Aghhhhh.

[LowBSix]

Honor your Father and your Mother and things will go well with you...

finish your school
Smoking can kill you

I wish I had finished college and learned to read music much better at an earlier age; my life would have been quite different and things would have gone much better at this point...

 

[Munjibunga]

My mom and I have a great relationship. But she also has the uncanny ability to make me feel like garbage if she wants to.

My parents are reasonably well off. I made enough scholarships to cover all my tuition ($35,000 so no small feat) so they pay for my other living expenses.

My ex that I dated for about a year and a half in HS just moved back from Seattle and we're back together and better than ever. My parents like her. They also got their doctorates at a seminary and are pretty religious. Me, not so much. I adhere to my faith, but I'm not very extroverted about it and find a lot of the small nit-picky rules a little dumb.

Well my mom gave me this big guilt trip speech. The gist of it was "School is your first priority, you can see her a little but not too much, and if we find out that she's over too much or living there, we'll stop paying for everything." She went on to tell me stories about friends who had sex once, and got pregnant and how it ruined their lives.

Then she went on and started crying about how she had smelled cigarette smoke on me one night a few nights ago when I came home (I blamed it on a friend smoking, but yeah, it was me!). I'm no addictive smoker. I enjoy my cloves like others enjoy cigars. One or two every night or so... I even stopped smoking for the first 2 months of the summer out of fear that they'd find out and throw a hissy fit about it with no relapses or anything.

I don't know, help me out. I know they're paying for a good amount of my stuff, and I'm very thankful for that. I still work and pay for most of my fun things (all my gear... all my food/drink/other stuff). I can understand them not wanting me to do stuff, and I fully understand it's their money... but at the same time I'm 19, and I should be able to make some of my own decisions about those kinds of things.

Basically I just can't wait to get graduated and pay for all my stuff so they won't have any say in the matter(s). But I'm definitely not gonna pull a "start working full time" and try to balance that with school full time.

So do I suck it up and live up to their standards (not gonna happen) or suck it up and start hiding my private life better?

Any advice/wisdom/musings from the TB elders?

Well, the facts are:

1. If you get the girl pregnant it will screw up your life.

2. Smoking cigarettes, especially cloves, is really bad for you and does not benefit you in any way.

So if you're riding the parents' gravy train, you have some pretty simple choices to make. Do you want to continue receiving the benefit of not having to pay your expenses in college and finishing without extraneous distractions, thereby setting yourself up for a life of future independence and reasonable income, or do you want to make violent love to the girl and blacken your lungs, lose the gravy train and end up flipping burgers in a generally screwed-up life driving a 1971 Vega Kammback?

If it were me, I'd play by the parental rules until I graduated from college, then see where you go from there.

 

[Munjibunga]

Yeah pretty much.

I hate being one of the whiny TB'ers who makes posts whining about their parents and living situations, but my mom just really got me feeling the worst I have pretty much all summer.

I guess the key thing is that I don't share the same religious or moral values that they do and base their lives upon, and no, I'm not really willing to fake it too much. I have no problem with "don't ask don't tell" but I'm not going to pretend to be this good God-fearing little obedient son forever. I go far enough to respect them, and I don't do anything they don't like around them. But the whole sniffing my fingernails for smoke and having friends drive by my GF's house to see if her car is there or not (or if mine is) is a little over the top to me.

And again to the "GO GET A JOB" bandwagoners, I go to a very intense liberal arts college with tons of writing, and I refuse to take any less than a full schedule (usually 1.5 or double load) and that with a full time job doesn't work and leave me with any quiet sanity time. I DO have a job, and it pays well, but no way is it going to cover everything it needs to.

Well, they will find out, no matter how you try to hide it, so just make the decision now. How do you feel about lying to them? Is that part of their morals you don't agree with? You already started. Are you ready to cut your financial dependence? Then just do it. Better that than they find out you're going against their wishes behind their backs. This is a classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat it, too (no metaphor intended).

 

[mike_v_s]

Well, the facts are:

1. If you get the girl pregnant it will screw up your life.

2. Smoking cigarettes, especially cloves, is really bad for you and does not benefit you in any way.

So if you're riding the parents' gravy train, you have some pretty simple choices to make. Do you want to continue receiving the benefit of not having to pay your expenses in college and finishing without extraneous distractions, thereby setting yourself up for a life of future independence and reasonable income, or do you want to make violent love to the girl and blacken your lungs, lose the gravy train and end up flipping burgers in a generally screwed-up life driving a 1971 Vega Kammback?

If it were me, I'd play by the parental rules until I graduated from college, then see where you go from there.

That'll NEVER happen. Get your facts straight. I'm not sure there is a running Vega to be bought in this country.

Mike

 

[MakiSupaStar]

Don't make me explain my shock and awe tactic.

 

[Jiggybass]

And what I'm asking is:

a) I will suck it up, but I'm still going to maintain the things that I believe in in my private life... basically asking a "what they don't know won't hurt them" kind of thing.

And I refuse to work more than a part time job, because anything more than that will not leave me mentally at peace enough to do well in school. Once I graduate I'll be raking in the money... but 3 more years. There's no way I can make my rent on my own.

No chance, parents, especially those like your mom (I say this cause from what you described your mom is my moms twin) Will eventually find stuff like that out, and it'll be 100x worse that way. Trust me.