Only you can say if the relationship is worth the bad patches. No relationship is perfect and and they all involve work. But it shouldn’t have to feel like you’re carrying around a piano. The good should outweigh the bad, and the bad shouldn’t have to be “spectacularly bad.” That just doesn’t sound good to me.
You may want to consider sitting down with her and saying “Look, this is the way it has to be until I make partner, and then this is how it will have to be,” describing whatever kind of work situation the partners have, which doesn’t sound all that much easier. Let her see if it’s something she would be willing to come to terms with, rather than continuing to promise and break the promises. You will always have to break the promises if you’re fast-tracking, so the only thing you can do is to see if she can be willing to not extract them from you. If she buys into it, then she has a stake in it too; she becomes your partner. Right now, she is a victim.
If he does that, he will no longer have a job at all, not at a law firm in the US. And my guess is that anyone who is being that pissy about a ring (that costs 3 months of the kind of salary he’s probably making - which is an insane ring) will be even pissier about a guy without a job, much less the kind of status job that she seems to want her boyfriend to have - even if she doesn’t seem to realize the kind of time/work commitment it takes to have and keep that job.
End it. Now. The sooner the better. She seems to need someone who inherited the money she wants to live on. You probably would do better with someone who also cannot balance their work and home life and doesn’t care that you can’t either.
Not true. I work in a medium-size firm, and it’s pretty rare for the lawyers to be here after, say, 6 pm. There are lots of small-to-medium firms where one can actually have a work/life balance - this firm does some damn fine work, including litigation. But don’t expect $165k your first year out of law school.
You are totally correct. Maastricht, if a brand new attorney in this town refused overtime, they WOULD be shown the door. New law school graduates are often forced to take paralegal positions because there are so many fresh UW Law School graduates that can’t find work as an attorney. These people have the potential to make lots and lots of money down the road, but as I posted earlier, there is a lot of dues paying to be done first.
Exactly. And if she needs a ring that costs 3 months of his salary at the place he’s at now, she’ll need a ring that costs 5, 6 months (at least) of his salary at a place with more sane work hours. And if that’s the ring she can’t live without - then she probably also thinks she can’t live without the lifestyle that goes with it.
Well, yes, but that isn’t what I was trying to say. Is it important for the OP to practice law at a place that does good work? Or is the money the most important thing about his current job? Because one can practice law and still have a life, but there are always tradeoffs - the most usual one on leaving a big firm is the money, but it doesn’t have to mean giving up the opportunity to do quality legal work.
My stepmom, for example, does precedent-setting employment litigation, but she works for a government office - she makes good money, but nothing like what she would make in a private firm for an analogous job. Of course, she works some overtime when there’s a big case about to go to trial, but never until 2 a.m.
So, V.O., here’s where the rubber hits the road - what are you willing and able to do to change how things are with your girlfriend? If you continue on as you both have been, I don’t see a rosy future (and let me be clear here; you are not the bad guy - you have both contributed to getting to where you are). You have some difficult circumstances, but they can be worked with if you both are willing to do what it takes.
Your girlfriend wants you to commit to her, but she also has to commit to you - that she will work at understanding how your job is going to be, and that the two of you will find ways to make it work with your job constraints. If your job is an insurmountable problem, you both need to man up and end it. No more threats, passive aggressiveness, ultimatums, empty promises, and empty apologies.
One question, though - is it only good when you are doing what she wants you to do?
Vulnerant Omnes, if you don’t mind satisfying my (maybe our) unhealthy curiosity :), what kind of money do you think your fiancé is expecting you to spend on The Ring? What ballpark figure is “three months salary?”.
The Netherlands really is a different culture. (Yes, I know the US has a wide variety of customs, but I’m talking mainstream). For instance, engagement rings are very, very rare here nowadays. The current tradition is for the couple to propose in a romantic way (restaurant, balloon flight, beach, etc), but without a ring. After she said yes, the couple goes and picks out their wedding bands together. And those are usually plain metal, so there is only so much a jewel shop can ask for that. Two thousand euro/dollar is the uppermost range, and 2-500 euros more common.
Lots of people here in the US don’t have engagement rings, or get very minimal ones. Personally, I’d dump anyone who got me a pricey ring rather than spend that same money on something useful or enjoyable, like a bigscreen TV or a down payment on a house or car.
Brainiac4 isn’t a lawyer, his doing the corporate path. And he is working 60-80 hours a week right now - and has been for MONTHS. Before that he just worked 50-60 hours a week - and did for years. Sometimes a lot more. Almost never less.
