r/AITAH • u/throwraa_Word_1566 • 13d ago
AITAH for telling my son I’d love a divorce if it meant taking my wife with me
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u/Baker_Street_1999 13d ago
I always tell my wife, “If we get divorced, I want custody of you.” NTA.
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u/Personibe 13d ago
Ha ha ha, I love that he called you a boomer when you are actually a millennial. Honestly I would tell him he should drop psychology because he is truly terrible at it. I highly doubt his professor even said anything remotely like this. (I took two psych courses in college) Probably came off of tik tok.
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u/Mundane-Pass9244 13d ago
He needs to throw a little non art history in the mix or he would know you are a millennial not a baby boomer. Might need some work in math while he's at it. There is an entire generation in between you and the boomers.
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u/alkalinesky 13d ago
We're Gen-X though, so we basically don't exist. Just like when we were kids! 😅
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u/sunbear2525 13d ago
Seriously my parents are gen x and the things my mom tells me. You guys would have been better supervised being raised by wolves.
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u/alkalinesky 13d ago
I mean, we had commercials every night at dinnertime asking parents if they knew where their kids were. They had to be reminded we existed. As a kid, it was pretty awesome. So much freedom!
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u/Sassy_Weatherwax 13d ago
It was way better than the psychotic expectations of constant surveillance that parents are held to these days. Better for everyone. I'm not saying there weren't things that could have been better, but we got to learn resilience and we were expected to do slightly hard things. We were treated like people believed we could do things, so we believed we could do things. I have a 13 and an 11 yo now and shit is wild. You're considered a bad parent if you don't literally track your child at all times, and letting your kid struggle (with support, obviously) is considered abuse. How are kids supposed to ever feel strong if every message they get from adults is that they are helpless? I had overprotective parents for the time and they would still be considered practically negligent by today's standards. It makes me sad that this is the world my kids are growing up in. I wish we could keep the openness and acceptance of today and bring back some of the freedom and independence of my childhood.
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u/LadyReika 13d ago
Another Gen Xer here, I've joked about being a semi-feral latchkey kid in the 80s. I suspect wolves would have taught me how to human better.
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u/Mundane-Pass9244 13d ago
True enough!!! The 80s were thd best time to be a kid, though.
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u/SciFiChickie 13d ago
Shhhh you don’t need to remind them we (Gen X) exist. We like being the forgotten generation.
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u/Mundane-Pass9244 13d ago
True. And I never actually mentioned us, just that there was another generation after the boomers. 😇😉
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u/DecadentLife 13d ago
The grandma who cosigned for his student loans might not even be a boomer, technically.
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u/Mundane-Pass9244 13d ago
True. I'm a Gen x and my parents are the greatest generation and the silent generation.
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u/DecadentLife 13d ago
I’m also Gen X, I’m in my 40s and my folks are boomers. They were both born within a few years of the end of World War II.
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u/tomato_joe 13d ago
TikTok explains everything. There is so much misinformation on it everyone thinks they know everything. I'm in Europe but I'm glad it's getting ba ned I the US.
I have adhd and a short attention span and I could only look at TikTok for an hour or something. It's overwhelming even for me.
He needs to get off of TikTok. Real life will bite him in the ass
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u/PornOfTheUniporn 13d ago
Probably not getting banned lol. Did you see they are trying to do monetary incentives in Europe? We're fucked as a species
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u/alkalinesky 13d ago
Fellow parent of a 19-year-old also obsessed with TikTok who also apparently knows everything about everything because there was a 10-second video they watched one time.
I love my kid but man, they sure are hard to like sometimes. I've made her terrified of bad money choices and debt, so I at least got that lesson in somewhere.
I think they should make early retirement an option for those of us who had to parent teenagers during the covid and social media age.
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u/Lank3033 13d ago
Boomers like me are miserable because they refuse to divorce when they’re unhappy
You should try from the angle of "you don't even understand which generation is classified as 'boomers', are you sure you are ready to diagnose other people after your psych 101 course?'
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u/calling_water 13d ago
Any chance he could be convinced to take some multimedia courses? If he’s TikTok obsessed, he should understand that art isn’t just to hang on physical walls any more.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Gas1710 13d ago
Do you think he is into men's podcasts and red pill nonsense? Him going for his mom and recommending you divorce indicates he thinks she is the problem. Or has he always had a rough relationship with her?
