I’m a planner. I plan things. I like plans, I make plans.
I planned to go to college out of state: I’m doing that.
I planned to major in Event Management and minor in Sustainable Tourism: I did that.
I planned to graduate a year early: I’ll be doing that in June.
I planned to go abroad and work on wineries while traveling the world: I’ll be starting that in August.
What I didn’t plan on was falling in love with a boy who lives thousands of miles away and on a different timeline.
The Situation
As the year continues along, and I come closer and closer to fulfilling my plans, I am realizing that they were set long ago, before I had a second person’s life to coordinate with. At the same time, my partner is realizing the reality of plans he has only ever thought of as the elusive “future”. We have begun to talk about the next steps for us and our relationship, and it has caused for some serious reflection on what I want in life.
While I know my partner ultimately wants me to do what is going to make me happy, he has every right to express his concerns about the state of our relationship should I continue on as planned. Our conversations have reached a continuous loop, with each one starting and ending like this:
His Perspective
We’ve been together for over two years, and all we’ve known is long distance. It has been really hard on us, and your going abroad would only make it harder. Why can’t you come live with me for a year while I finish school, and we go abroad together after?
My Perspective
I set these plans a very long time ago; it’s what I’ve wanted for years now. I shouldn’t give up on my future for anyone, no matter how much I love and want to be with them. It’s only eight months, we would have been doing long distance still if I was doing all four years of school, how is this any different?
His Perspective
Relationships are about compromise. We have to be able to give and take to make the relationship work. Just because we can do long distance, doesn’t mean we should have to. We struggle when we’re one time-zone away, you’d be in a completely different hemisphere.
My Perspective
That isn’t compromise. It isn’t us starting something new together. It would be me changing my life to fit into yours, while giving up my goals. I would be living in YOUR house, with YOUR roommates, in YOUR college town, waiting around for my career to start. I don’t want to wait to start living my life.
His Perspective
I don’t want to wait to start living my life with you.
The Solution
I’m caught in quite the dilemma. There isn’t an objective right or wrong answer, I’m simply in the middle of the age-old choice women have been asked to make for years: family or career.
And I’m actually considering his proposal. On the one hand, I hate long distance, and would give anything to not have to do it anymore. It’s only for a year, I can wait one more year. On the other, who would I be if I gave up my dreams for a boy?
I am acutely aware of some of the internalized misogyny I am harboring while evaluating this situation. It is wrong for me to think of myself as lesser should I choose my partner. It is wrong for me to choose someone else over myself. What I should be asking is, why are women the only ones who ever have to make this decision? Why do I feel that one decision is inherently “better” than the other? Shouldn’t I be supporting the right for women, including myself, to choose, whatever that choice ends up being? Why have I attached a goodness or a badness to choices that are neither good nor bad?
Why should I have to choose? Is there no situation in which a compromise can be reached? Can I not thrive in my career and my relationship at the same time? Women are made to feel as though they have to be one thing or another, that they have to choose a side and stick to it. No thought is given to the idea of priorities, or the shifting of them with the oscillation of life. Is it not possible to emphasize your career for a period, while giving noted attention to your relationship, and a year later finding yourself prioritizing your relationship while respecting your career? And again, why is this a choice only women are faced with? Men are rarely, if ever, asked if they plan on returning to work after the birth of their child. Men are rarely, if ever, asked to relocate with their partner whose job asks it. Why, then, have I found myself in this situation?
In my conversations over the next few months, I am hoping to make a conscious effort to center my wants and needs and encourage others to do the same. To learn to think of my situation as an allocation of priorities rather than a choice. To stop attaching a rightness or wrongness to the choices of women.