Your postings usually rock, so I am a bit surprised that you've taken a different tack this time.

I think everybody knows what 18-year-olds are like, and everybody knows what it is/was like to be 18. OF COURSE everything ANYONE says is going to sound like yak, yak, yak, blah, blah, blah. OF COURSE "nobody understands us" at 18. OF COURSE nobody knows that "my boyfriend is a really great guy, once you get to know him." Because WE'VE ALL BEEN THERE!!!

But that doesn't mean we don't need to hear painful, "boring" stodgy adult stuff once in a while, even if we don't actually "get it" until we're older.

Sure, we readers can't know how "great" the boyfriend really is, how "smart" the girl really is, or how "bad" her terrible controlling mom is . . . but we've seen all of this before. We all may sound too smug, or too arrogant, but only because we know how tragically this old story goes, almost every time, without exception.

It is this LW who is deluded, not the posters here.

I, for one, don't believe that any 18-year-old is helped by make-believe or romantic fairy tales or outright lies. We all wish life were always nice, but a lot of times it isn't. And there are some things you can do (or not do) that help determine how nice/not nice life will be. This girl needs to grow up and take control of her life, for real. She's getting fed (and willingly eating) a pile of bullshit, and it isn't from her mom, and it isn't from the posters here.

Trust me, I am not "jealous" of the LW's youth or sexuality—still got plenty of both myself, thank you very much. More accurately, I am terrified about what her life will be like if she continues down this path, if she doesn't protect herself and doesn't start living like a truly independent grown-up as she claims to want to be.

18 comes and goes in the blink of an eye. It doesn't take long to turn 25, 30, 40 . . . the "bad" boyfriend becomes a lot less attractive in a very short time, and especially unattractive if you are trapped for the rest of your life with him. (The horror, the horror!)

By the way, a large part of my career has involved reading resumes and job applications. I once threw a stack of well over 80 letters from a rinky-dink local "business college" in the trash, because every single applicant appeared utterly unemployable. You would not believe how much laughter and derision some-MANY- resumes generate in the office. (And I am not talking about small, innocent typos. Go to "nothired dot com" and see what I am talking about.)

We all know that many smart, together 18-year-olds still think, speak and write this way with their friends, which is fine, but I don't think it is fair to pretend that this is OK in the workplace. Our unsentimental view was "Sorry, they should know better than that."

There are many valid paths to success, and many paths to abject failure—and I am not defining success in monetary terms. The top priority of EVERY young person is to set out on the path of their own life. What a lot of teenagers don't realize is that there are MANY people "out there" who want to HOLD OTHER PEOPLE BACK from success in all forms—they want to keep everyone down at their level. I am not convinced that this "boyfriend" isn't one of those.

I stand by my post that the LW is living in a fantasy world and better start thinking things through more clearly if she is going to avoid a very miserable future. She may or may not want to hear it, but that doesn't change the truth of the situation.

I read an article last year (god I wish I could find it now!!) written by an economist lamenting how young people, often women, get stuck in dead-end, low wage jobs.

He went so far as to say something that I considered shocking, that made me angy, but that I still can't shake a year later:

He said that young women should keep in mind that the lowest-paying jobs, such as child-care, cleaning, etc. should be considered "volunteer work" because essentially they do not pay enough for a person to live on their own, eat decent food, or control their own life—let alone have any options for recreation or achieving personal goals. It was his way of defining the prison that is low-wage work for far too many people in North America. ("If it doesn't pay a living wage, it's by definition volunteer work.")

Maybe that was an extreme way to present the situation—after all, nobody does these jobs "for fun" like true volunteer work, but I have started using this idea with my students to provoke them into at least thinking about it in an emotional way, rather than just putting is aside as something they should worry about "later."