Boyfriend and school?

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Ughh. Okay, so my nursing inspiration is at 100% now! :) But I am having a MAJOR road block. My boyfriend and I recently started dating and but we moved very fast, very quickly. I love him :redbeathe. He does NOT understand school work. I go to school full time (15 credit) full of pre-reqs and I am a candy striper AND starting a CNA course (hopefully!). He gets angry when I don't pay enough attention to him, if we don't talk on the phone enough, or we don't do 'stuff' enough. We both still live with our parents, and he has a part time job and is thinking about joining the army in August. I don't drive so currently he is very PO'ed at me for having to drive to get me. Well SORRY! :uhoh3: Does your boyfriend/significant other get so angry and threaten to break up with you JUST cause you want to go to school to get a job to be able to drive, get an apartment, and raise a family. I am trying to do the best for us! I am also always freaked that I will get pregnant so I want to get as much school done now as I can. I don't know what to do, I love him so much and we will be together forever but I don't know what to do.

Oh, and I forgot to add about the sex...

It depends on where you live, but if he's 18 (I'm guessing he is if he's thinking about joining the Army), it could be illegal.

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I thought the age for statutory rape was 16 in my state. I was surprised to find out it is 18!

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Specializes in Gerontology, nursing education.

Tara Rae, you've gotten a lot of excellent advice from many different people on this thread, including some tough love and posts from mothers and fathers who see their children---and their younger selves---in your situation. PLEASE print out these posts--all the posts---tape them to your notebooks, to your bathroom mirror, anywhere you can see them when you feel need for some reassurance and strength to carry out YOUR life's dreams.

Sure, this guy may seem "amazing" but he isn't. I thought that of the guy I was with when I was a senior in high school. I thought he was the only person for me and that I'd never meet anyone as wonderful. He was controlling, manipulative and abusive, but I was too young and naïve to see it at the time. I took risks that were, in retrospect, utterly stupid and I also compromised my values---as well as my common sense. I got engaged at age eighteen; maybe I thought I was in love because I'd slept with him. Sexual attraction, at any age, can make people do crazy things and awaken feelings for which one is just not prepared. It's much harder to handle those feelings, though, at age sixteen than it is at, say, age twenty-six. Anyway, the boyfriend went into the military (during peacetime, not at a time of war like today) and I went to nursing school. I don't know how I could have handled nursing school if he'd been home because he never would have understood the commitment that school entailed. During the next couple of years we changed dramatically. I grew and matured but he didn't. When he told me that he'd gotten into drugs, I broke off the relationship. I could not spend the rest of my life with someone like that.

Unfortunately, I got into a pattern of bad relationships after that. My self-esteem suffered and I found myself attracted to verbally and emotionally abusive control freaks---even married one---and I didn't break that pattern until I dated one last loser at age 46. That relationship nearly broke me---but it made me aware of the unhealthy pattern I'd been in since I was a teenager. And when I was healthy enough for a relationship, I met the man who is now my husband and the love of my life.

But please---you do not want to do what I did and waste thirty years of your life on losers and control freaks, no matter how "awesome" they may seem. When I was married to my first husband, I knew I'd made a mistake three months after the wedding but I didn't want to admit that I was wrong in marrying him. When I was about six months pregnant with our first child, I wanted to leave him but didn't think I could raise a child by myself---and I was already an RN and in my late twenties. Think of how much more difficult it would be to be a single parent, without a career, in your teens!

Another thing I want you to think about, too, is something that was touched upon by other posters. If he does join the Army, yes, that would be a way to provide for a family, but he would also stand an excellent chance of deploying to Afghanistan or Iraq. It's stressful being a military wife---my second husband is a Guard chaplain who has deployed twice in the past few years. He still suffers with PTSD and tells me---sometimes---about how frightening it was to be stuck in an intersection for fear of an IED and how he felt afterwards when a rocket hit his sleeping quarters---fortunately it did not detonate because everyone in that building would likely have perished. He often counsels young soldiers and their families and tells me about the incredible stress these families face. The spouses who stay at home never know if each email, each phone call is the last communication they will ever receive from their loved ones. Yes, military spouses do rely on each other and provide support but for many the stress is simply too much. The rate of divorce is very high in military marriages, worsened by repeated deployments.

