Growing Without Guilt: How to Deal With the "Haters"
- Getting your education is a positive goal
- Family, friends, and neighbors may feel intimidated or threatened by your success
- Negative influences may make you feel guilty about your achievements
How to Deal With the "Haters" and Nurture Your Relationships While Succeeding as an Online Student
You are climbing the ladder of success. Being an online student is helping you progress in your career, confidence and earning potential. After all, these are some of the benefits that inspired you to study online in the first place.
One unexpected consequence of your growth and success, however, may be jealousy or negativity from those around you. Each step up the ladder not only brings you closer to your goal, but also potentially directs you away from loved ones.
- Why would your partner mind if you earn more money?
- How could your friends be less than excited for you when you get promoted?
Unfortunately, these are not uncommon reactions when people face someone else's success. Here are some suggestions for climbing the ladder of success without guilt … and without climbing it alone.
Seeing Green … the Good Kind
Remember the days when you sat down with your partner and charted out a new pathway for yourself? You mapped out an online curriculum plan. You calculated your new earning potential. You even dreamed about how you would spend that first bonus money to celebrate.
You hugged and said everything would be better, right? After all, more money means greater security and financial stability. A promotion means a boost to self-esteem and confidence in the workplace, right?
Right.
But sometimes, your progress and success can be threatening to those around you. Even though your partner, family, and friends offer support, it can become clouded with jealousy, resentment and insecurity.
Seeing Green … the Bad Kind
Making plans on paper is one thing, but watching you follow through with your goals is another. Family and friends may worry about preserving their place in your life. And their damaging remarks and attitudes can hamper you changing your own place in life.
Family members may not want you to surpass them intellectually. For some students, they may be the first person in their families to attend or finish college. While most family members will be thrilled and proud, there will always be the wet blanket who douses the excitement with a rude comment.
"Well, look at our new fancy college student! Are you too good for us now?"
Or there is the partner whose original support twists into insecurity. She resents the amount of time you spend online with virtual classmates. He tires of taking on additional household chores.
You continually will need to come back to that first moment when you both hugged and made a pact "to make it work."
- Fend off jealousy by asking a babysitter to watch the kids for a few hours while you and your partner go out for dinner or a movie. Show her/him that she/he is still important and necessary in your life.
- Laugh off rude comments. Don't get in a shouting match at Thanksgiving dinner over why you are taking college courses. Take an extra helping of gravy and know that your decisions are helping you and your family.
- Marriage counselors often cite "lack of communication" as the key problem in struggling relationships. Keep the communication lines open. Talk through negative feelings and don't let them fester.
Seeing Eye-to-eye.
Most people choose partners and friends with similar interests and backgrounds. Your social group most likely earns a similar salary and shares similar views about spending and saving money.
But when you earn an advanced certificate or degree and increase your earning power, your loved ones and friends may feel insecure. They may worry about losing commonalities with you.
They may worry that you will change. Men who lag behind their wives' salaries can feel particularly threatened by their wives' newfound independence and success.
Even though there is much talk about the equality and progress of women in today's society, old traditions run deep. Men still view themselves as the provider of the family and may feel like less of a man if their wives or girlfriends become better educated and more financially successful than they are.
Stay focused on your goal while remaining true to your relationships:
- Remind your partner about the original plans for improving your education and career. Remind her/him about support you felt before, and how your success helps the whole family.
- Show family and friends that you are still "the same old you." Take time for dinners and activities that nurture your current relationships.
- Talk about your partner's dreams and goals. She/he may be more motivated now after watching your growth. Make plans to help your significant other take courses or make a change in her or his life.
- No matter how much you try, some friends may not understand your decision. If a friend continues to harbor resentment, then nurture your healthy friendships, and cultivate new ones.
- If your partner continues to feel insecure about your "higher" status, consider going to counseling.
Seeing the Big Picture
Don't let the insecurities and jealousies of others sidetrack your goals. Don't let guilt paralyze your growth.
Emotions like insecurity, jealousy, and bitterness are immediate, intense and short-lived. When a loved one throws these feelings at you, duck and walk away. Let their negativity burn out.
Approach them later in a calm state and talk long-term. Discuss the big picture. Roll out some butcher paper if you have to, and make a mural that shows a timeline of you and your family at different stages in your lives. Show how your current education path benefits everyone. Show how your loved one's contributions also benefits everyone. Your success is his success. It's a partnership.
Go For It — With No Regrets
By embarking on a new life path, you will change.
You'll learn new information, see situations from new perspectives, and proactively take on new challenges at work and home. Balance time with the loved ones in your life, and you'll reach the top of the ladder with your goals and relationships in tact.
Ronni Rowland is a writer based out of Orange County, CA. She regularly writes for eLearners, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, and San Diego Family Magazine. Her work has also appeared in Nick Jr. Family Magazine, Daughters, Montessori Life and the Orange County Register.
Comments for Growing Without Guilt: How to Deal With the "Haters":
3 comment(s)
Carrie Huddleston On Monday, April 19 2010
People are begining to make fun of me as to why i have not completed my Baccalaureate Degree. I need the working mom's scholarship to further my education and career.
Stacy B On Saturday, June 19 2010
I can relate to much of the article. When I returned to school last year we could afford for me to pay as I go, however now that I have maintained a 4.0 and was invited to be a part of the Honors Society at the University, we no longer can afford my tution. I am looking for other ways to pay for my education. I don't want student loans to pay when I am finished; I have children to raise. They will probally be college age by the time I graduate.
Misti Kinner On Friday, July 16 2010
I want to be able to finish school, and make my children proeud. I don't know if I can do it without some help to pay for my tuition.