To think DH is wrong to threaten to not speak to DS over university choice

[DPSN]

DS has an offer to study at Cambridge but is considering turning it down to study closer to home at a university with a reputation for his subject which is nowhere near as good as Cambridge's to be near his girlfriend. I think basing a life choice on a current GF is a mistake but he is very stubborn and I cannot force him to go to Cambridge. If she is the love of his life, love will conquer time and distance but if she isn't,I think he will regret turning down Cambridge for her.
I have asked him to weigh up the pros and cons of each option carefully.
DH , on the other hand, has said he will not want to speak to him again if he doesn't go to Cambridge and would want to limit financial support.
I feel I am living in a parallel world with DH thinking he can control DS' s choices with threats and bullying tactics. He says I am too soft for saying ultimately it is DS' s life and choice.
Opinions please.

I would encourage a gap year to buy some time for him to think

Could you point out that if she really is the love of his life, then the chance to build a fabulous life together will be much advanced by his Cambridge degree?

I'd be devastated if a child of mine threw away an amazing opportunity for a teenage relationship.

I remember my parents saying that they wouldn't sign my grant forms if I went to a London uni. Many years on it still really rankles with me. They were worried about safety. Instead I used to spend any spare cash I had travelling up to London anyway.

Obsidian because, quite rightly,not taking up a potentially life changing opportunity to stay with a partner of very short duration would be seen as an emotionally immature response and raise red flags.

Agree on deferring for a year, especially if he could get some work experience related to his field of study where they will all say, don't be stupid, go to Cambridge. Ardour might have cooled in a year's time.

sorry, thats entirely irrelevant other than using money as a weapon is such a bad idea.

Definitely push the 'short term pain for long term gain' argument and talk about opportunities to visit, long summer and Christmas holidays. I can see how if you and DH are planning to move, the girlfriend can imagine he will move in with her by default if he stays local. Push the idea that with a Cambridge degree they could get their own nice place rather than him living at his girlfriend's mum's place indefinitely.

How about approaching it with vast concern for the girlfriend?

'Hmm, gosh, it's such a shame that Katie is frightened to move anywhere outside her home town. It's rotten for a young girl to be so unusually nervous. Maybe if you move away and she comes to visit you a few times, it might do her a huge favour, because it'll let her see that life has so much to offer outside Mumstown.'

This has the incidental bonus of being true.

Is this offer conditional upon his A levels this summer? Everyone is talking about it as if it is a done deal

They have lovely balls at Cambridge!

I would be beside myself if my son were throwing away an opportunity solely in order to - let's face it - continue to have steady sex. It would be bad enough if she were intelligent and ambitious but for a lumpish clingy homebody? Your husband's reaction is understandable.

Tell your son you will facilitate his relationship with travel monies etc. if he will at least try two terms. And really try, not just put in the time. If he still refuses, tell him that as an adult he is free to make his own choices but that you will not be financing what you consider to be a life-alteringly bad choice. If he is not interested in your input then he can do without your money as well.

And I hope he is strictly using birth control but I bet she will conveniently "fall" pregnant as soon as she can, in an attempt to seal the deal. What a nightmare.

Is there a third party who can talk with him - teacher, mentor, uncle, anyone?

This is very hard. On the one hand your husbands tactics aren't fair at all and almost certainly will only push your son towards his girlfriend, I know that my romantic decisions aged 18 weren't great and I'm glad I didn't base any major life decisions on them!

"GF wants to stay put in hometown and never move as she can't imagine moving away from her Mum."

And there's your best argument right there.

It's not JUST what university he goes to. It's also which job he can EVER apply for. EVER. Because he's got to live in that one town for as long as her mother is alive (and beyond, because then the children will be settled ...).

'OK DS, you're choosing ThisTown University. More, you're committing to living in ThisTown for the foreseeable future, so you need to be aiming yourself at local jobs. What jobs can you get locally? Because that should be a big factor in choosing your course.'

If he wants to do, say, Marine Biology and ThisTown is 100 miles from the nearest shore, that argument might carry some weight.

I found other towns offer much the same in my experience. I think it's not true you can only be happy and achieve if you leave your hometown.

Is there someone outside of you and DH who your son would trust to discuss this? 18 year olds can feel their parents don't know or understand. Aunt, uncle, family friend, someone he can talk to and look at it objectively.

I almost did this (though it was oxford not Cambridge). In the end I decided to go to Oxford with my bf's support. He is now dh and father to my children and we both have great memories of our uni days - our own lives during the week and visiting at weekends. Oxford was the right choice for me, academically and socially. Yes, there is privilege, but there's actually a bigger variety of people than I'd ever come across before and I learned to value people for who they are and to be comfortable in my own skin for the first time.

