<p>Ema, nope, didn’t misquote you on purpose. Misread it last night. My bad :p</p>
<p>My nearly common-law-wife and I bought a house when I started to write my thesis. I already had a job offer in hand to work at a great place nearby where both of us would have an easy commute. Even with all that, the amount of work we’ve done on this place has made writing my thesis extremely difficult (though the ceiling fans we put up this weekend ought to help during the hot days!). So, yeah, totally hold off on buying the house until you’re out of school.</p>
<p>My sister married while in Med school. It takes a lot of work and may be straining at times but they love each other and are very happy. You’ll be fine but every marriage takes a lot of work and dedication. I think it helped strengthen their marriage because they worked hard on their communication skills do to their condition. I would rent like they did because they aren’t sure where they will end up working after they graduate.</p>
<p>I don’t see a problem with it. Given that, I live in the south and a lot of people get married young here. (I’m 20. Why haven’t I found my future husband yet? My mother was 20 when she met my dad. Blah blah blah.)</p>
<p>But, anyways, I’ve had a lot of friends get married either as undergraduates, right after finishing their four year degree, or even in grad school.</p>
<p>I mean, when you get married, it’s not like everything in your entire life changes. If anything, you can pull your expenses together and save some money. And since your boyfriend isn’t planning on going to graduate school, then at least one of you will have a decent income coming in.</p>
<p>OP, do you have any plans for an academic post (you discussed the possibility of a Ph.D.)? If so, one of the things you’ll need to take into consideration is the portability of your potential future spouse’s work and how that would affect your quest for an academic post. I have multiple friends from graduate school who hold academic posts that are far beneath the promise they showed in graduate school because their spouses had jobs that limited them to a certain area. Fortunately, all of my friends had thought deeply about how they wished to balance the desire for a prestigious job and the desire for a family beforehand, and they decided that they were happy to sacrifice job prestige for family concerns. </p>
<p>(Some people come to the opposite conclusion–I certainly did. But, if you are interested in academic employment, or employment in any field where jobs are exceedingly scarce, you have to have that conversation with yourself. And you have to be honest with yourself.)</p>
<p>SLAC raises a fantastic point. In my relationship, my fiance has zero interest in being a career anything. He wants to be a stay at home dad (works for me!). For that reason, we are free to move when I graduate (and we will probably have to as the jobs that I want are simply not around here). You really, really need to know going in what your partner wants- this is not just for grad school, but in general. If you both want to have ambitious careers, the odds are not great that you’re both going to be able to find them in the same area. Almost always, one partner will have to sacrifice. If one of you is career-driven and one of you is family-driven then you have a lot more flexibility. </p>
<p>I’m not saying one model works better than the other, you just REALLY need to know going in where you both stand.</p>