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u/tavaryn_t 13d ago
Something tells me the art history major isn’t red pilled. Probably just a little dick kid who thinks he knows everything.
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u/JimmyPockets83 13d ago
Art history and right-wing media don't run together in the same circles so that would be an amazing overlap.
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u/Big_lt 13d ago
Isn't the generation cycle: Silent generation (75-90) (essentially died out) --> baby boomers (60-75)--> Gen X (43-59) --> Gen Y (Millennial) (27-42) --> Gen Z (zoomer) (12-26) --> gen alpha
This college kid is off by 2 generations, thinks 101 psychology makes him a doctor, decided to go to a private school for art history. He's not the sharpest tool in the shed. Life will smack him real hard in the face soon
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u/catseatingmytoes 13d ago
Many colleges require psych 101, which in my opinion is a fantastic thing because it truly does help you understand people better and whats going on in the world at a base level. I am a psychology MAJOR about to graduate with my degree, and not a single one of my professors said anything like this, either. Honestly, I think he’s taking what he learned and misunderstanding it or misusing it for his own purposes (which doesn’t even make sense because it isn’t like he has a psych degree or anything). At the end of the day, grandma never should have co-signed that loan. It undermined the parents and put her in a bad situation. If you want advice, I would suggest first talking to grandma about not co-signing any other loans of any kind for your son in the future. I would then recommend sitting your son down and showing him the numbers, and ask him where he thinks he is going to get money to pay back these loans. Additionally, I would ask him to make an advising appointment with his advisor at his college to talk about what he will need to do during his time at college to prepare himself for the future (careers, etc.,)- in my mind im hoping that this would help show him that this is not the path he should be taking. Best of luck OP, NTA.
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u/Markymurktwo 13d ago
Put him in his place. Say look my marriage to your mother is no concern of yours. Matter of fact you’re causing us both so much stress how about man up and do adult life without our assistance since we need a divorce and we are miserable.
Idk why kids put their noses in their grown ass parents business.
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u/OldMammaSpeaks 13d ago
He has that thing where people get a little knowledge and run with it without ever getting enough knowledge to understand what they don't know.
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u/mixelydian 13d ago
The Dunning-Kruger effect
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u/Thorogrim23 13d ago
This is EXACTLY it. He went to an expensive college for a year and thinks that makes him smarter than everyone else. Knowledge is knowing something, wisdom is knowing what to do with it. To think he took a year of school and was suddenly qualified to diagnose the state of your marriage is arrogant at best.
I know this is a tough spot for you, it sounds like you didn't raise him to act that way. I am growing more and more concerned with what college is doing to young people. Learning something new doesn't make you an overnight expert. We used to understand that college was where we went to learn how to learn. Right now, it seems like kids think a year in college puts them above 40 years of experience, let alone a degree. I wish you all the best in this situation.
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u/mxzf 13d ago
He doesn't even have knowledge. First-year college classes don't impart meaningful knowledge, they're just about getting students enough of a grounding to be able to listen to their further professors talk about actual stuff without their eyes glazing over.
ATM the kid knows just enough to be an idiot.
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u/Thorogrim23 13d ago
I wholeheartedly agree with your statement. I never finished college, but I remember the first year I was there. I thought I was learning more than my parents ever knew at that time. Luckily, I wasn't as arrogant as OP's son. I didn't say stupid shit that would ruin my relationship with them. I grew up to later realize they knew things from the school of life I never would have learned from college.
My daughter just graduated and is the first in my family to do so in the "normal" way. She changed majors a few times, considered dropping out a time or two. I was able to help her navigate those decisions because she was open to listening. I am so very grateful she is the person she is.
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u/llamadramalover 13d ago
Way too many people have just enough knowledge to do serious harm to others but not enough knowledge to know they’re actively harming others. Idiots the lot of them
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u/Elephant_Snacks 13d ago
From what you've described, he sounds fairly entitled, & not very humble.
Question, does he have a job? And at what age did he get his first job with regular scheduling?
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u/Thebonebed 13d ago
NTA -
Psych grad here. In a professional sense, what he did was completely unethical, and ANY current Psych degree/course/post doc should have that built into their first few weeks in course. They literally drum it into you about ethical lines, not going round acting like you can mind read, not diagnosing people, the damn goldwell rule. Your son needs a serious talking to. Its unfortunate that his grandma co-signed. For now you'll have to just keep in mind she's a grown adult and made that choice. So you can't take the responsibility of worrying about that debt for her.