GF is still very young. They both are. She may mature and broaden her horizons and want to explore and even feel bad about holding your son back at this stage. But she may not - and for her that's completely legitimate. Not everyone has to want to backpack across the Gobi desert afterall, or even leave their hometown.

But maybe also plant the thought with your son that the issue may not just be which university town but where he spends the rest of his life. Does he want it to be local or does he want or think he may want a wider set of options? At this stage it is, or hopefully it is, about having options and not getting locked into final decisions.

(BTW if GF doesn't want university or to leave her home town or be far from Mum, does she want to start her own family early? Is that something your son would like ...maybe he should think about that too?)

I could imagine GF being scared to lose him to another "world" and yes in an ideal world she would want him to make the most of any chance he has and not be restrictive - but she may just be too scared and young to feel that yet. Is there any mileage in helping her see Cambrigde as a pretty and romantic place she will be able to spend time with your son, where he can romance her and treat her? May balls, punting down the Cam, or whatever else might float her boat? And long term maybe a nicer house in her current local town - ie whatever makes sense or could be attractive in her terms. If I were the GF I doubt I'd be convinced, but I don't think it would hurt to try and present the Cambridge option as positively for her as possible.

The suggestion of at least trying out a year at Cambrigde and then switching if it still feels like the best option is a a really good one I think - for the GF there is a time horizon she might be able to live with and there could be enough time for everything to settle. The risk is that your son is so distracted that he doesn't do enough work...

Also someone outside the family talking to your son too...it helps take the emotions out of it. Better still if it is someone who has stories of long distance relationships doing well.

Actually, now I come to think of it, I do know of a now long-married and happy couple where it did work out. Slightly different circumstances in that the young woman went away to university herself and almost failed her own degree in her attempts to see more of her BF but at heart they were a well matched and committed couple and it worked out.

Overall, though, if there is any hope of deferral that is probably the best option.

Pay for the girlfriend to go and live in Cambridge, do anything to get your DS to take up place there
I did what your DS did back in the day - stupid choice, split up with boyf after first term (my choice !). However, my paretns hadn't a clue so didn't try to dissuade me.
If my Dc did this, I would use every means of bribery (not threats) under the sun to get her to go an live in Cambridge or pay for her to visit every weekend.
This is not Cambridge versus UCL/Durham/Warwick (I'm assuming) which would be okay if the course was comparable.

Btw no one tried to talk me into or out of Oxford, though I knew it was what my parents wanted. As it happens my dissertation fid turn down a place there, though later went to Cambridge as a postgraduate. That was also the right choice for her.

Dsis did. Obviously my privileged education did nothing for my coherent communication.

Why call someone a lump lea?

I would say I was quite a homebody, but to call someone lumpish for wanting to stay near home? If I'd have stayed nearer home I'd have lost a lot less of my life on the Motorway.

What a nightmare. Worst of all is they sound quite mismatched in terms of aspirations and that never bodes well for a couple - he's obviously academic and could go far, she isn't and has no ambition to ever leave her hometown. Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, but she's better off finding herself another homebird, rather than curtailing your DS's potential.

I can see why your DH finds it frustrating but he can't stop speaking to his own son just because your son has made his own choices. You don't have to pay for those choices though. Continuing education is now so expensive that I don't think it is at all unreasonable to say that you don't want to pay for something that isn't really a worthwhile investment in their future. And I honestly never thought I would ever say that.

One of the definitions of "lump" is "person who is stupid or dull." Dissuading someone you supposedly love from taking a massive, coveted opportunity that could enrich both of your lives strikes me as both.

It's a hard one as I can understand exactly how your husband is feeling but your son is almost an adult, if he hasn't already turned 18 of course, so it's his future and his decision.

We were going through something like this last year. My son didn't turn down Cambridge (his relationship had already put the mockers on him doing exceptionally well at A level) but decided to go to a local university rather than one further away so that he could be near to his clingy girlfriend. She was doing A levels but dropped out of school in May, just before exams started, so she sat with our son while he revised and interrupted him every few minutes to show him something on social media. Our feelings were that she was trying to make him fail so that he wouldn't be able to go to university because she'd be on her own, as all of her friends were going too. He almost did, he didn't have a single UCAS point to spare. He's since said that she didn't want him to go, because she thinks that it's a waste of money...

He lives in the halls to get the full experience even though he's only a few miles away from home and unfortunately it's close enough for the girlfriend to visit often and she stays over - I think she's got it into her head that it's their little flat. The huge worry before he went was that she'd deliberately get pregnant to try and keep him from going, a lot of people mentioned that but it had already crossed my mind that it might be something she'd do.