<p>Distance makes the heart grow fonder,
or
Out of sight, out of mind.</p>
<p>What do you think your relationship is? Whatever your decision, your world will not end with it.</p>
<p>Choose LA. </p>
<p>I once chose a guy over my schooling and I ended up in a foreign country a few months later talking with his new girlfriend. </p>
<p>Do not compromise your own goals for someone who does not have the same sort of goals. </p>
<p>Besides if it was really meant to be then you guys can get back together after 5 years.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Airbarr, I've never really believed in long-distance relationships. They may or may not work, but I just don't like it. I had an internship at the school in LA last summer and not being together was very, very difficult.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think there's your answer. You're not willing to do something very, very difficult for her, and she's not willing to do something very, very difficult for you. Still, you're thinking of giving up your dream research for this girl.</p>
<p>Kind of sounds like you just don't want to have to make the tough decision to break it off. I don't blame you. Neither of you is willing to compromise so that <em>you</em> can go where you need to go, though... So...</p>
<p>
[quote]
I am almost positive that down the road, say after I graduate, she would be willing to follow me.
[/quote]
Really? What makes you believe that she will leave Denver in a few years? She is not willing to move now even though it will not hinder her career. Personally, I think the family "need" is a lame excuse. It sounds to me that she just doesn't want to leave her family. And if they really are that much in need of her assistance, she will not leave in five years either. What if you get a great job offer somewhere other than Denver and she still doesn't want to leave? Then what? I think you hit the nail on the head when you said about her "...not wanting to leave her life to start a completely new one..... Time will not fix that. She is perhaps a homebody and not up for the adventure of new beginnings.</p>
<p>Alternately, what if you stay in Denver and she gets a great job offer elsewhere? Will she go? Will she promise to pass it up and stay with you?</p>
<p>I would recommend that you love yourself first. Go to LA because you will always regret passing up that opportunity. Your gf's career choices are equivalent, but your study options are not.</p>
<p>I believe that even if you marry your gf, you will regret not pursuing your best option. Resentment can fester over the years and come back to ruin your relationship later on. Really. I think you best option is to go to LA to study, try to maintain the relationship knowing that she has her family around her for support, and plan for the future after PhD. Who knows, maybe she will move out there to the LA office after all!</p>
<p>Here's my take on it - you haven't offered her any reason to move. Until you marry her, she is related to her parents and siblings, not to you, and she is responsible for her own life, not conforming to yours.</p>
<p>Honestly, it amazes me that people are willing to make life-changing decisions for folks that won't commit to them. </p>
<p>If you want the relationship to last forever, marry her. Otherwise, make the decision based on what's best for you and don't resent it when she makes a decision on what's best for her.</p>
<p>"Personally, I think the family "need" is a lame excuse. It sounds to me that she just doesn't want to leave her family."</p>
<p>Yes, what an awful trait to have in a person one wants, say, to start a family with. One would clearly prefer a partner willing to leave thier family any time some type of adventure popped up.</p>
<p>The derision this poor girl receives simply because she has already achieved enough professional success to allow her to focus on her family is bizarre. The fact that it comes from people who are (ostensibly, at least) still trying to achieve that level of professional success is absolutely baffling.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Yes, what an awful trait to have in a person one wants, say, to start a family with. One would clearly prefer a partner willing to leave thier family any time some type of adventure popped up.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>There is, however, a <em>very</em> big difference between staying with one's parents and siblings, and staying with one's spouse and children... If I had chosen to stay with my parents and siblings and not to stick by my husband's side, I don't think I'd have blamed him for following his future and leaving me instead of sticking with me and my past.</p>
<p>Yes, but by extension... Anyway, they are not married, and the OP has evinced a willingness to leave his girlfriend in favor of school that probably, in her mind, calls into doubt the impending nature of future marriage. As huguenot so aptly observed, she has little reason to think of him as family.</p>
<p>My point is simply that the members of this board who would belittle the girlfriend's desires have, to some degree, lost the plot. It is quite a reversal to presume that valuing family over career is "lame". That's how it goes for most people. </p>
<p>No one should be attacking this girl for valuing her family over adventure or the career of her boyfriend. That's a normal thing. We're the ones that are weird.</p>
<p>GopherGrad, I am a professional adult employed for 25+ years, and married for 25+ years if it lends any credibility to my opinion. Clearly, I don't think family is lame. What I am saying is this: young people just starting out should be true to themselves. The OP should go to LA because that is where the research he wants is located. The gf should stay in Denver with her family if she wants to (she is clearly not ready to leave). Some people are very attached to their childhood families and have a difficult time leaving, even if they are employed. Some have difficulty sharing holiday time once they are married. It's not wrong, but that's the way it is. </p>
