Should he choose his dream job over his family? Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
“I got a dream job offer, but it was in Florida and I currently lived in Ohio. My parents live in Ohio. My wife has family both in Ohio and in Florida where we were moving. The Florida family members offered us their house as a base to move down to so we could focus on moving all our stuff across the country, and then we’d be welcome to stay until we found our own place.
Everybody on my wife’s side of the family was extremely supportive. They were sad that we were moving away, but they were going to come to see us for Thanksgiving and we’d go up after Christmas. They were all super proud of me for getting the job offer and they were excited to see us start a life together.
When I told my parents, I immediately received a phone call and was screamed at for an hour to be called a disappointment, told that I was ruining my life and that I would be miserable moving away from family. They acknowledged that I had been offered my dream job, but that I should have been looking harder for jobs around the area instead of in another state. And that if things didn’t work out, I couldn’t come crying back to them.
My wife’s family down in Florida called just after I ended the call with my parents to congratulate me. I broke down crying, and my amazing stepmother-in-law spent two hours calming me down, reassuring me that she would always have my back if my job didn’t work out for some reason, and helped me plan my entire move in steps that my ADHD goblin brain could manage.
Those two exchanges cemented my decision to move. I was still kind of in shock from how my parents behaved and extremely upset. I was considering asking the police to take me to get my stuff because I genuinely did not feel safe going there. I would just say, ‘Forget it, keep the stuff’ but I was not giving them the violin I paid over 2000 bucks for.
My dad is a school psychologist and my mom is a teacher. I’m so amazed that people who dedicate their lives to working with other people’s kids could treat their own kids this way.”
