Carolyn Hax: Young love and all of its attendant pitfalls

Dear Carolyn • I just finished high school and am going off to college this fall, and my father just retired from a long career in the Marines. I recently got a boyfriend, and we have become very serious (marriage has come up). He and his mom had a falling out, and his father was abusive and is out of the picture. He has been staying with his sister, but they are now not getting along. I am working on it but not getting very far. My parents also don't completely approve of him. He always has me pick him up at a general location, and my parents find it to be "extremely bothersome" that he doesn't have us pick him up at his house. They also don't like us kissing in front of them. I am close to my parents but also truly love this young man with all my heart. I don't know what to do.

Pulled in Two Directions

Dear Two Directions • Stop sucking face in front of your parents, then go to college. That's it, really, but I'll explain anyway. — Public smooching: It makes bystanders wish they were elsewhere. The better the bystanders know the smoochers, the more self-conscious they get, even when they are happy for you, which apparently your parents aren't. — Oh, the drama: My biggest concern. I get how good it can feel not only to be in new love, but also to feel needed and relevant to important things, like providing a sense of family to someone whose own family harmed him. But someone who comes from abuse and is talking marriage early in a relationship is red-flag material. He might be lovely and both of you just young and impulsive, but don't assume that. Be skeptical, patient, sure. Meanwhile, heroism is often some seriously boring stuff. It's not about getting sucked into someone's family soap opera, for example, or eloping to give an abuse victim the only love he's known, but instead staying gently and firmly out of it while he works things out. It's not in going 10 rounds with parents who don't understand you, but instead in listening to them, especially to stuff you don't want to hear. It's in weighing their concerns honestly, choosing what makes sense to you, and accepting the consequences of that choice.

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