<p>It is also possible that the OP sees more of a future for the two of them than she does. After all, he is considering giving up his dream research and future jobs for her, but she won't consider going with him to secure their future and make his dreams possible, even though she can smoothly transfer her career to LA. Seems a little lopsided to me.</p>
<p>There are so few years when these formative decisions are made. I think the best option would be for OP to go to LA and try to maintain the relationship long distance. He may feel regret at the lost opportunity if he does not and be resentful to the gf if they even stay together. OTOH, if she leaves her hometown under duress, she might be resentful. If it was meant to be, it will last. (Now does that sound parental or what?!)</p>
<p>illest_brother, there is a sub-text to this discussion that you should recognize. GopherGrad, is making some important points that are certainly true. In the end it will be your family and your relationships that matter most, not your career. That said, the fact that GopherGrad stands almost alone in this discussion is revealing a lot about the sort of people who end up in graduate school and academia. It requires tremendous sacrifice and some aspects of family life are inevitably compromised. Thus, one question that you must ask yourself is: are you the sort of person who is willing to make the required sacrifice? Can you live with the inevitable compromise?</p>
<p>As many others have suggested, it doesnt sound from your description that your level of commitment to one another really all that strong. Youve known one another ten years and been together for five. Why are you thinking that youll probably get married five or more years in the future?</p>
<p>No one here can answer any of these questions for you, but the answer to your original question lies in the answer to these questions. The two of you should be working out the answers together.</p>
<p>That said, LA really is all that. There might not be a better place to be single at any stage of life. Its also one of the few places that can accommodate the needs of nearly any couple. If you cant find a suitable compromise in LA, youre not likely to find one anywhere else.</p>
<p>I have to ask just two questions, as maybe I don't really understand:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Why does the gf need to look after her parents and siblings? Is there something wrong with the family? Did they not expect her to grow up, get a job and make her own place in the world? At minimum, a young adult having to attend to the parents and siblings is not the normal situation.</p></li>
<li><p>Why do you say so definitively that a long range relationship will not work? There are all means of communication and travel available. Experience tells me that many people have been successful doing this. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>That still doesn't change my view that the OP should probably go to the place that excels in the research he wants to do, or that the gf shouldn't feel pressured into moving if she doesn't see her future with OP. But I think these are two important questions that may make the situation a little more understandable.</p>
<p>As odd as it sounds, I think I agree with everyone in this thread.</p>
<p>I'm speaking as a young man who lost a chance at one of his very best friends, thanks to picking a better program in a different city, and who plans on moving three times in the next five years: to the Northeast, the Midwest, and then who-knows-where. It's a decision I wake up every morning and regret -- and yet would do again.</p>
<p>1.) You can choose to stay in Denver for five years, but at some point you are going to have to leave. That's the nature of academics.
2.) It is unreasonable to ask her to leave her family for you. They're her family. You (at this point) are not.
3.) It is unreasonable for you to give up your career so she can spend time with her (presumably non-disabled) parents. (Disabled parents significantly change this entire discussion.)
4.) If you stay in Denver, things might not work out anyway. If you go to Los Angeles, at the very least, you'll be in your field.
5.) Your family is more important than your career, if you have to choose.
6.) You do not have to choose -- at least, that's not what you're asking about in this thread, anyway.</p>
<p>So to my mind, the answer is pretty clear. Go to Los Angeles. Take the program there. If you're not ready to marry her, then try the relationship long-distance. It will be hard. It will also be survivable provided the relationship is otherwise strong. If you are ready to marry her, then ask her to move with you -- and ask with hardware.</p>
<p>My suspicion is that, if you take the Los Angeles program, you will try your hand at long-distance and it won't work. Speculating with as much accuracy as I can across the Internet, my guess is that she'll move to Los Angeles once she realizes that she really does have to choose.</p>
<hr>
<p>(PS: If we are discussing seriously disabled parents, by the way, then she has to stay near them, and any future husband of hers will have to stay as well. You then need to decide whether you can take serious hits to your career -- not just here but at every step of the way from this point on, from post-doc to faculty hiring to tenure-track -- because you love her that much. Not to mention the physical and emotional exhaustion that will result. If not, you have to leave. If so, then propose to her and stay in Denver.)</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses. No, her parents are not disabled in any way. I feel that is just an excuse; which I have logically countered most of her excuses to the best of my ability. Her "real" reasons, from my point of view, is doubt, fear of starting a new life, and commitment issues. As much as I want to sacrifice and stay with her, she just isn't willing to make a short-term sacrifice (5-6 years) for the sake of our relationship, which I think is unfair. I know in my mind that if I stay, I most likely will resent her for it and LA will always be in the back of my mind. I do agree with most of the people in this thread, and unfortunately, I think the best thing is just to go to LA and try hard to make a long distance relationship work. Not only has she been my best friend almost half my life, but I always saw her as a partner, someone I would always have by my side to go through life with. I have thought of proposing, but I wouldn't want her to come with me just because of a ring and a document saying the state recognizes our relationship. Besides, she specifically said she doesn't want me proposing just to get her to budge.</p>
