Relationships

I am choosing between Bing or Stony for undergrad and one of my issues is my relationship. He is going to school in NYC but I really wanted to go to a state school. If I go to Stony, we would get to see each other more often but not if I go to Bing. It’s a relationship where I really see potential but it’s just that we only started in senior year so we got together pretty late. Right now, personally, Bing is better in what I am looking for except for its location being so secluded and away from home. I don’t know what to do. Both of us would never cheat and we trust each other on this. It’s just that the less contact will damper our relationship because we talk every day and see each other most of the time.

Hey, I know where you’re coming from. I met my boyfriend freshman year at Bing and had to make a decision about where to go for grad school when I graduated a year early - either stay at Bing or go to an Ivy. I really, really wanted to stay with him. We’d been dating 3 years at that point. I wanted to get married. I couldn’t bear the thought that I might lose him by going to a school far away.

Because he’s the best person, he convinced me to do what was right for my future, which was the Ivy. It was a horrible decision to make. I cried so much. But LET ME TELL YOU it was the best decision of my life. Because we were “meant to be,” we survived the distance. If your relationship is strong enough, it will survive. But you’re 18. You can’t do something wrong for your education and career because of a relationship that’s less than a year old. In all likelihood, just statistically, you will break up - you’re still in the honeymoon phase and don’t really know each other that well. Your degree, though, will last forever. If Binghamton is better for your field, that’s what your priority should be right now.

So to sum up: if your relationship is really meant to be, it will survive distance. Don’t expect it to, though, because maaaany many high school relationships evaporate in college once you meet new people and change as a person so much. If it doesn’t survive, it wasn’t strong enough in the first place, so you should be relieved you did the right thing for your education rather than end up at a school that was wrong for you.