Well, you shouldn’t be so selfish. Think about how difficult it would be for a nurse to just pick up stakes, move, and try to find another nursing gig. :rolleyes:
pack, from your descriptions, there are several huge red flags waving. And from the semaphore that I’ve learned the hard way, I read the message as “Run away!”
Read back over what you posted here. All of it. Carefully. You are concerned about hurting her and being a jerk, yet she doesn’t seem to care one tiny bit about your perspective. She sounds controlling and narcissistic, from your perspective. My way or the highway. Until and unless there’s some sane balance in the relationship, I wouldn’t be including her in any sort of major life decision.
Nope, dont move. Granted kick ass nursing jobs in top rated places can be hard to get but in general, nursing is one of the most portable careers in existence, you can land a job in any 100k pop town in about 2 weeks. A friend of mine 4 years after graduating is on her 3rd job making about 30% more than her starting wages. Her standing joke is if she wants a raise and does not get it, she just moves to another hospital.
Do not move to suit her.
Your ass is already 3/4 ways out the door. She will drop you like a live hand grenade in a few weeks anyway. She will ‘not speak to you for hours/up to 2 days at a time’ for the least little thing? I don’t think the word ‘awesome’ is quite the word you need.
She’d better have K-cup tits for you to put up with that kind of abuse. And, even then, she’ll still dump you, so don’t bother moving.
Best wishes.
BTW, who is your Financial Advising job with, if I may ask? If you are unclear about your romantic situation, which seems cut and dried to me, then I’m wondering if you are getting into some kind of Amway thing with your business? May need to run that buy the SDMB crew as well.
The fact that she’s not willing to ditch her dream job for you isn’t the problem, and it certainly doesn’t make her a ‘typical demanding bitch’. The problem is that she’s not ready for an adult relationship (which is totally normal, given that she’s 23). She gives you the silent treatment when there’s a problem, instead of trying to work it out together. And she wants to control your other relationships. Neither of these is how a grownup healthy relationship works.
Again, I’m not saying this is a problem with her - there’s nothing odd about being immature at 23, and in a few years she’ll probably have grown up enough to be capable of an adult relationship. She may well be a totally great person. But the question here isn’t whether she’s worth making the sacrifice for, it’s whether your relationship is worth making the sacrifice for.
If you’re in a long-term, healthy, grownup, loving relationship, then it can definitely make sense to make long-term major sacrifices for the other person. But fifteen months isn’t long-term, trying to dictate someone’s relationship with his mother isn’t healthy, and giving the silent treatment isn’t mature or loving. So, no.
BTW, the silent treatment alone would have been a deal-breaker for me. Especially for days - a quick cool-down after a hot argument can be OK if you know you just can’t communicate properly in that state, but that should be known by both people.
I think you need to get over the idea that there has to be a bad guy. You seem to feel like it is wrong to put career ahead of girl, or something, so you are worried about rationalizing it as okay, because she’s a bad girlfriend, anyway, or because she’s being unreasonable because her career should be objectively more flexible.
The fact is that both of you are more interested in your careers right now than in this relationship. And that’s fine. No bad guy here. You’re not married. What married MEANS is the promise to put the relationship first. Neither of you made that promise because you don’t want to. That doesn’t make either of you the bad guy. It just isn’t what either of you want.
So kiss and separate and know you’ll go into your next relationships wiser people because of what you taught each other.
Thanks again everyone. Especially Manda- that makes a lot of sense to me.
I want her to put herself first and I told her that I want her to do what is best for her. I never want to feel like I held her back from anything whether we’re together or not.
I think what really got to me was the ultimatum. As much as she says she wants to be with me and wants me to move there so that we can be together; she said that I have to move there or else it is over. I guess I would have hoped for the- “Do what is best for you. I want you to move here but if you feel like you need to go to where you want to be then maybe we can try the 3 hour LDR and see how it goes…”
Regarding the relationship issues. Does anyone have any input as to if this is normal and something that we will grow out of in a few years? Or are these pretty bad signs all together?
I mean just today on the phone she asked me if I thought it was safe for her to walk to her car in the dark to see what time she had to move it by, I responded by saying “You live in a nice area, if you feel safe enough to do it I’m sure you’ll be ok.” Now I guess this wasn’t the most protective boyfriend thing to say, but she immediately said that I don’t care about her and that she would talk to me tomorrow and then hung up. And later texted me “you don’t love me, why don’t you care”.
I think i pretty much have decided i’m going to where I want to go. I guess I’ll tell her that and see how it goes. BTW she is coming out here to visit this week. I think I’m going to wait to tell her until after she gets back, I don’t want to ruin the trip.
Personally (and this is coming from being married for 25 years, and neither of us is the easiest person in the world to live with sometimes) I would say that this early in the relationship it’s a big red flag. Two of the most important things in a relationship are communication and respect. It sounds like the first thing that happens when you guys have issues is that your girlfriend shuts down communication, and it seems to me that if she’s dropping ultimatums on you about things that are this fundamental to both your lives (like where you live), then she doesn’t respect you very much either. She sounds very manipulative (see your comment below about safety and ‘not loving you.’)
She also sounds very immature, but if she’s 23 that’s not necessarily unexpected. She might grow out of the immature part (some people do, some never do) but it’s been my experience that people don’t change their fundamental personalities. If she’s reacting to you in a certain way now, this early in the relationship, then I can’t really see it getting anything but worse.
From what I’ve read from you, this seems the wisest thing to do. You don’t have to stop being friends (though she might want to, if she doesn’t get her way) but it sounds like this relationship isn’t the best choice for you at this stage in your life.
One other warning: don’t be swayed if, after you tell her, she suddenly appears to change her spots and starts being nice and accommodating. You’ve called her bluff, which might not be something she’s used to. It’s possible she might scramble to do anything to keep you, but like I said, people don’t often change that fundamentally. As soon as you agree to take her back, she’ll probably be back to her old ways within the month. Don’t let this fool you and make you give up your plans.
My last, and permanent, relationship has been really, really easy. We sometimes fight and we sometimes annoy each other, but when we first started dating, the sheer ease of interacting, mutual regard and respect, and quality of companionship immediately stood out compared to my previous relationships. Those relationships were fine in many ways, but I was often tense and worried that one misstep would end it. I’m posting this to say that your current relationship sounds like it’s more difficult than necessary, and I’d recommend looking for someone who’s more relaxing to be involved with.