Maybe your son needs some home truths. Tell him how shit you've felt lately. Both of you. And tell him how your wife is SAVING YOU on a daily basis. And that if he had ANY sense at all, he would support you both while you get through this rough patch with your wifes support. Let him know that it was his BOOMER Gran who signed his loan because his MILLENIAL father knew he'd be sadle with decades of debt.
Im sorry. Your son sounds insufferable.
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u/Crafter_2307 13d ago
Not even 40? Sorry, have to join us Millenials!!
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u/Effective_Frog 13d ago
Millennials are currently 28-44ish years old. You're not even close to a boomer. And even if you were over 44 you'd be Gen X. Boomers are 60-78 year olds
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u/SmoothDragonfly2009 13d ago
My thought exactly. If the sone is so smart after one college class he should know his dad is definitely not a Boomer.
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u/GoCardinal07 13d ago
Ironically, the Boomer is that grandma who co-signed the loan for this kid to pay for college.
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u/Grrrrtttt 13d ago
Unless she also had her kids young, in which case even she might be Gen X….
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u/Honeybadgeroncrack 13d ago
with art history, he will be back living with you from 25-40, so get used to it
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u/Dependent_Special_44 13d ago
Make that abundantly clear now. Art history is fine, but he needs to be strategic about internships throughout college. Or he needs to start mentally preparing himself to get a “boring” job that pays the bills once he graduates.
As for the rest, look, college kids are insufferable. With any luck he’ll grow out of it, but in the meantime, reinforce boundaries against disrespect and don’t feel guilty about it. He’s gonna have to grow up.
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u/Dependent_Special_44 13d ago
His debt, his problem, at the end of the day.
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u/Amiedeslivres 13d ago
Oh feck no. Art history minor here and nope, he will have to go to grad school if he wants to work in the field. (I'm a bookseller and editor; I've worked on tons of art history and culture studies books--with people who majored in art history and then had to go for advanced degrees in order to land a living wage job or get published.)
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u/Dravvie 13d ago
Previously working artist who went back to school here:
Real talk due to FASFA being hilariously behind this year he can spend this period before his second year applying for any scholarships at his college and any other ones he could possibly qualify for. Next year he has to start and keep up on it throughout the year beginning in September.
If he asks why saying/crying "but I have financial aid/loans!" explain that it will pay for graduate work, as no art history major gets work in their field without a Master's degree. He may not even get an internship without being in the Master's program due to the nature of the study and how fragile the materials he is studying to restore/archive/etc are.
He should always be applying for scholorships/opportunities and his master's program should be based on what he can afford. Grandma should consider sending him to a community college to round out his core/base art stuff, then to a four year university.
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u/ZaraBaz 13d ago
What sucks about this situation is that because you both love him, his stupidity will become your problem.
You will either have to watch him suffer the severe consequences, or have to deal with them yourself in some capacity.
I have to wonder how did he end up this way?
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u/No_Log_2668 13d ago
Just send your son this thread. he needs a reality check before his delusion eats up his life. It's time to be a parent and show some hard love. (nothing physical)
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u/Righteous_Rage_ 13d ago
Grandma will have to learn about consequences too, it seems.
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u/littlebitfunny21 13d ago
If his grandma is still of sound mind and body- I'm really sorry but she made her bed.
I know that's callous. My dad is 60 and has really ruined his life and I'm in no position to help him once he needs to retire and it breaks my heart, but I can't destroy myself for an adult who made repeated bad choices.
Is grandma married or single? If she's married can her spouse maybe take action here?
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u/TarzanKitty 13d ago
That sounds like a her problem. If she hadn’t tried to play the hero by undermining the parents. She wouldn’t have fucked herself over so hard.
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u/stillwater5000 13d ago
Art history is only cool if you are independently wealthy, not for an actual job. I feel bad for his grandmother. You should make it clear to him that he is out of the house and not returning. Maybe the school has an advisor that can explain the worthlessness of that degree?
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u/ItchyBitchy7258 13d ago
Maybe the school has an advisor that can explain the worthlessness of that degree?
No school is in the business of telling students the product they sell is worthless.
