A
male
age
30-35,
*lbert
writes:Hello,Currently I'm a college student in New Orleans (sophomore to be precise), and I'm strongly considering transferring back to a school near my home in Kansas.The reasons I want to transfer is that my current doesn't quite have the major I want, and I feel like i fit in better back where I'm from. I love all my friends here, and I feel accepted, but I also don't feel myself...Things keeping me here in New Orleans is that my gf is here. She and I are really close, and we've been together for 8 months, and we have all these plans of far into the future, and we spend every waking moment together. And most of the time it's great, but sometimes she makes me feel like the worst person in the world. She has bipolar and has some issues controlling it, and she keeps getting angry at me for no reason. I always try to do the right thing and be the level head, but to her for the past couple of months I always do the right thing, but execute it in the wrong way... It's really frustrating and I've been trying to work through it, but she refuses to change, and just blames it on her bipolar condition.I've already applied to the Kansas school, but I don't know what I should do... I could possibly work through the problems with my girlfriend and try to explore majors offered in NOLA... or go to Kansas and be with my friends who I feel more natural around (and who have more similar interests to me) and also have a major that I definitely want to do.Thanks for any help! Reply to this Question
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (11 June 2010): You should go, as you are planning to do. There is nothing wrong with establishing yourself, and part of that is getting the best education you can. This isn't selfish, it is sensible. I would make sure you are going to the best school you can get into and afford, not just where your friends are.
As for your girlfriend, she and you have some choices to make. Go together, split up, or have a long distance relationship. Her bipolar thing doesn't change the essentials of the situation. Make sure that you aren't being unfair: if you want to drop her then for goodness sake don't drag it out into a long distance relationship.
Put bluntly: your education lasts you for a good thirty years or so. You'll lose contact with most of your school friends in three years or so. Your girlfriend might not last out the week.
When you are older your priorities will be different. Your goal will be to support your family well. But at your stage of life your goal is to establish yourself. Your girlfriend should be more than welcome to accompany you doing this (even from a distance), since she may well become the other pillar of your family. But simply staying with your girlfriend is not the goal in itself.
Regarding the bipolar thing. it should be an embuggerance -- something to be dealt with, managed, and occasionally raged against -- not a crutch. She isn't a child, you are not her mother. It is for her to work out how to deal with it. You can be supportive and understanding, but anything more than that will corrode your relationship and probably undermine her dealing with the disease.
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