Copied from PMS Elle's "Advise- damage control?" thread.To go to the college I had wanted to go to, and had a good scholarship to go to, and not the one my boyfriend was encouraging me to go to in order to be closer to him.
That was excellent advice. Good thing that you listened to them.
How did taking their advice fuck you up, though? If you lost that boyfriend over it, was he really worth keeping?
It fucked me up because the way my father did it was to threaten me with my own suicide. When he sat me down and laid it out as, "If you go to XXXX college, you will burn out trying to work enough to afford it, have to drop out, lose your boyfriend, become depressed because you've ruined your chances of getting a job in your field, and commit suicide," I believed him. He was my father - I looked up to him - and I was naive and easily influenced enough that it would have likely come true through self-fulfilling prophecy. At the time I prided myself hugely on independent thought, and to realize that I couldn't stand up for myself even to defend my desire to live broke through any ideals I'd held.
I didn't lose the boyfriend, though he had a very hard time because right before I left (which he was already dreading) his house burned down and his parents started in on the divorce crap I mentioned in the other thread.