<p>Many of us have seen our kids’ or their friends’ high school romantic relationships wither and die when the young people went off to college.</p>
<p>But what’s happening with today’s college relationships? Are they also dying out after graduation?</p>
<p>A generation ago, they often didn’t. Many young people who were in romantic relationships at the time when they graduated from college made great efforts to maintain the relationship – whether or not they got married. Often, this involved one or both people making sacrifices in terms of career or graduate school choices so that they could live in the same place. </p>
<p>Are today’s college graduates still doing this sort of thing? Or are they so career-focused now that they will sacrifice a relationship – even a solid, long-standing one – rather than make the career compromises necessary to maintain it?</p>
<p>This question was prompted by a thread over on the Cafe about how marriage – even without children – can limit a person’s dreams. It got me to wondering about the choices young people who are in love but not yet married might be making nowadays.</p>
<p>My husband and I spent three years on opposite coasts going to grad school before we got back in the same city again. We made some decisions about where to locate ourselves that were less than helpful for my career, but I don’t really regret it. To soon to know what sort of decisions my kids may make. I’m still waiting for relationships!</p>
<p>Marian - we are not quite there yet. But my daughter has wondered if she should break up with her BF when she goes abroad for a semester, which is in 3 weeks. I asked her if her feelings for her BF would change in 3 weeks. She said no. I told her if she is truly in love, then distance shouldn’t matter. If she starts to not feel the same way after they have been apart for a while, then she’ll need to deal with that. I also told her to be honest with her BF if/when things change, he doesn’t deserve to find out about it on FB. Feelings is not like a faucet that could turned off and on. </p>
<p>Relationship is about making compromises, and it can’t be a one way street, it needs to be a give and take situation. It is more complicated now because many women have careers, and they are not as willing to give up what they have worked so hard for. At my firm, I have seen men move with their wifes to other parts of the world. I have advised my daughters not to give up work after marriage. It is important to be financially independent. It should be interesting to see how everyting turns out in the next 10-20 years for our children. Do you think we’ll still be on CC?</p>
<p>My daughter managed to make it through undergrad w/o a serious relationship. I’m not sure how happy I am that it looks like she’ll get her career underway without worrying about such a conflict. I’m not sure she’s happy about that, either.</p>
<p>My fathering desire is to have her “settled” - this is not a rational feeling, it’s just the way it is.</p>
<p>Like mathmom (whose near twin I seem to be in many respects), I spent three of the five years between college and marriage living apart from my girlfriend/future wife – one year about 4,000 miles apart, and two only about 150 miles apart. She definitely made choices for me, moving to California after graduating from college, with no job ideas at all, and then forgoing in-state tuition at Boalt Hall to go to (expensive) law school only 150 miles from where I was going to be. I wasn’t so accommodating, until I moved here to join her and to get married, and stayed when she wanted to stay.</p>
<p>Our recent graduate has not had any official relationships yet (although in the middle of graduation her brother let slip that she had been involved for a while with a boy processing past us). Among her friends, serious relationships are fairly rare, and even then it’s a mixed bag. One woman just came home after her four-year boyfriend broke up with her a week before she was going to move in with him (he had been out of school for a few years). One woman has followed her serious boyfriend to Texas (not a place she would likely have chosen herself). A pair of gay men seems to be on the point of living 800 miles apart without breaking up. A few budding relationships withered and died in the pre-graduation and job-searching anxiety.</p>
<p>Our now-third-year has too many relationships. Like many young men, he is very skilled at getting women to break up with him by being passive-aggressive when he feels too many demands are being placed on him, and like many young women, it turns out they don’t really mean it when they break up with him. I am waiting with baited breath for the first indication that he is actually adjusting his plans to accommodate someone else. Or even thinking about it hard.</p>
<p>My son also made it through undergrad without a serious relationship.</p>
<p>In a way, this was an advantage because it meant that he had the whole country to choose from in terms of graduate schools. He ended up selecting one in California – a dramatic change of scenery for someone who grew up on the East Coast and attended a college only an hour from home. And it turns out that he loves California and is very satisfied with his graduate program (a good thing, because he’s shooting for a Ph.D. and will therefore be in grad school for quite a long time).</p>
<p>I think, though, that he might have preferred having a girlfriend, even if it would have put constraints on his choices.</p>
<p>The summer before oldest D was to leave for college I talked to her about the possibility of breaking it off with her h.s. boyfriend of 3 years (he was a year older and was attending local U). I told her that if she was still involved with him, she probably wouldn’t have a “complete” college experience - he would go up there to see her or she would come home, taking her away from the activites on campus. There were tears, she said “no way” she was going to do that, etc. About a month into college, she broke it off. A few months later she met a nice young man at school. They dated all through college and married last summer! She worked a year while he finished his Master’s degree. Now they both are moving half way across the country (sigh…) so she can attend graduate school.</p>
<p>On the inverse, younger D is a rising junior and has never had a date - in h.s. or college. She went to dances in h.s. with boy “friends” and has a great group of friends she still gets together with when she comes home. She is the very definition of “tunnel vision” - her eye is set on the goal at the other side and she is barreling head first toward it. She says she doesn’t have time to think about dating.</p>
<p>It’ll be interesting, should I live so long, to see how the current college-age generation fares divorce-wise. While my generation probably did “make sacrifices” to jockey careers, it didn’t really seem to work out too well, given the our high divorce rate, and the popular wisdom is that our kids’ generation is even more narcissistic than ours was.</p>
<p>My wife and I have been married almost 3 decades and I guess we’ve both made some “sacrifices,” but we viewed them more as joint decisions. Maybe it’s about facing life as a team. Easier said than done, perhaps. One of our “advantages” was that neither of us have worked in professions that pay particularly well. Money corrupts!</p>
<p>Don’t be surprised if your kids would make similar “sacrifices” with their future spouse. Kids tend to inherit their parents’ values, even if they should rebel in their teens.</p>
But my daughter has wondered if she should break up with her BF when she goes abroad for a semester, which is in 3 weeks. I asked her if her feelings for her BF would change in 3 weeks. She said no. I told her if she is truly in love, then distance shouldn’t matter. If she starts to not feel the same way after they have been apart for a while, then she’ll need to deal with that. I also told her to be honest with her BF if/when things change, he doesn’t deserve to find out about it on FB. Feelings is not like a faucet that could turned off and on. </p>