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DreamGoal · Newbie Joined: 05 Sep 2008 Posts: 1 Career Advice: +0/-0

Hello All,

I'm on here obviously as I need career advice. Now this week I applied for a position for my dream job and if I got it, it would be a dream come true. However the job is in London and I live in the North West with my girlfriend who I have been with for 2 years. At the moment my girlfriend is doing a PhD at the local university and is in this position for another 2 years and so can't move around. Now this means if I got the job I would be in a bind as I don't want to leave my girlfriend as she is the one I want to spend the rest of my life with and there is no doubt in my mind about that. However this is my dream job and I can't do anything about it for 2 years until my girlfriend has finished her PhD but it is my dream job. I have talked to my girlfriend about it but nothing was resolved, she understands it is my dream job and it makes her feel bad the fact that she is stopping me from pursuing it but there is nothing she can do and I don't want to stop her doing her PhD. This is my dream job but I don't know what to do if I was offered it.

Please help any advice you could give would be much appreciated! Thank you!

Pauloz · Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2008 9:36 pm Post subject:

DreamGoal

You may not be stuck. She has to do her PhD, but that can be managed, too. Most colleges have remote study capabilities these days, and if your girlfriend is doing a PhD she's pretty much under her own management from the point of doing the thesis onwards.

So that's not necessarily a major conflict, unless she actually has to be physically on the premises. Even so, she could do the thesis from London, and that's about a year, so you're down to one year from two.

Don't know what subject she's doing, but generally the thesis is about getting the work done, and in some cases getting away from the local social scene is pretty much essential. London may not look like an escape route for her, but it could be, and there's a lot of sources for her materials, whatever she's studying. It could actually be a positive move for her, at that point.

The other point here is that compromising a really good job may not be such a great idea. These opportunities are too rare to miss. If it's a real career path move, the one you really want to make, it'll need to be done at some point, and you could be costing yourselves time, having to do it all later anyway.

In terms of your future together, the job would be a step forward, not backwards.

Any dislocation would at most be only temporary, and only for a year or so.
Doesn't mean you're actually inaccessible to each other, either. Neither of you is working on an oil rig or a submarine, and you should be able to wangle plenty of actual contact, if you put your minds to it.

It's not insoluble, just a nuisance.

Randy · Posted: Sat Sep 06, 2008 4:33 am Post subject:

Well I'm sure I won't be the first old guy to dump this arcane wisdom on you: If it's "true" love, it'll survive a couple of years apart. Besides, as Paul told you, your situation is "managable". But having been around the block more than a few times, it really is true that if this "love" is the sort that can't and won't survive such a situation, you're really not talking about "love" at all but more of that wonderful youthful infatuation that borders on obsession, none of which is meant to suggest the "love" isn't real or true at all, only that it has yet to put be the inevitable tests of the "real world," tests such as the one you now face.

Now in my experience I've never been afforded the luxury of having it all, of having things both ways, regardless of the topic. Some people can and do; it's just never worked that way for me. So if I absolutely "had" to choose, I'd go with love every time.

But that becomes the neat little secret, I think. No where is it written that you HAVE to choose! If I've observed anything during my stay on this planet, it's that the universe favors love over everything else. So I'm not a gambling man at all but I think you'll find that if you can erase the whole notion that life has given you an ultimatum and both of you do what you must, not only individually but as a couple, you'll find and experience that life is still filled with magic and wonder and miracles and that it is indeed true that people can and do "live happily ever after".

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