And with two kids it isn’t always easy. I work as well, so we have two careers and two kids PLUS the marriage to balance - but it really isn’t balancing. The kids come first, for both of us - but I get the vast majority of doctor’s appointments and such. His job comes next. Our marriage. My job. In theory, our marriage is more important than his job, but the marriage would have to get really strained before I’d demand a change. We’ve been really lucky - our parents are in town and have been able to help. It is also helpful to have the financial resources to be able to “buy time” (housekeeping and lawn mowing when our kids were little).
When you are partnered with someone with a demanding career, you need to be a fairly independant person and understand that sometimes Christmas dinner needs to be delayed because work interferes. Or the person you are partnered with needs to change careers.
So, I think you need to ask if you want to stay in this career. Her demands for your time and attention will not change - and should you marry and have kids, will probably become more intensive, not less. If you want to be a trial attorney, then you owe it to her to level with her - this is the way it is, this is the way it will be for years.
She decides if she stays or goes.
Don’t offer to marry her until she has a chance to try out this reality and decide if she can live with it. And don’t just listen to her words - she may TELL you she is happy in order for the relationship to stay - believing it WILL get better and she WILL be able to change it. That is a recipe for many years wasted while two people try and make the other person happy, unable to change who they are at the core. Also, if YOU decide to be the one to try a different path, don’t offer to marry her until you know that path will be satisfying to both of you.
You don’t say where you live, but I’m guessing that you work at a large firm in a major city. Due to salary wars over the last decade or so, new associates at such firms make a lot of money. But, it comes at a price. My perception is that these firms have the attitude, “ok, you’ve got your ridiculous starting salary, but we own your ass now.” While I don’t know any specifics about your firm, I doubt that there’s any fix to your long hours. You’ve got to bill X hours per year for your employers to make money on you, and since your salary is high, so is X. There’s no way for the math to work out unless you spend a whole lot of time at the office.
That leads to my point: You seem to be in a pattern of making commitments and then having to break them. Your girlfriend (and you) need to understand that, basically, you’re a guy who can’t make specific commitments to spend time with her. Everything is contingent, because you might get that call that says, “get back to the office ASAP.” The problem isn’t the case you’re working on right now; the problem is the nature of your job.
I think you have three basic options:
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You and your girlfriend decide you can live with the fact that you can’t spend a lot of time with her for the foreseeable future, and the time you do spend with her will be somewhat sporadic and unpredictable (i.e., lots of last-minute cancellations, and “I’ll make it to the party if I can”).
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You get a different sort of job, with the understanding that this will probably entail a major drop in income. (Which means a different sort of ring / honeymoon / apartment / car / etc., if that’s important to your girlfriend).
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You go your separate ways, because you’re incompatible.
Won’t you just be trading her in for a younger model in ten years, anyway? I’m kidding, sort of, but the person you are now and the person you’ll be once you are making that much more money… I’ve seen enough ‘before’ and 'after’s to wonder whether I’d be able to start dating someone in law school and stick with them throughout their career– especially the bumpy patch at the beginning (aka. 6+ years). I know, I know, lawyers and their spouses will chime in and tell me I’m wrong, but perhaps you are best being a lone for a bit.
Not law school. These two started dating at 18, apparently.
To the contrary, when I worked briefly for a medium-sized litigation firm in Chicago with a rep for being “family-friendly,” the percentage of partners who were divorced and/or having affairs, and whose kids were fucked up was a significant factor in my deciding that was not the life for me.
That and the fact that I had 2 kids under 3 and another on the way, and was told that even tho I was meeting the billing requirements I had to stick around the office for a couple more hours each day just in case some partner wanted his ass wiped at 7 p.m. Yeah, I know little children look like angels when they are asleep. But I decided I’d just as soon see what they were like when awake.
Finally, it only took so many times for clients to lie to me to convince myself that I didn’t care to give up my personal life to haul them out of messes they generally created themselves and avoid their obligations.
Private law firm associates - and to a large extent partners - are income-producing assets plain and simple. Nothing more. And the moment you stop producing sufficient income, don’t expect your firm to do anything other than chuck you to the curb and try out a newer, cheaper model.
And yes, I acknowledge that there are some smaller firms that are not entirely money hungry whores as the big firms, but IMO they are vastly in the minority.
You’re working to get her an engagement ring that costs three months of your salary, that SHE picked out, and this is how she treats you before you two are even married?
Get out now.
