Teenager Who Dropped Out Of College To Move In With A Man She Met On Vacation In Spain Has No Regrets — ‘If You Know It’s Love, Never Let Go’
Now, ten years later, she's sharing how that decision as a teenager changed her life completely.
OPOLJA | Shutterstock It can be scary and daunting to forego the conventional path and follow your heart, which is what happened to one teenage girl.
In a TikTok video, 29-year-old Hayley Elstob admitted that despite all the criticism, she decided to leave college when she was a teenager in pursuit of love and claimed that she doesn't have a single doubt that she made the right decision for herself.
She dropped out of college to move in with a man she met in Spain on vacation.
"My life changed forever when I was 18 and I went on a girls' holiday to Magaluf," Elstob said, speaking about a vacation she took in a town in Majorca, Spain. She explained that for the average person, it would've just been a two-week vacation full of tanning by the beach and hanging out with friends, but for her, it ended up completely changing her life.
Just a week into her vacation, Elstob met the person she believed would one day become her husband. It seemed that her intuition was correct, and now, at 29, Elstob and her husband have been together for 10 years.
"This was quite a problem because I had a university place and a place in the halls of residence ready for me in September. I also had a mum and dad who were very angry and threatening to drag me back to U.K. soil," Elstob continued. "But something told little 18-year-old me that this was true love and that I had to stay for the whole summer to see where things went."
Of course, to any rational parent, hearing that your 18-year-old daughter wants to drop out of college to stay in a foreign country with a man she's just met would obviously cause an issue.
It's definitely possible that Elstob's parents were worried that she was throwing her entire future away, and while that's a valid thing to be concerned about as a parent, there are also some things that teenagers need to work out on their own.
If Elstob's decision to stay in Spain and leave college was going to be a mistake, then that was just a mistake that she needed to make.
Fortunately, it clearly didn't end up that way for her. Elstob and her friend stayed in Spain for the summer and lived their best lives. The two of them worked for a boat party selling tickets and during that time, her relationship with her husband-to-be flourished and grew.
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"We knew that we couldn't just ignore this bond. There was going to be a serious conundrum at the end of this season because we knew that we lived about three hours from each other, and something had to give," she recalled. I desperately wanted to move out of my parents' house and away from my hometown."
She knew meeting her husband-to-be was the perfect opportunity to become independent.
The only issues that she faced, which were pretty major, were that she had no friends, no money, and no connections where Jamie, her then-boyfriend, lived. It was also the first time in Elstob's life that she had to start over again and make a new life for herself.
She ended up getting a job in a restaurant, made new friends, tried to get out as often as she could to explore her new surroundings, and managed to build a happy life for herself miles away from her hometown. "I had loads of people telling me I was absolutely insane to move in with a boy that I'd only know a handful of months."
"I don't blame them," she added. "I'd have probably said the same. Look where we are now, we have a house, a dog, a baby, a marriage, and we've traveled all over the world together."
During an interview with Newsweek, Elstob said that she and Jamie plan to move to Canada after her husband was offered voluntary redundancy earlier this year. With an 18-month-old child, the couple is now preparing to move their life to a place that holds special significance for them. Previously, the couple got engaged in Ontario.
"Jamie is my best friend, biggest cheerleader, and the most incredible father to our child. I'm grateful every day that we met. He's the best thing to ever happen to me," she said. "If you really know it's true love, chase it and never let it go. It's worth all of the negative opinions. I knew he was the one because he was the best person I'd ever met, and that still holds true now."
At the end of the day, while a college education is important, it's also not for everyone. It's clear that Elstob and her husband have managed to make a successful life together, and Elstob encouraged people to "follow their heart" because it's better to take a risk than end up regretting it later.
Nia Tipton is a Chicago-based entertainment, news, and lifestyle writer whose work delves into modern-day issues and experiences.