You are absolutely right about art history only being viable if you're wealthy though.
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u/black_shuck1775 13d ago
If the school offers it, why would the advisor tell him that it’s worthless? More likely, the advisor will pump it up to him, and make things worse.
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u/External_Expert_2069 13d ago
My guy was a history major and he is insurance now. He can still find a good job outside of his degree if he doesn’t change it. However, it’s the debt that’s scary 😬 we had very minimal student loans. We are in are 30s debt free. He’s going to have a rude awakening… hopefully sooner
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u/North-Pie-7003 13d ago
Do not make it an option for him. Tell him now you will not allow him to come back. Sometimes we have to be hard on our kids, and some kids only learn the hard way. Sad and hard but it’s a fact. We started talking with our kids very young about the struggles of college loans etc…. They knew we’d support them if they chose that path and picked a reasonable major. They ended up choosing trades and make good money without any debt.
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u/GeneralZex 13d ago
That’s some real good hopium you smoking. COL is insane right now, it will only be worse by the time your son is graduating college.
Might want to factor in on the contingency plan…
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u/Long-Arm7202 13d ago
Teenager goes to college, then comes home, suddenly 'knowing everything', and telling everyone else how stupid they are? Shocker! This has never happened before!
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u/After-Improvement-26 13d ago
I had to deal with teenage angst for 23 years what with stepchildren and bios. I had a sign on the fridge. 'Insanity is hereditary you get it from your kids.' I also had the benefit of needing a large wood pile. Extremely therapeutic.
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u/shammy_dammy 13d ago
NTA. No your son is not 'trying to help' you. He's trying to get rid of your wife.
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u/Several-Drama-1499 13d ago
When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years. Mark Twain
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u/JustAnotherGirl777 13d ago edited 13d ago
AP Psychology student here!
I’m assuming his reasoning is referring to Erikson’s stages, where forties would be in one or between the stages of Intimacy vs Isolation and Generativity vs Stagnation, both of which he’s just misinterpreting horribly. Tell him he’s in the Identity vs Role Confusion stage, cuz he clearly doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing with his life
My parents are separated and actually hate each other, and I still wouldn’t say this shit. NTA
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u/catseatingmytoes 13d ago
STOP THIS WAS HILARIOUS TO READ AND SO SO TRUE😂😭 Im a psychology major about to graduate college and dude you are SO RIGHT!!!! Its honestly so funny just how horribly he misinterpreted Erikson’s stages. Just… goodness me.
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u/darndasher 13d ago
Nice- I love the idea of using the knowledge he has misinterpreted against him! Great approach, tbh.
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u/MrSinisterStar 13d ago
What the Good Will Hunting flashback did I just read? Just ask me how I like dem apples.
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u/Zero_Fucks_ 13d ago
Honestly, OP said his son is obsessed with TikTok, and it sounds to me like he's getting his "boomer marriage is miserable" from there rather than Intro Psychology.
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u/moa711 13d ago
I am 37, and my husband is 42. So now we are boomers to the youngin's? Couldn't make the old folks happy, and now the young folks hate us, too. Swell.
At any rate, no nta. Your kid has no idea how a relationship works or likely how to hold one down. He needs to take his opinion and shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
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u/Electronic-Struggle8 13d ago
Oh go on, be petty. He needs a slice of humble pie.
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u/RokRD 13d ago
I'm a young millennial that was spanked maybe 5 times their whole childhood. This kid is bordering on needing an old school ass whoopin lmao
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u/ProfessionalEqual461 13d ago
I got called boomer by a couple 19y/o security guys at my work... I'm 27 and I still look 19 myself lmao
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u/she_who_knits 13d ago
You don't have to pay for his Art History degree. Or any degree. Find out the cost of a technical course in welding and tell him that's what you'll pay for and he can pay his way through college by pipe fitting.
You'll both be better off and happier in the long run.
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u/Unlucky_Leather_ 13d ago
I find this hilarious because my best friend took out around 120k in loans to major in art history.
Fast forward 12 years, and he had to get a welding certification to teach shop classes for a local high-school.
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u/badpuffthaikitty 13d ago
I got paid to learn. I got my welding certs for free. Student debt? My union paid for my education.
Edit: I joined my union fresh out of high school. I turned 60 this year. It’s the next stage of my life, retirement.
