[vcvhartley]

My boyfriend and I are both 25 and we have known each other for three years, we have been dating for nine months, and we have been living together for six months. He is the most amazing man I have ever met and I am in love with him. We talk about wanting to get married and spending our lives together. However, we are in a state of crisis at the moment and I need advice on how to deal with everything because I have absolutely no idea what to do.

Brief synopsis of events leading up to our particular dilemma: Nathan, my boyfriend, went to college at an expensive university to get his BS in Criminal Justice. The economy crashed and his parents, who run a construction business, were no longer able to pay outright for him to attend there. But they told him that if he took out a student loan under his name because their credit wasn’t good enough that they would make the payments on it. They also told him that they would make payments to the school for the last semester of his tuition. This totals to about $60,000 all together. If they had not told him that, he would have transferred to a less expensive university. Well, he has aspirations of being a police officer, and one of the requirements is that police officer candidates must not have ANY debt in default or in collections. We found out in January of this year that Nathan’s parents had been lying to him and withholding mail from him and not making any payments on his student loans and tuition, causing both to go into default and the university filed a collection lawsuit against him. Needless to say he was faced with the crippling realization that he cannot become a police officer anytime soon.

Well, Nathan works for his father. And we rent from his father. His father refuses to take any blame for the situation. Even though all the father had to do when he could not make payments was tell Nathan and Nathan would have figured something out on his own end before things went into default and resulted in a lawsuit. His father is emotionally, mentally and verbally abusive and berates Nathan to the point of breaking down almost every morning. Nathan’s father withholds pay from Nathan for hours worked and has been cutting his hours leaving Nathan almost destitute. His father holds the fact that we pay rent to him and that he basically controls everything in our lives over our heads. When Nathan tries to get a new job or we try to move all hell breaks loose. He is controlling of every aspect of Nathan’s life and calls Nathan at least five times a day. I have tried to talk to Nathan about his father, but he has a very strong sense of loyalty towards him and refuses to stand up to him. Nathan’s mother has told me that the best approach is to keep my head down and stay out of it because the father has been this way for years and there is no changing him. Nathan’s father is putting a serious strain on Nathan and on our relationship.

As a result, Nathan has signed up to join the military because it is the only way he can get away from his father and the only way he can further his career in criminal justice while we are sorting out the whole mess that he is in. He leaves for bootcamp in August. I cannot live with him while he is in the military unless we are married, which feels rushed.

Questions:
How do I handle the situation with the father? I feel like I have had as much as I can take….
Should I wait for Nathan while he is in bootcamp or move on for the time being?
Are the family dynamics a deal breaker?
Should I marry him before he leaves so that I can go with him and we can live a life away from his family?
What the hell am I supposed to do…?

Please help,
Victoria

[AskApril Masini]

These are all good questions.

The first thing you have to do is to take a few steps back and look at the situation from a different perspective. I hope I can help you do that. 🙂 You started living with your boyfriend very quickly — maybe too quickly. I don’t doubt your feelings for him, but as you can see now, love doesn’t conquer all. It’s important, but so is compatibility. Your boyfriend is 25 years old and he has a college degree, some student loan debt and a lawsuit. Take a breath. None of this is cancer. In fact, it’s very common for young people with college degrees to have big student loan debt, and lawsuits do happen, especially civil suits like this one. In other words, breathe. These are all surmountable. Lots of people get over debt and law suits. It’s unfortunate that he’s in this spot, but in relationships, things happen. This is one set of problems.

He’s being given the opportunity to make changes in his life. This is a good thing that can come out of the bad. If your boyfriend can’t get a job as a police officer because of the lawsuit, then he can certainly get some other type of job and pay off the loans, as well as settle the law suit, or pay off the judgment, if it’s gone to that extent. He can negotiate the loan amount, the tuition amount — with a lawyer, without a lawyer – there are ways to be creative when you have problems. But, they require perspective, flexibility and drive. This is an opportunity for him to develop those character traits. 🙂 That he chose to join the military is an interesting step. It certainly wasn’t his only option, but if that’s what he wants to do, then that’s great. It’s a way to solve some of his problems and he’s taken action, and that’s terrific.

But, now comes the hard part: [i]You[/i] have to see him differently than you want to. 😕 It’s easy to blame his parents, but at a certain point in life, you have to take responsibility for yourself, and while you’ve talked about being upset that his father isn’t taking responsibility for what he and his wife did, your boyfriend isn’t 18 or even 20. He’s a 25 year old man, and he has to take care of his business. I know you’re calling them the family from hell, but he’s part of that family. I really doubt that this behavior is new to him. It may be new to you, but people don’t suddenly start behaving like this out of nowhere. That’s why it seems like a particularly bad idea to work for and rent from his father, especially given the family dynamic. I’m not sure why he wouldn’t try to rent from a neutral landlord or sublet without having to be on the lease, if his credit is bad, from a roommate. I’m also not sure why he wouldn’t work for someone neutral — not just to get away from the family dynamic, but to build a resume that isn’t based on family connections. Those would have been good steps for him to take if he hasn’t already.

As for you, my advice is not to marry him, simply because you want to live together on the military base he’ll be stationed at. Marriage is hard enough, but for you to jump into it because he’s chosen to get away from his father by enlisting in the military, knowing you can’t live with him there, is going to keep you from having the perspective you really need to gain. He’s got some problems right now, and until he straightens them out, it’s a better idea for the two of you to date, and get to know each other more deeply. I know you’ve been on each other’s’ radar for three years, but you’ve only been dating for 9 months, and there’s a lot of drama going on. Moving in together at the 3 month mark kept you from having a perspective that you might have had had you not been living together. Now you have an opportunity to gain that perspective when he goes to the military base, and you have your own place to live.

I know it’s hard, and you feel like you’re being ripped apart, and you want to blame his parents, but…. the hardest part, and the most productive part, is for you to move into your own apartment, continue to date him, and see how he handles this set of problems. He may rise to the occasion and take care of business, which will be great, but if he doesn’t, you may dodge a bullet by giving yourself the space to see how things play out. 😉

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