Girlfriend's Family and Future Plans
Please bear with the long read, I need to give all the details to make the problem clear. Thank you for reading.
Me and my girlfriend are doing our masters in the same university, with me finishing in 1 year and her finishing 6 months after me. My girlfriend has lost her grandmother 3 months ago. Now, her grandfather is in a last stage of stomach cancer and the doctor says he has 6 months to live in best conditions. Her mother is married to her second husband with one child and they are also not in a very healthy relationship. For that reason, her mother has to deal with all these alone: running to work, taking care of the grandfather, dealing with her mother's loss, taking care of her family, cooking, housework, etc.
My gf is doing her best to help and support her. She is now at home, helping her mother while her grandfather is in the hospital, having an operation for removal of his stomach. He will be out in a few days and then there will be a need of someone taking care of him afterwards. Because their financial situation is not good, they cannot pay for a nurse. Today, my girlfriend tells me that her mother is very desperate and walks around like a zombie. She told my girlfriend that she wants her to freeze her masters for one year to stay home and take care of grandpa or otherwise she could be seeing her family's funerals only.
After what her mother told her, she is very confused about what to do. She also feels like she has all the load of taking care of her family on her shoulders which makes her decision more difficult. If she stops studying for one year, we agree that it will be a big obstacle for her future career. It is also very unsure that her father, who is very success oriented and dominant on her education path, will continue sponsoring her education after this break. The chances are very high that she could end up staying home without a masters, without a good job and under stress of all her family issues.
Besides these, what really concerns me is our future. Before all these happened, we had very nice and realistic plans about our future together. We both were planning to build a life here after graduation, both of us working at a good job. Then building a family together was the second step. We would also be close to our families due to location. After I heard about this one year thing, I started having concerns about these plans. I want to be supportive with her decision but at the same time, I think her doing a one year break will be a big obstacle against her own future and our future. I do not ask her to give up her family to have a future with me but it also does not look bright to me if she decides to spend one year taking care of them. She tells me she wants to be where I am and she wants to make our dreams come true but I cannot stop questions like "What if she decides to stay more after one year?", "What if I'm left here with my hands empty?" are popping up in my head. I also personally beleive that, if she has a stable future to be able to stand on her own feet, then she will be better able to support her family in better ways but if she spends her life next to her family, taking care of them all the time, she will go down with them and it will be much harder to pull them up.
Call me selfish or whatever, I will appreciate any advice about how to make it easier for both of us.
