Research is my favorite thing to do and I want to do it all day every day for the rest of my life!! After I finish my PhD I want to become a processor with primarily research duties. Thanks. I really do think we'll be all right. At first I was worried because I had been in a long distance relationship before and it failed, but the circumstances were so much different. We had been dating for like a month when the distance started and we also had like nothing in common, so...yeah. My current SO and I have been together for almost 3 years and get along very well, so the only issue will really be us missing each other, haha. And the time zone difference, ugh.What's your motivation to get the PhD? Why not stop now, at undergrad, and be about it?
I'm not sure if you're looking for an advice right now, but I can advise you something: stay true to your other half. It's too easy to give in the temptation of leaving a person behind, but if you truly love that man - you would have to work on it.
I have to give you the opposite advice! Don't tie yourself to your undergrad boyfriend. If you really want to do research, then you'll likely never go back to the city where your boyfriend has that great job he wouldn't leave for you. I don't know your field, but most of the time, whether you're looking at industry labs or academia, you'll find it very difficult to pick where you live -- you may really end up in the middle of nowhere if some midwestern lab is the best place hiring when you graduate. If it's not worth him leaving his city to support your career now, it won't be worth it in 5 years, either.
It's not that it wasn't worth it to him to leave with me. Timing was difficult and this wasn't the ideal situation for either of us. He had to respond to his job offer back in December when I was still in the middle of applying when I had no idea where I was going to end up. It didn't make any sense for him to pass up a fantastic offer and wait to see where I go. We have a lot of friends who have been unemployed for months after graduating, so it really would be difficult to decline an offer after seeing how much it sucks to be looking for a job up to a year after graduation. I wouldn't be able to support both of us on my PhD salary. He plans to stay at his current company for ~3 years but after that he's more than happy to follow me. After that everything should be fine, unless I get a postdoc/faculty position in the middle of nowhere where there are no jobs. If anything I'm the one who is leaving him behind because I had multiple great offers in our state, with one in his city, but turned then down because the department wasn't the right fit. Sorry for the long-winded response, I get a little defensive when people tell me that our relationship won't last. We have a solid foundation of mutual respect, love, and honesty. I let him know before we started dating what my career goals are and what that entails for us, and he accepts it.
A little side-advice from experience. Defensiveness means one isn't willing to accept outside validation of what seems to be a possible way of things. I won't claim to know you from just a few plain-text posts on the Net, but whatever's the situation, I'd advise you to give your relationships a good long thought: if there's something that bothers you about anything in life and you're defending your perception of reality against validations of it possibly going wrong, you won't live happily until it's resolved - either by you accepting the negative possibility or by the possibility becoming reality due to your worries ruling your decisions with invisible hand. In any situation, I would advise you to take matters into your own hands: it's best if you decide what's going to happen with you, no matter how terrible, rather than let outside interventions decide for you. To make certain: I'm not saying your relationships won't work - that is for you two to decide. If you both live in love with each other, whatever the circumstances, then I'm most happy for you.I get a little defensive when people tell me that our relationship won't last
I get that you're trying to be helpful but you come off a little condescending. I wasn't defensive because I'm insecure in my relationship and not open to what others have to say about it, I was defensive because hogwild assumed that my SO not following me to my new city was because he doesn't care about me -- which of course I don't fault hogwild for because that's what it looks like to someone who doesn't know the full situation.
In which case I apologize. I must have skipped this part and confused the whole issue to myself. Whatever the situation is and no matter how it turns, I hope it works out for you.I wasn't defensive because I'm insecure in my relationship and not open to what others have to say about it, I was defensive because hogwild assumed that my SO not following me to my new city was because he doesn't care about me
A lot of people assume you owe them an explanation all the time. That if you aren't willing to share it with people you haven't prosessed it enough. But you don't OWE people an explanation. You can be defensive of something that is reational because it's personal to.