Is it a good reason to break up an otherwise good relationship if one person graduating and going to medical school in another state while other struggling to graduate with very bad GPA due to lack of effort and ambition? Are long distance relationships as difficult for young students as grown ups?
I stay out of those things. I can tell you I’ve not known anyone deeply committed and in love with each other break up for the reasons you have just brought up.
Long distance relationships will either stand the tests of time and separation, or they won’t. So it’s not the mere fact of separation that’s the issue. If the relationship is strong, it might survive. If it isn’t, it might not survive.
LDR’s are, at the very least, a good way to determine how solid the relationship is. Let whatever is going to happen, happen.
As others have said the reason to break up or not is on the strength of the relationship. If you have doubts and aren’t happy with the differences between the personalities then that is a good reason. My son and his gf will be facing this in another year or so when he attends vet school where they currently are and she has to go off to medical school at another school. They have discussed not getting engaged until they see how all that plays out for a year or two. They feel it will work but you just don’t know until you do it.
D and her BF broke up during the time she decided to attend medical school on the East coast and he was planning to stay in the south. His reluctance made her take a closer look at their relationship and she made the decision to break up. She had a hard time at first but looks back and knows it was the best decision. Perhaps these reasons are just arrows to taking another look.
My first serious boyfriend and I broke up after a year long separation due to his junior year abroad. He was a good guy and we are still friends, though I can see through his facebook posts that we have less in common than I thought. My husband and I spent our grad school years on opposite coasts, though I spent every summer on his coast. It sounds like these two don’t have a lot in common, but the choice to break up or not, now or later is theirs. I have seen marriages where on partner is a go-getter and the other is more laid back work, but I think you have to go into them with your eyes wide open. That partner is unlikely to change.
I don’t think the distance is a reason to break up but I think the lack of effort and ambition are. Those are the kind of differences that really bite you down the road when life gets serious and it isn’t the fun and excitement of youth any longer.
I know of 2 good examples of successful long distance relationships. 1 is the “kid” who lived across the street from us. The other is my younger son. I won’t bore you with the details, but in both cases the couples were basically on the same page. In the example described by the OP, the issue I see is not the long distance but the apparent mismatch in motivation, ambition, (life goals?). One person going off to med school while the other is “struggling to graduate with very bad GPA due to lack of effort and ambition.” ummm… yes, I say break up.
I have a theory that a long-term relationship can only hold a certain amount of ambition.
In some relationships, that ambition is distributed almost equally between the two people, both of whom have moderately demanding careers.
In other relationships, the ambition is concentrated in one person with a really big career, while the other takes a more relaxed approach to his/her own career (and usually prefers it that way).
And of course, there are many situations in between those two extremes.
I would think that someone who aspires to be a doctor – and who is facing medical school followed by a residency and maybe a fellowship, possibly with each of these things happening in a different city and with little free time for pretty much the next decade, might welcome a partner who isn’t ambitious at all and is willing to kind of go along for the ride, move from place to place as the partner’s career dictates, and pick up the groceries and stay home to wait for the plumber much more than half of the time.
But it seems that in this particular relationship, the future doctor doesn’t feel that way.
Ambition and distance are probably bigger issues but culture and denomination are different too. It seems long distance issue made ambitious person think how much of a compromise it’s going to be on all fronts. It’s hard to tell in life if another special person would enter or is this going to be a bigger loss than it seems at the moment. You know life is complicated.
Its true about one less and one more ambitious partner often creating a more relaxed and efficient partnership than two ambitious or two slackers but if not going well, can be cause of resentment on both sides.
Define lack of ambition, effort and “bad GPA”? Because he/she couldn’t get into medical school?
Well, 2.5 GPA with easy major in school giving inflated grades, low MCAT, no alternative future plan, not completing graduation requirements on time would qualify for lack of ambition/effort by most definitions. On other hand happy, fun, active, considerate, caring, social, loving, optimist so with potential for a good long term partner.
Wow, with all those upsides maybe there’s hope. Question is do they have direction at all? If they have no direction, this could be a mis-match. If they have a direction (maybe not even a plan yet – but a direction!) for some way to support themselves after college in a way that leads to some level of job/career satisfaction down then the line then I wouldn’t care about bad grades and lack of motivation in college. Maybe they were on a pre-med track b/c of parent pressure and just never felt they could get off so coasted through?
