Hi Reddit, I could really use some advice.
My boyfriend and I have been together for four years, and our relationship has always felt really solid. We’ve talked about our future for years — marriage, having kids, building a life together. I’m close with his family and his friends. It feels like we’ve built something real and long-term. But now he’s about to move across the country for a postdoc, and I’m struggling to figure out what we should do.
He wants to be a professor, and I know how competitive that path is. The postdoc is an important step, and I do understand that. What I’m having a harder time with is the uncertainty that comes afterward.
He’s told me that after the postdoc, he’ll move and follow me wherever I end up for residency. But professor jobs are extremely limited and scattered across the country. What happens if the perfect position comes up in a place I can’t move to? I’m tied to one location for the next five years because of med school and then residency. If he passes on a rare opportunity just to stay near me, then what was the point of doing the postdoc at all? But if he doesn’t pass it up, are we just delaying an inevitable breakup?
I might be able to do long distance if there was a clear plan and timeline, but right now it feels so open-ended. I don’t want to pretend everything’s fine and keep making memories if we’re just heading toward an expiration date. At the same time, walking away from a relationship this deep and real feels impossible.
Has anyone gone through something similar — especially in academia or medicine? What did you do? I really don’t know what’s right.
Thanks for listening.
TL;DR: My partner of four years is moving across the country for a postdoc. He says he’ll follow me after the postdoc, but I’m struggling with all the uncertainty and wondering if we should break up now or try long distance.
Comments
The attrition rate between starting a postdoc and getting a permanent position is something like 85% – it’s more likely than not that he will ultimately leave academia for a more stable and better paying career. It really just depends on your tolerance for uncertainty.
Long-distance can be challenging, but it can also strengthen your bond if both partners are committed. Before making a decision, I recommend having an open and honest conversation about your feelings, expectations, and concerns regarding the distance
No one can tell you what you should do here, and knowing what other people did and whether it worked or not makes no difference, because those people are not you, and their relationships don’t have the same strengths, weaknesses, and circumstances as yours.
What you both have to do is sit down and figure out what a relationship that meets all of your respective needs looks like.
Once you have figured that out, then you need to look at the realities of a possibly-four-year long-distance relationship and see whether all of those needs (all of them) can be met for both of you while you are separated for that long.
If the answer is no, then there’s no point in pursuing this. If the answer is “yes” you honestly and actually believe that all of your respective needs (yours and his) can be met while long-distance, then you might as well give it a try; it’s not a binding oath; if you try, and it doesn’t work for one or both of you, then you can always end it then.
If you do decide to give it a try, have a lot of conversations before he goes, and agree on the things that you’re both going to do to support the relationship so that everyone’s needs are met; better to get those conversations out of the way up-front, so that both of you know what to expect 1) from each other and 2) from yourselves. If during that conversation you find that either of you are unwilling to do the work necessary to support the relationship, then that’s that: it’s all over but the crying.