TL;DR: Gf is planning to go far away for school. I'm torn between going or staying. Need help seeing which one fits the bill better
Hi, we've been together for nearly 5 years now, both graduated from uni last May, and have been debating about how to tackle school this coming fall. I work as a developer who is planning to re-attend cc locally this fall and she works in retail and plans to head about ~9 hours away via car in a very hcol area for her education. I never had much time to about this since the news came in late April.
She was not able to get into any of the schools in our area, and although there may have been some schools a little closer than 9 hours, it's at the point where it feels too late in the admissions process for this Fall to bother applying. She did however get into an online school but is adamant that she is not interested in online learning.
Something also important is that she's the main provider for her older brother (32) and mom (54) via necessity with me pitching in occasionally. I am fortunate enough to come from a more stable background. Also, no student housing options are available for grad students. We've spoken with the school already. Culturally, we must get married if we leave together. That's something we 've both agreed on.
Here is a short list of my talking points and her responses we both have been discussing.
- "How do you plan to attend?"
- "If I go alone, I'll find some roommates. If you come, we get a place together."
- "Are you willing to stick to a budget over there?"
- She's very avoidant on this question and doesn't like answering. For context, we do not have a budget currently. Our proximity to family and my income gives us the privilege to buy most things we want within reason. Any store run, event, or place we go, I foot the bill. Not a complaint but just something to note. I'm an introverted homebody that works remotely, pays my bills, lives minimally, and throws my excess income into index funds. She's also introverted but prefers to do a lot more. She likes to buy ingredients to cook trending recipes she sees online, eat at any restaurant she sees a good review for or craves, and buys random gadgets that someone on Tiktok said she needs. Financially, we're almost night/day opposites. I'm the boring and stingy buzzkill while she's impulsive, spendy, and easily sold on things. It's worked so far because our living conditions are nice. However, I fear she isn't willing to acknowledge the reality that our current lifestyle will not fly when she goes to school over there.
- "How will I continue to go to school?"
- Also no plan on this one. As I said, I'm already enrolled in fall classes. Nothing paid for yet, so I can still back out. I'm sure there are some cc's over there in proximity, but I have not found anything so far. I would like to go back to school and make a career pivot slowly into a mixture of medicine and technology. I also don't want to go to school for much longer, so I'm trying to rush this out asap.
- "You have no experience in this field, so are you sure this is what you want?"
- "Yes, this career choice stems from personal trauma. I have no experience because I was too busy in undergad caring for my family."
- This one is mainly just a leap of faith. I'm trying not to be greedy but it's a huge ask for me to greatly slow down my education for three years to support hers when she has no idea if she actually likes the field or not. It's hard to digest that we'll be basing the next three years of our lives over a hunch that she's interested in this subject without having any experience, but there's not much we can do at this point. The closest thing she has to experience is her own family trauma and that she enjoys reading books about healing broken families (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, I'm Glad My Mom Died, etc.).
- "Who will care for your family here? Who will support you there? You can't be in two places at once."
- "We'll move my mom and brother to affordable housing, have relatives that are physically closer visit to help, and we pitch in money when we can. You can pay for our life insurance (~$250/mo), my phone bill ($95/mo) and my car insurance (~$150/mo) while I go to school. I can also pick up a job while in school and work 2-3 days a week so support you and the folks back home. Also, by the end of my first year, I should start doing practicum.
- Anybody who has had experience and is reading this, is practicum in these graduate school therapy programs often paid?.
- "How much aid are we getting out there? It's possible that FASFA won't cover your full tuition like they did with undergrad and we'll have to create a buffer of a couple thousand $ every semester."
- We don't know. She submitted her FASFA back in early May and we have not heard anything back. We don't know what her school is offering us in terms of financial aid. She's always too tired to follow up and call their financial office, so I'll have to get that sorted. She qualified for federal and state grants for undergrad, but since last year has worked full-time. This is a dealbreaker for me about whether we even go there or not. If we have to fork over a couple thousand a semester, I don't think it'd be worth the time to put ourselves under that much stress. Just budgeting to survive there is already looking dire. If we have to factor in saving several hundred a month to meet tuition costs, that gives us a miniscule margin to breathe.
- "So we get married, move out there, you finish your program, and then we come back. What happens then?"
- "We go back to living separately so I can keep supporting my mom and everything goes back to normal."