Look, you are a bright, motivated young woman with an AMAZING future ahead of you. If we're all wrong here and this guy truly is the love of your life, wait a few years. Stop having sex without protection. Pursue your dreams and see, in a couple of years, if you can grow together and build a healthy relationship and a healthy life---for yourselves and any future children you might have.

And please keep us posted. I think many of us are really worried about you.

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This is very troubling to read.

When a man... ahem, boy, gets angry with you over things that you are doing to better your life (like going to school, studying, etc) that is a HUGE red flag. Either he is very immature (which is probably the case considering your age, he probably isn't that much older) and/or he has serious control issues that need to be looked at closely by you. A pattern that tends to occur in abusive relationships is that the abuser wants to have some sort of control over the abused. The abuser wants the abused to somehow be dependent on him or her, leaving the abused with little way out of the relationship. He may see your schooling as a problem because by earning your degree and bettering yourself, you will not be fully dependent on him, meaning you can up and leave him. Please think about this carefully.

Compromising what you believe in for him is not good. Worrying about being pregnant is REALLY not good. Being a nanny is WAY different than being a mom. Especially when you have your whole life ahead of you like this. Please reconsider your relationship. Concentrate on school and get your degree.

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I think in any relationship there should be support for each other. I think that you need to reevaluate the relationship. I have been in a long distance relationship for 2 years (we've been dating for 5) we are now engaged. Sometimes it is hard because the only time we can see each other is on the weekends, but sometimes I have to study, but he understands and we try our best and it is not always easy. Bottom line, if he really cares for you, he will support you in everything that you do.

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Don't worry, if you end up breaking up, you will have enough studying on your plate to keep you busy :)

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I have a funny feeling this post is fake. This just sounds too ridiculous and some of the facts from multiple posts of hers do not align.

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I also do not understand how someone intelligent enough to finish high school before the age of 16 could be so terrible at spelling. I mean I know a lot of us use internet slang but she wrote "majic" instead of "magic" and "organeyzing" in a previous post..

I hope the standards for nursing are not dropping!! Actually, I hope they are, then I stand a better chance. :)

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Career > Love

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Specializes in Med Surg/MICU/Pediatrics/PCICU.
I also do not understand how someone intelligent enough to finish high school before the age of 16 could be so terrible at spelling. I mean I know a lot of us use internet slang but she wrote "majic" instead of "magic" and "organeyzing" in a previous post..

I hope the standards for nursing are not dropping!! Actually, I hope they are, then I stand a better chance. :)

Actually after reading some of her other posts, she is still in high school. Yet somehow she is starting in the nursing program as well...???? I'm a little confused with that one. I have heard of some people being so smart they graduate early, and some just taking a few college classes. But this girl states she is in college and taking online high school classes to get her HS diploma. I don't know I've never heard of that before sounds made up to me.

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I had a room mate in college one time who was attending college half the day while she finished her final year of high school. She had been attending college for at least the last two years of high school. She said it was almost common in her area. She once told me that one of her high school teachers was giving her a hard time and she told him off, stating that her college classes were far more important than what she was doing in high school. I met her in summer school and she was already a sophomore in college, actually further along than I was and I had been in college full time the previous school year.

However, I don't believe that is the case here.

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Specializes in Peds/outpatient FP,derm,allergy/private duty.

Well if it is fake, someone sure has a strange idea of what would be a fun activity. I was in a thread recently that set off many people's troll-dar, turned out it was for real. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, there is so much good advice here for anyone involved in a similar situation, it was worth it in the end.

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