My [26M] girlfriend [24F] is falling further behind in life...
I want to apologize in advance if this comes off as a pure rant. Of course there's also pros and not only cons, but I just needed to get this off my chest.
I met my girlfriend in engineering college around 3 years ago, back then we were both pretty young but things have changed since then and I feel like we're at completely different places in life. I'm employed and working on finishing my masters degree in the next year or so. And I'm wanting to have kids by around 33-34. Whereas she hasn't studied in all the past years, and she's still only 10% (at best) done with her undergrad degree. Plus she's only ever worked part time (like 5 hours a week) as a tutor for high school kids.
She just does not have a plan. I'm not talking about having great ambitions or expecting her to have her entire career planned out. She's really just treading water at the moment. Every day she just wakes up and starts scrolling on her phone or watching Netflix. No sense of urgency, no applying for jobs, no studying, no hobbies, no exercising. (and yes, she already is in therapy)
As shitty as it sounds, I often thought to myself "I wish I was with someone who's just normal". Or "I wish my girlfriend was reliable". Whereas as a teen or even early 20s guy this probably wasn't high on my priority list, I've found that nowadays I find it really really attractive when a woman is some combination of smart, educated and ambitious. And the fun part is, my girlfriend IS smart, she's scored around 130 on several IQ tests. But every conversation with her just feels dull. She has nothing to tell me since she doesn't read or follow the news and doesn't have hobbies either. She knows next to nothing about history (didn't even know japan was involved in WW2 for example), politics, tech or whatever topic one would want to talk about. Plus she thinks philosophizing is lame, so no deep talk. I just don't want to only ever talk about the weather and what other people are doing/saying.
She's 24, and yes, objectively that's still young, but also not that young. I only see two options for her near future right now:
- She continues studying engineering, and by the time she finishes her degree she will be 30 assuming she starts right NOW (and yes, attaining just your undergrad degree can take this long in my country). So she will be 30, with an empty resume, probably won't have the easiest time finding a job. And by the time she's 31 or 32, we would be having kids, further disrupting her career.
- She does something else. But that would require her admitting to herself that she "failed". At the moment she's just not able to do this. She'd probably need a couple more years of personal growth to get to this point.
I just keep losing hope by the day. The clock is ticking and the pressure is mounting. But on the other hand I don't want to just give up on her. I also had severe episodes of depression in the past and I only really figured out what I wanted to do at age 24. Before that I didn't really work hard and plan for the future. She's only 24 too, so it would feel hypocritical for me to hold her to such high standards. Maybe I'm overthinking and placing too much emphasis on professional success, or maybe I'm correct to be concerned, since this carries over into every area of your life. I really don't know...
I don't even have a question or anything. I'm just hoping someone reads my wall of text, and really, any input is appreciated. Thank you for coming to my TED talk! :)