- **"**No we're not doing that. When we get married and come back here we are finding our own place and setting up our own lives."
- "My mom has to live with us then."
- "That doesn't sit right with me. Where's your brother in all this?"
- "He's not going anywhere with his life. I'm my mom's only lifeline out of poverty. She's living with us otherwise we aren't getting married and I'll go alone so you can focus on yourself."
- This is currently where the conversation is. She's steadfast on supporting her mom as soon as she gets back. Nothing wrong with loving your parents, but I don't want to get roped into this commitment either. Part of it is because throughout our 5 year relationship, her mom never liked me until recently. The first time I visited to ask to take my gf on a date, her mom told me to leave and closed the door on me. Turns out it was because I'm very tan and she mistook me for a different ethnicity than her own. Another time she asked my gf to call me over to fix their closet and as soon as I finished she rushed me out the door and told me to leave again. These are just two of a long history of microaggressions for years that I dealt with. It wasn't until I finished college and my money started rolling in that she suddenly started being friendly. I pay for all their groceries, helped them buy a new washer/dryer, bought them a new deepcleaning shark vacuum, bought them chairs, a desk, and donated my old mattress to help furnish my gf's new bedroom. Honestly I bought them more stuff than my own family or myself. Now she's saying that we need to stick together and almost kissing up to me. I talked to my gf about feeling like a tool that's being used and she admitted that's what her mom sees me as. My lines are drawn in the sand parallel to my gf's unfortunately and nobody looks like they're going to budge
- There's a saying in life I've heard a few times. Something like when you marry someone, you're also marrying their family.
I love my girlfriend. We've been together since highschool, through undergrad, and now into whatever lies ahead. She is one of the few people I've socialized with since we started dating. She's also the second person I've ever been with and by several years the longest. We understand each other at a level that I'm afraid I will never see anywhere else. Our relationship is practically all I know about dating and pretty much all I care to know. Right now it's being tested and strained as we find the best way to move forward. For this dilemma, with the short time I've had to think, I've only come down to a two viable solutions.
- We get married and go together. Her family fends for themselves while I take care of our bills 100%, giving her the financial freedom to focus. If she wants to support them, she can pick up a job and work minimally.
- Pros: She has much more freedom in her schedule and finances. We strengthen the relationship by living together. Helps us grow together as a couple. When we come back together, we are hitting back with double the income.
- Cons: A huge financial commitment for us. What happens to my educational goals? I will need time to sort them out. She understandably will still worry to a degree about her family back home. We still need to sort out what we do when we come back home. I don't want to support her mom but she does.
- She goes alone and we do not get married. I support her living expenses somewhat while building a future for myself here. MAYBE: After a year, I go down and join her there.
- Pros: I get to keep pursuing my school and meeting my goals. She doesn't get a 100% free pass but still gets a huge financial burden lifted from her shoulders. Also gives me time to build wealth for the both of us since the big expenses won't be as hard hitting (rent over there mainly). We are not married so we do not need to have the conversation of how to support her mom until the time gets closer and we decide to seal the deal. Earlier is usually better, but I guess it's okay to wait a little on this and let it simmer.
- Cons: A huge 9 hour gap separates us. She still has to work a little bit so she loses some schedule flexibility. She has roommates so that leaves room for social issues or drama, possibly detracting from her ability to learn. We do not live together. There will understandably be some worry about her family back home as well.
Are there any other solutions I'm not thinking about? I'm running out of time to think because marriage in our culture is a long and arduous process. There are a handful of ceremonies and events that have to be done for us to be deemed married.
I absolutely won't let her go down there without any support at all. To pull something like that off would require extreme sacrifice that I can't watch happen. Working almost full-time while going to class 2-3 times a week, doing school work, and then doing practicum that might be unpaid sounds horrible.
I'm afraid of what this problem spells out for us. Long-term, her vehement refusal to let go of her mom and my refusal to help her spells out a nasty and bitter argument in the future. Do I cut the head off now or hope that we can come to an agreement in the future? Her lavish spending habits and refusal to budget conflict with my financial dreams to slowly accumulate wealth. My schooling and career goals are still in progress while hers are as well. We have so much further to grow, so I don't want to hold myself back helping her too long but I also don't want to abandon her in her time of need. Please help with your advice. Thank you!