If I could offer a young person advice about anything it would be do NOT make life decisions based on your boyfriend or girlfriend. Girls especially. Do NOT stay close to home for him, do not skip opportunities to travel or study abroad, do not pick a safe college to be with him. Expand your horizons. Broaden your own life. He is not the world.

I want everyone who disagrees with this post to come back to me in a couple years and tell me how that shit worked out.

My daughter got engaged when she was 17, when we still lived in WV.  It was her choice, and I made sure she knew I had her back, because after a certain point, you need to accept that if you really want to be there for your kid, it’s going to be as a safety net.  

And then the lay-off happened, and my girlfriend in WA offered help and at least short-term housing to get us up and on our feet, and also to get our queer asses the fuck out of WV.  

There were very long and tear-filled conversations, and I finally turned to my daughter, and, as gently as I possibly could, asked her, “Do you want to spend your entire live in West Virginia?”

I could watch it all click on her face as she shook her head.  She wanted out of that state just as badly as we did, and I suspect she hadn’t really let herself dwell on the fact that he?  Didn’t want to leave; had given bare-bones lip service to the idea of leaving, but wasn’t willing to put any kind of effort at all into it.

She didn’t want to die in WV, and within the first two *weeks* of us being in WA, he showed himself to be an overcontrolling, boundary ignoring, self-centered prick.  He didn’t quite seem to understand that no, she wasn’t moving back, and yes, this was going to be LDR unless and until *he* moved.

Three months later, she mailed him the ring, and very bitterly commented that she’d dodged one hell of a bullet.  She is now halfway through a computer science degree, has an apartment with two cats, and is the happiest I have ever seen her.

Is this how it would work out for everyone?  No.  But I’d like to point out that he was utterly unwilling to even consider changing his life for her, but fully expected her, as a minor, to move out to stay with him in WV.

And that says it all, really

Laura Jayne Martin (via sweetleviathan)

I love this. Most people I know really only care about the romantic relationship they are in. I’ve pretty much decided that if you don’t consider my friendship to be an important part of your life worthy of time and consideration you can fuck right off.

(via fuckyeahwomenprotesting2)