When I was starting out I wouldn't have gotten serious about anyone if the relationship would prevent me from pursuing my own path: no PhD students who might have to to to West Tuscaloosa State for a post doc; no international transplants working in NGOs or government temporarily; no one who planned to work Wall Street hours; most sadly, a wonderful Marine who wasn't ready to leave active duty. That was the toughest one but I'm not cut out to be a military spouse who moves constantly and lives through multiple deployments in constant fear. Turns out if I'd chosen love with that one our marriage would have been about Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade. I hope he found someone incredible who deserves him.

Now that I'm married I wouldn't choose a job over family but I married someone whose life plans weren't incompatible with my own.

This question is fit for an entertainment program. It sounds too melodramatic for real life situations. Both "career" and "love" have too many subtlties for anybody to answer this question coherently.

I had a college boyfriend I loved very much who was in ROTC at the time. He wanted to get married and have me to transfer schools and move to San Diego with him when he graduated. However, that would have meant losing my spot in medical school, and probably not going at all given that he wanted to be a career officer.
I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had gone with him. I like my job now, but medical school and some parts of residency were brutal, and I was suicidal through a lot of it (even purchased all of the things I needed to do it and wrote goodbye letters at one point). I am still not at all sure that I made the right choice. And I think if I hadn't been 20 years old at the time, I would have made a different one.

I know that I wasn't offered a job out of town by my mentor because I was in a serious live-in relationship. Mentor instead offered me a similar job in DC. Mentor was influenced by the fact that mentor's husband had cheated on her and left her, in part because career-wise she had become more influential than him. Mentor didn't want to offer me something that would lead to a split between me and my fiancé. What mentor didn't know at the time was that the fiancé was emotionally abusive and had gone so far as to threaten to beat the crap out of me. It would have been the best thing for me to have to move out of town for a job. So, that's one time love was chosen for me over career.

I also made choices with a subsequent fiancé to chose love over career. I deeply regret it.

I would advise my daughter (and son) that someone who asks you to choose relationship over career doesn't really love who you are; they love who they want you to be. Someone who loves you will find ways to make your relationship and your career work. I did this for my fiancé who travelled for work, sometimes up to 6 weeks at a time.

Sadly, when I look back at my life, I see that most men I was involved with felt free to criticize my career choices and ask me to make different ones because they "loved" me and for the "sake of our relationship". I wish I had been mature enough to understand that their criticism was their problem and not a problem it was incumbent on me to solve by changing my life.

At the end of the day, both are really a gamble.

Anonymous wrote:

PaigeKeller wrote:What kind of love or relationship would demand such a choice?

Seriously! Can someone enlighten me!

When I joined the foreign service, all of the men had just gotten engaged to girls who couldn't wait to be an international housewife! All of the women had just gotten
dumped by guys who were lawyers and doctors and engineers and who couldn't imagine following their wives around the world. Most of the women there had chosen
the career over love. Many of them never married.

Why are men marrying girls?

PaigeKeller wrote:What kind of love or relationship would demand such a choice?

Seriously! Can someone enlighten me!

When I joined the foreign service, all of the men had just gotten engaged to girls who couldn't wait to be an international housewife! All of the women had just gotten
dumped by guys who were lawyers and doctors and engineers and who couldn't imagine following their wives around the world. Most of the women there had chosen
the career over love. Many of them never married.

Anonymous wrote:I did it with the thought that I was providing for my family. Choose career on the path to partner during the Big 10 days. In the end, my husband divorced me for working too much and I was 2 levels below partner. I had to leave the firm to go to a private company that would pay me enough to support me and the kids. So in the end, I lost both.

I took a more family-friendly path and then moved for my spouse's job, and then my spouse left me for a coworker.

Anonymous wrote:It depends on how much i care about the girl. There should be one that is worth it.

I can say, being the "girl" on the end of this, that I feel very secure (in an emotional way). I was dating 2 people at the same time. Both knew we weren't exculusybe, I wasn't doing anything sketchy. About 8 weeks in, I had to choose one, and I chose the one I knew better because the other was travelling 2 weeks a month while we were dating. Fast forward to 6 months later, and the guy I chose and I didn't work out. Hadn't talked to the "other" guy since I told him I was becoming exclusive with first guy. "Other" guy got in touch literally 10 days after I broke up with the first guy. He didn't know if split from the first guy, just hoped I had, and in the interim had gotten a job that requires less travel. Several months later, he admitted that he went to his boss after I ended things with him and said "this job is ruining my life" and transferred to one that requires less travel.

Point being is, I know he's going to be in positions that require more travel in the future. I also trust that, based on his previous actions, if it really means the success of our relationship or not, he'll choose our relationship. and that makes it a lot easier to be supportive of his career.

Depends. Mid 20s, in love but careers were taking us to different continents- chose career.

Now, married to a different person 10 years, 2 kids, in it for the long haul- would choose the relationship.

I did it with the thought that I was providing for my family. Choose career on the path to partner during the Big 10 days. In the end, my husband divorced me for working too much and I was 2 levels below partner. I had to leave the firm to go to a private company that would pay me enough to support me and the kids. So in the end, I lost both.

It depends on how much i care about the girl. There should be one that is worth it.

Those examples make sense and I can see pretty clearly why a career that required distance might put someone in a position of choosing. I was thinking maybe someone had an ethical boundary in their career that their love might not approve of also. An interesting topic if you examine it.

And I don't know that this decision would be made so cut and dry. Personally, my career is my passion too. I would have to seriously consider the reason for having to give it up. I could always find another one with my education but it wouldn't be so easy. Not a question I can be so lackadaisical about responding to.

It depends on what kind of 'love'. If it's the first blush of a newish love, then I would not choose 'love' over my career. If it's the love of committed relationship with history then, no, I would not choose my career over love.

PaigeKeller wrote:What kind of love or relationship would demand such a choice?

Seriously! Can someone enlighten me!

Dh's job demanded a lot of international travel. That got old fast.