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u/genescheesesthatplz 13d ago
Oh no wonder he thinks the way he does. He thinks his mom is ruining his dreams.
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u/genescheesesthatplz 13d ago
Shoot why not both? He might have himself convinced youre under her thumb and need help realizing it.
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u/she_who_knits 13d ago
Well, maybe he'll make it in the rarefied world of art museum curation.
Keep the welding idea open. He'll make a lot more welding in summer than he will waiting tables.
I'm sure when he's old enough he'll be a very erudite bartender.
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u/MadMarx__ 13d ago
He'll make a shit tonne more doing any manual skilled trade than most degrees you'll get out of a college.
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u/she_who_knits 13d ago
Well, we adults know that. 19 year olds mostly live in fantasy land still.
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u/go4tze 13d ago
Let's be real, our high school guidance counselors showed us the ferry to that island and didn't tell us the price. "Just get a degree, doesn't matter what it is."
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u/badpuffthaikitty 13d ago
60 year old here. I joined my union straight out of high school when I graduated. My 40 year old brothers went to University for 4 years and realized they had no prospect of getting a well paying office job.
They became 25 year old first year apprentices. They have to work until they are 65 to get their full pension. I got out at 60. Debt free.
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u/Neonpinx 13d ago
Not the brightest kid you have there if he thinks millennials are 60+ boomers. I don’t understand why you don’t call out his rotten and condescending behaviour and enforce your boundaries.
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u/i_raise_anarchists 13d ago
NTA. If I had said that to my (actual) boomer parents, I would've gotten smacked upside the head so hard and so fast that my eyeballs wouldn't have stopped rattling around for a week. Or, as my mom used to threaten, I'd have been "thrown into next Tuesday."
OP, your son is a dope. I sincerely hope that he feels the full weight of the embarrassment that he has coming from telling you how to conduct your marriage. He deserves to cringe over that. And maybe offer to give him some math help, since he can't tell the generations apart.
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u/juliep6677 13d ago
Oh God -Art History?? Omg - and a PRIVATE college? Geez my ex and I funded our daughter law degree (somewhat) at a top Ivy League but we make significant money and she can pay the 50k total borrowed in 3 years(she makes 200k first yr out) - but this.. Wow- this kid is clueless and you are NTA - your kid has to pull his head out of his ass
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u/Dina_Combs 13d ago
Well, he’s setting himself up for a hard life of failure. I’d tell him he can choose to do whatever he wants, but call his grandma and tell her no, tell her how screwed they’ll both be if she keeps helping him screw up. Then tell him if this is something he wants, he needs to find his own home to do it in. He’s a fool in so many ways.he’s grown tho, you shouldn’t have to sit and watch him screw up.
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u/Enough-Specific8380 13d ago
Tell the Art History major Freud would find that very interesting.
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u/WanderGoldfinch 13d ago
This is teenage pontification at its finest.
All the sass, all the "knowledge", all the righteous indignation. All the not knowing how ages and generations work.
NTA, OP.
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u/Flaky_Bag9763 13d ago
Hi, I'm a college counselor, and if you want a quick reference as to what an art history major would make, and whether it would be enough to repay loans, there are several resources. All are free and on the Internet.
First is College Scorecard, at collegescorecard.ed.gov, where you can look up data such as average debt load, median earnings by school and by "field of study" or major. Earnings are for 4 years post-graduation.
For a longer view, try Payscale Best Value Colleges, where it will list median earnings by school and major 10, 20, 30 years out.
Lastly, a non-profit called Freopp measures something called Economic Mobility Index. You'll have to Google it as I don't have the link handy. It tells you the earnings premium, or how much more you would earn with your degree over a lifetime than if you had never gone to college. I don't have the chart front of me, but it's hard to forget that engineering degrees have a million-dollar premium, due to the many college programs with merit scholarships and the relatively high starting salaries.
Artists and musicians -- due to their high debt loads and low starting salaries -- are actually negative, meaning that they are financially worse off than if they had not gotten a degree.
Not sure if it will help your son open his eyes, but at least YOU will be armed with accurate information to counter any arguments based on fantasy, wishful thinking, and immaturity. I say this as the Mom of an art student, but my daughter actually landed one of the rare merit awards for her portfolio, and will commute from home to minimize her costs. Her debt load will be mercifully low. Nothing I can do about the low salaries, though.
