Deciding which college to attend based on where the person you’re dating is going doesn’t ~always~ end in disaster. But recently, when I asked the BuzzFeed Community to share their own stories of what happened after they followed their high school significant other to college, the majority of people responded with worst-case-scenario breakup stories.
Here's what they had to say:
1. "About a week before application deadlines, I changed my plans of going to my family’s ‘legacy’ university to following my S.O. to the local state school. My parents didn’t even visit the campus with me — my mom was just so smitten with the idea of me following my ‘love’ that she didn’t think there was any reason to see the school. (Thanks for teaching me what’s important, Mom!) He and I signed up for the same dorm and the same orientation weekend. He promptly dumped me at orientation, refused to speak to me when we got to campus, and avoided eye contact when passing me on campus for four years.
2. "My high school sweetheart was an average student with no real plans for college, while I was in the top 10% of my class. I could go anywhere in the state, and he couldn't. Goofy, smitten me thought we would be together forever, so I settled for the local four-year college that had no football team (in Texas ffs) and was mostly a commuter school because that's where he got accepted. I ended up breaking up with him a week after high school graduation, and I was stuck.
3. "He committed to a school for a sports scholarship, and I committed to the rival school with a scholarship for the same sport. Since it was only a 15-minute drive between our campuses, we thought we could stay together, but also have a little space. He gave me a promise ring before school, but I sold it after he cheated on me four months into freshman year. We had been together four years. I still had to compete against him once a year. My team beat his every time. :)"
4. "A girl I went to high school with followed her boyfriend of less than a year to a ridiculously expensive college in a town she didn't even like because she was convinced 'it was true love.' He dumped her by December, she failed out of the university by the end of the school year, and she had to come back home to go to a community college. Obviously, there's nothing wrong with community colleges at all, but prior to college, she kept talking about how 'worthless' they were."
5. "I started dating my ex during our senior year of high school. He came with me to the college nearby, but we broke up about six months later. He ended up transferring to another school a couple of hours away. We eventually got back together, and he convinced me to transfer over to his school and move into the same complex as him. On my drive down to move in, we were on the phone, and he said, 'I don’t know if I want to keep dating you.'
6. "I gave up acceptance to two prestigious universities to attend a school closer to where my high school boyfriend was going. We broke up two weeks before classes started.
7. "I had an amazing college experience, but he did not. He was constantly jealous and worried that I was having a better time and hooking up with other people. We stayed together for a year until I finally realized that it wasn’t healthy and I deserved better."
8. "I turned down my acceptance to multiple universities because my boyfriend of the time wanted me to stay back and go to community college with him. I'm not bashing community college, but I definitely set my dreams aside for someone who was extremely toxic and abusive. Long story short, the relationship was a disaster, and it took me years to finally realize I needed to leave.
9. "My best friend followed her boyfriend to his first-choice college. Shortly before they started, she discovered that he had been cheating on her. She kind of broke it off but continued 'seeing' him for many months. A little while later, she decided she'd had enough and broke up with him for good.
10. "I followed my high school sweetheart to college after he received a football scholarship. He had cheated on me in the past, so I should have known better. When we got there, he cheated on me multiple times and used my car without my permission (and left the gas tank on empty). He was abusive and eventually broke up with me.
11. "My S.O. was a year younger, so we planned ahead and made college plans together, looking for schools in close proximity that would suit both of our academic endeavors. I didn't apply to my dream school and only applied to colleges that fit the theoreticals we made together. I thought, 'Why not?' We were planning the rest of our lives together. I was disappointed I didn't apply to my dream school, but I ended up absolutely loving the school I chose and had a blast. We had to wait a year until we could be together, and long distance didn’t work. I got dumped for someone else — right before my first exams.
12. "I don’t want to say that my high school boyfriend was the only reason I picked the college I did, but it certainly contributed to the decision. We were young and naive and in love, and we had talked about spending our lives together. Once we got there, he ended things fairly quickly. I didn’t get a reason straight from his mouth, but I assume that once his world expanded, he realized he wanted to date around more. I wound up transferring schools.
Oof, some of these were rough.
So, let's end on a high note. Sometimes, going to the same college as your high school partner can actually turn out really well:
13. "My high school boyfriend decided to apply to a school four hours away, and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do in life. I didn’t want to leave my family, but I ended up applying as well because I felt so strongly we were going to work out. We were in different majors and had different classes. We didn’t run in the same social circles, but we were truly best friends and loved each other’s company, so finding time for each other was never a chore.