There are plenty of successful people who don’t do well in college. Would be curious what their interests are and how he/she describes their future.
If I made a checklist of things I considered important in a relationship, GPA and MCAT score wouldn’t be on it. Happy, fun, active, considerate, caring, social, loving, and optimist all would be.
Some people may do what it takes to get a degree and not much more because they just aren’t all that motivated by the classroom learning experience, but feel it’s still better to have a degree (in anything) than not have one at all, or maybe their parents pushed them into it when they never really wanted to go. It doesn’t mean they can’t/won’t find their calling, motivation, and ambition post-college after trying different fields. Nothing wrong with that IMO.
Iived a long term relationship and going on 32 years now. Even after we got married she went off to do her residency and I was starting a practice
You both don’t need to be “A” personalities. What you mentioned in the positive seems like great attributes.
Question is “do you love her”?
If you can’t just say yes then time to reevaluate. If yes, then I think “helping” her figure out the next phase of her /your life is worth at least trying. If it doesn’t work out then you can separate.
You might be surprised that she doesn’t just know what to do yet. Talk to her about what your feeling not just to us
Good Luck.
“Question is “do you love her”?”
I didn’t see the respective genders mentioned above, but I think there’s a tendency to judge males more harshly for a “lack of ambition/effort” when comparing that to attributes such as being a “considerate, caring, social, loving” partner.
College aged me would have very much prioritized someone with similar ambitions, drive and skills, so low grades and no plan would have been a deal breaker in a potential partner. But the married for almost 30 years now me would understand that I (the ambitious one) would make more than enough money for the both of us and would very much prioritize a partner who is happy, fun, active, considerate, caring, social, loving, optimist. After a certain income level - and that income level isn’t as high as I would have predicted in college - more income doesn’t improve the quality of life in a partnership very much, yet having a partner who is enjoyable to live with is priceless.
@Twoin18. Thank you for pointing that out. I made an assumption that I shouldn’t of but the question remains the same. “Do you love that other person?” 
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I married someone who was good looking, fun, considerate, very accommodating to me and my family. All of those traits very good when we were young, but at the end of day I needed a partner. A partner who would pull his weight in putting food on the table for our family (to be very blunt), not someone who cared more about what was good for him. My ex and I loved each very much when we got married, but day to day grind of “why am I working 15+ hours a day when you are not working” got to both of us.
I don’t think having good GPA necessary means someone is going to do well in life, but what is important is if a person is hardworking and responsible. OP’s daughter should figure out why this young man is not graduating on time and not doing well in school. She should also think about if/when the chips are down would this person be there for her and their family later.
Finding the right partner is the single most important thing we do in life. A good partner can make you a better person, and a bad partner can drag you down.
My experience aligns with @Marian (post #8). I just celebrated 6 years of marriage with my less ambitious but nonetheless incredible husband. He moved with me to a city where he had very few opportunities while I completed grad school, then with me across the country to Colorado for a postdoc. Now he is moving to NYC with me where I am starting a new career as a data scientist (and earning much more than I did as a postdoc). In grad school he worked a just-above-min-wage job working with people with developmental disabilities (which he loved) to help put food on the table, and did the lion’s share of housework/cooking while I worked 60+ hours per week on my PhD. Since I started my postdoc (which nearly tripled my salary) he’s been a fulltime housespouse and has taken to baking most everything from scratch, couponing, and making use of all food scraps for homemade stocks, etc. He much prefers this to working outside of the home (I very much consider what he does to be work) and he picks up a little cash on the side from the secondary markets of some of his hobbies.
None of what I did would have worked without a spouse who was willing to prioritize my career over his own, and who had skills complementary to my own deficits. I’m domestically challenged and would live in filth eating sugar cereal for 3 meals a day if left to my own devices, but I’m really ambitious, resourceful, and good at what I do. He’s not at all ambitious but is supportive, funny, thoughtful, and an excellent homemaker and caregiver. We’re the right balance for each other and the dynamic works really well, though from the outside people don’t always understand.