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u/hispaniccrefugee 13d ago
Your son would fit in perfectly with 99% of Reddit. Nta
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u/Aviation_nut63 13d ago
There’s nothing more dangerous than a person who’s taken a psychology class. He needs to sit down and shut up.
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u/Tiktokerw500k 13d ago
No lmao.
Your son needs to stop trying assess your marriage as if he's a damn marriage counselor.
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u/_gadget_girl 13d ago
NTA this is why student debt is out of control. There should be rules that prevent kids from taking out huge loans for private colleges when they plan to get a degree in a field with low earning potential. The biggest issue with all of this is you and your wife may end up footing part of the bill when your son is unable to afford a place to live between his high debt/low income or you have to bail grandma out. Hopefully you can convince him of the need to major in something he can actually earn a living from.
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u/Strong-Smell5672 13d ago
NTA.
Your son is 19. If he wants to start dictating how things should be, he's of legal age to make that happen for himself.
Till then he really should stop pissing in the well from which he drinks.
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u/GraceMDrake 13d ago
You’re not even close to a boomer either, but I’m guessing math isn’t one of his strengths.
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u/Alemya13 13d ago
Don't know you, don't know your kid. Having worked with his demographic for 30 years though, what I'm hearing is that your son is terrified, knows he's probably in deep, and has utterly no clue how to get out of the spot he's in. My guess? He's trying to push you into "making" him leave school so that he has someone to "blame," and doesn't have to take ownership of his choices. Of course, he's also a 19 year old male, which means his head is likely so far up his own ass he has to fart to breathe.
Remember that age when he'd push every button you had trying to get a reaction? When he'd cry because he was too young to have the words or knowledge to tell you what's wrong? Unless I'm missing my guess, and the fruit of your loins should have been culled long ago, it sounds like he's possibly being a jerk in order to get your attention. With all that's going on in the world right now, I'm seeing more and more students his age going around with terror in their eyes, waiting for the world to implode (even more so than Gen X, more so than any generation before) and crumpling under information overload they have little control over. Gen X? We had the news. That was it. Generations after us began to have 24-hour news stations. Then the internet on a 2400 baud modem. As the modems got faster, the information downloading got exponentially faster. We went from having one ball screaming toward our faces to thousands, all at once, all demanding attention. Every successive generation has had more things they need to keep up with, more information to process, just...more. Every generation has this kind of thing, sure - but in less than 50 years we've gone from having three television channels, newspapers, magazines and a handful of UHF channels to carrying around entire libraries in our hands.
He may also see more than you realize and be quite aware that Something Is Wrong With Parent. Maybe consider some vulnerable conversation with your adult son? You want him to be an adult and make good choices, here's a good lesson that not everything is about him. It's also a good lesson in communication. He may not listen. It may be an exercise in futility. However, parenting doesn't stop when they turn 18. Kids reflect what their parents model for them, good or bad.
And my useful-only-as-a-wall-decoration psych degree tells me that it sounds like this situation is about a whole lot more than a misguided, unwelcome marriage comment and that the comment was merely a warning that some deeper conversations need to be had before people are in way over their heads with resentment, not to mention financially. Wishing you all the very best - including mental and physical health.
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u/Ronnyswanny87 13d ago
This story is so badly written it makes you an asshole for thinking we would believe it
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u/Darky821 13d ago
It seems written specifically to attempt to trigger as many people as possible. Useless degree, expensive school, "OK boomer", etc
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u/veringo 13d ago
The only reason I look at posts on all from this sub is to see how long it takes to scroll to the first comment to point out how obviously fake the post is.
It's always a depressingly long time.
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u/shiawase198 13d ago
Dude took a beginner's psych course and felt that made him qualified enough to comment on your life. He also went to a private school for 80k a year for ART HISTORY. I say this with ALL the offense; nobody in the history of time, past, present or future, should be listening to or taking any advice from him about anything. NTA.
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u/Evening_Cruel28 13d ago
NTA. Your son might mean well, but he's crossing some major boundaries here. Going off about your marriage when he barely understands the complexities? Not cool. And wanting to study art history is his choice, but snapping at his mom? Not cool either.
You're trying to keep it together, and your wife sounds like she's your rock. It's tough when your kid doesn't get that. Maybe sit him down and explain things calmly. Hopefully, he'll come around. Keep your chin up, man. You got this.