The extravagant, outlandish, outrageously expensive wedding meme is in full force in the United States. The “rule of thumb” espoused by experts is three months gross salary; for someone earning US$40k-60k per year (roughly the range of the average 1-5 year experience in a typical white collar job) that’s US$10k-15k for a lump of tetrahedral carbon allotrope in a gold band. Fashionable weddings come in at low to mid five figures. For someone earning the kind of pay as an entry level associate at a top tier litigation firm, you can triple those numbers and the expectations behind them. Personally, I think this is all completely insane, but then my idea of a good wedding is six people on the beach of an island sufficiently remote that you have to kayak out to it.
I have a friend that is a corporate litigator at a prestigious firm on a partnership track working on some pretty cutting edge liability cases (at least, this is what I’ve been told). One of the first things she told me was, “…the first rule of being my friend; I’ll flake on you for work. Repeatedly and unabashedly.” It has been an accurate statement, though she generally manages to live to commitments, and it is generally no big shucks to me if she has to bomb out of dinner plans or whatever. If you’re going to have a dependent relationship with someone with that kind of career–and enjoy the fiscal fruits of it–you have to accept that. If not, it’s best to move on, 'cause it isn’t going to get better any time soon. (And the stories I hear about corporate legal culture frankly make me think that it’s something that I’d want to stay far away from, even though my friend insists that I’d make a great IP lawyer. The one that cracks me up is the lawyer whose kids drew a family portrait with the mom and kids standing together and dad flying away in a plane.)
Frankly, the o.p. and his fiancee sound too immature in their behaviors and expectations to make a marriage go at this point, regardless of career impositions. I think the first four respondents had it right. What’s the rush, anyway? You have the rest of your lives to scream at and backbite each other.
Stranger
Yep.
Sucks, but it is how it is.
Who really knows over the net, but I wonder if she’s making threats because she’s unhappy enough to want out, but can’t quite get up the courage to end it. So she’s trying to force the OP to be who he isn’t. Ain’t gonna work. She might also be hoping he ends it so she doesn’t have to.
I’m a very independent person by nature. Rejected my high school sweetie who probably would be married to me if I hadn’t put a career interest first. Then in grad school, I met the guy I wanted to marry. Except his career aspirations took him away for months at a time to places so remote we had essentially no contact.
I had no concept that could bother me so much, but it did. So much so that I turned into this clingy, insecure person I didn’t even recognize as me (and which probably drove him crazy). I really resented his absences. When he was gone, I’d drift back to independence and build my own life, but I’d also have to take care of all the details of his life he couldn’t. Paying bills, getting the car fixed, etc. So I’d have all of the work of a relationship, but none of the benefits.
Then he’d come back, and I’d start giving up stuff I’d taken to doing while he was gone in order to make room for him in my life. Except even when he was back, he’d spend long hours at the office and wouldn’t commit to getting together–work came first. The thing is, we were in grad school, and it’s not like there was a boss standing over his shoulder or something if I asked if he could get together with me on a Friday night. So it might be helpful to the OP to consider whether things would really be different in a different career. There’s a possibility it wouldn’t be.
After about two years of this, I did finally stoop to getting really passive aggressive and nasty one night after he came back into the country again and wouldn’t say yes or no to seeing a movie on a Friday night. All of our previous mature attempts to deal with what amounted to my unhappiness with the situation (didn’t bother him a bit) hadn’t helped. So I left a really nasty note on the windshield of his car–but only after talking to him in person at about 6 pm and still getting blown off on the “so can we see each other tonight?” question.
That was the night he broke up with me, thank goodness. It was amicable and it hurt both of us equally, but it was the only solution. For as much as I loved him, I didn’t like who I was turning into, and he wasn’t going to be anyone other than who he was. I still sometimes wish it could have worked out for us, because of how good the good times were. But I can honestly say that whenever we occasionally touch base, I’m still quite sure I’m happier having been without him for the past twelve years than I ever could have been with him. And I’ve been single those twelve years–like I said, I’m not normally a clingy and insecure type who has to have a man in her life. But in the dynamics of that particular relationship, I was, and it was an indication of just how badly out of balance the whole relationship was.
As for him, he’s married. I presume happily, because if this incompatability had existed with his wife before they married, I hope he would have ended things with her as well for both their sakes. And certainly there are plenty of marriages where people are apart a lot that work just fine. So no, I don’t think things have to be so difficult as I experienced with him. We just had different priorities and there was no compromise that wouldn’t leave one of us miserable. That’s how it goes sometimes.
Anyway, the general situation the OP is in kind of reminds me of that relationship. Except my relationship ended before the bad times got nasty. One thing I’m sure of in my own relationships: by the time I start saying things like “but the good times are so good,” it’s time to bail, because staying would be really dang dysfunctional. Ups and downs are one thing. A roller coaster is another.