the block” is like 200 feet away.

One last very important piece of non-neighbor-dating-advice:

• Dating your neighbors means that you’re a lazy asshole. Okay, you might be a really really really nice person, but you are in fact quite lazy. You’ve probably passed up on dates with people who live farther away using excuses like “I don’t like catching the train at night” or “I’m too drunk to drive” or “cabs are gross” or “I’m already in my pajamas.” All of these things can be avoided by dating your neighbor but it also means the only person your new sex-partner sees is a drunk girl in her pajamas with a side ponytail EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEK.

I know I can’t stop you from falling in love with that hot guy who lives upstairs but please, for your own sanity, consider dating at least a mile or two out of the radius of your home….or stock up on really hot pajamas cause you’re in for a hot mess of a ride.