<p>April 15th deadline is slowly approaching. Sending in the acceptance of offer letter will be one of the hardest things I have ever done. We'll see what lies ahead...</p>
<p>Well, the idea isn't that you're trying to get her to move with a ring. The idea is that you want to marry her, and that living together comes with that.</p>
<p>lfk,</p>
<p>I agree with your most recent post, and with the conclusion everyone is drawing. i_b should take the LA opportunity, try it long distance and move on if it doesn't work.</p>
<p>As oldschool pointed out, my problem is and always has been this seeming insistence that WE are the normal ones. We are not. We sacrfice for our careers and demand that our loved ones do the same. It is one thing to exercise our prerogative; be true to ourselves. It is quite another to expect that others sacrifice to support us or view our ambition as normal, no matter how all-consuming.</p>
<p>Your experience with this is great, you really can't mess with success. Unless the point is to warn others of the dangers of failure. I've wrecked one marriage-worthy relationship chasing my career and am 3/4 of the way on another. While I can't abandon my ambition, it occurs to me that I have probably failed to give adequate notice of my desires and priorities to the women in my life. In doing so, I have hurt other people and involved myself in relationships that never had a great chance for success.</p>
<p>The posts that focus on the girl's lack of dedication to i<em>b show the same type of blindness. If the go-getter-grad-student types that hang out here insist that they and their desires are normal and will be accomadated naturally, they will (at best) face a crap-shoot's chance of finding a person that will. And they won't know if they've won until they're in i</em>b's position.</p>
<p>Better, I should think, to be honest with oneself and others. If you admit that loving you will require the satisfaction of odd and special demands, you're more likely to find someone that loves that about you.</p>
<p>Double post.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, most relationships are not perfectly symmetrical.<br>
Just because you love some one, doesn't mean you can live with them.<br>
And just because you are compatible with a person, doesn't make you automatically love them.</p>
<p>It's cruel, and decisions are hard. Perhaps the most difficult thing here is the asymmetry of the commitment and different views of the future.</p>
<p>error!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>This is kind of funny. I had a quick discussion with one of my profs the other day. She had just gotten a great offer from a school all the way up in Canada, putting her even further away from her husband at another university. Why they haven't been lucky to finding jobs in the same area is beyond them, but they've been willing to make sacrifices based upon the job market. They even have two children together and the children lives with my prof. I cannot imagine how tricky that would have to be but it all really depends on the relationship and the personalities and all other factors that makes it work long-distance wise. This can happen quite often in the academia among professors who are married to each other.</p>
<p>While i_b is a fortunate position to have a girlfriend with more flexible, non-academic job that isn't ruled by the status of the job market, it is an issue for her to be committed to him and help him achieve his dreams. So let's see what the girlfriend says... :)</p>
<p>I think everyone on this thread has pretty much brought the issue to light. So there is not much for me to add in terms of discussion.</p>
<p>But speaking from someone who understands your girlfriend's position (lack of commitment, not the "wanting-to-stay-with-parents" stuff), I would suggest you go to LA. At this point, it would not be in your best interest to convince her to come with you, or to stay for her. If she comes with you, she will probably leave eventually. If you stay, she will probably break up with you eventually.</p>
<p>I can't imagine being with someone for 10, 5, or even 2 years, and not knowing whether I'd want to marry them. If there's something holding her back, then it's not going to change due to geography. Move, do the long distance relationship thing. You may even break up. But until the day that she comes to you and tells you that she is considering sacrificing HER life and HER future for you, don't ask her to do anything she isn't jumping to do. Don't fool yourself into thinking the relationship is something it's not, or that she feels something she doesn't.</p>
<p>Distance makes the heart grow fonder. Let this be a test of how much she truly wants you in her life. If she comes into some kind of realization, then she can always move next year. It's not like it's a permanent 5 year separation.</p>
<p>I know this comment has nothing to do with career vs. love, but I don't really think the answer to this question lies in the answer to career vs. love. I think I speak for most of us when I say that we would sacrifice our careers a little, or even a lot, for love. The question here is whether you should sacrifice career for something that may or may not be love. I think your girlfriend's actions during this whole process has shown that it's probably not. At least, not at this time.</p>