I have had three significant long-term relationships. The first started when I was young. D was someone I dated in high school, but I him in U.S. History class during eighth grade. We took a lot of the same AP classes, were involved in some of the same activities, and had plenty of mutual friends. When we were accepted to PAC-10 schools that were a 6 hour drive from one another, it became clear that we would break-up. And after prom, a carefree summer, and a rocky start to our fall terms at our respective universities, we finally did.
But when we returned to our hometown after graduation, we got back together. And this time, we were enjoying each other’s company even more than before. It was an exciting and exhilarating time. We were working at our first real jobs, signing leases/mortgages on our first places of our own, and generally enjoying all the things that make young adulthood so wonderful. We had a lot of fun–attending college football games, roadtripping to Napa, and hanging out at the beach on weekends. And I hoped it would go on that way for longer than it did.
When D’s best friend got engaged (the first engagement in our mutual friend circle) , things started to change. We both started worrying about the future and stopped enjoying the present. I wondered if it was time for law school and, one day, when D and I were breaking up he said that he would never marry someone who was just a paralegal. (The irony here is that D had an administrative job as well . . . and he has that same job now, five years later.) While the paralegal thing was the crux of the breakup, his dig really lit a fire underneath me. One year and three months later, I would be a 1L.
By the time I moved to Austin I was in a new relationship with B–a more intellectual, mature, and athletic guy than D. He was an Ivy Leaguer who had played professional basketball in Europe before finishing his MBA. And such a romantic guy. I was seriously smitten. But I was a 1L and, as 1Ls tend to do, spent nearly all of my time with things like Con Law, Contracts, and Criminal Law. So busy, in fact, that I didn’t pick up on the clues. I loved B because he was so interesting and, together, we were always learning about new things. But, had I been paying more attention, I would have noticed that we weren’t spending much time together. I hadn’t really met his friends and I hadn’t met his family–not even his brother who lived in a house in the neighborhood across the street from the law school. And there was good reason for that.
I didn’t find out until long after the fact, but B had been married to a very pregnant wife when he first met me. According to him, he had already filed for divorce at that point. But that didn’t matter to me. I was (and still am) horrified that I had been involved with someone who was married–even if the divorce was already in progress. And I blamed my preoccupation with law school. Maybe if I hadn’t been working so hard, I would have noticed.
And then I met B2. He was everything that B wasn’t. He wasn’t academic, hadn’t gone to grad school, but was an attentive, fun guy who told me right off the bat that he was divorced. After my experience with B, B2 was a breath of fresh air.
Where B could only seem to find time to see me during the lunch hour or on random weekends, B2 wanted to be together all of the time. It was difficult to meet his expectations and get all of my schoolwork done. When I went home to be with my family for 2-3 weeks at Christmas, he got agitated. When I moved to Beach Town for the summer to work at the law firm, he felt left behind. And then he lost his job. During the nine months that he was unemployed, he worked at a bar on 6th–which means that we had almost no mutual free time. Things became strained because of that and other things (e.g., I got really worked up over what I saw as a lack of financial responsibility and a lack of ambition), but I held on to hope that things would get better once he found a job.
Then, two weeks ago, he handed me a letter that said that he didn’t want to move to Beach Town with me when it was time for me to start work full-time at Summer Firm because he was afraid I would spend all of my time working and not enough of it with him. He would rather stay in Austin with the friends he made here. The friends who didn’t visit him when he was in the hospital this fall. The friends who ate the food out of his pantry when he was unemployed. (Yes, still bitter, guilty as charged).
I looked at the letter and looked at him and, man, was I mad (still am). We had been talking about moving to Beach Town for years (I received my original offer from Summer Firm two months after I met B2). Why did he wait so long to change his mind? Why did he have to do this right before graduation? Why didn’t he ask me to consider other jobs if he thought this one was a dealbreaker?
The worst part of it was when B2 said (seriously) that he thought I wouldn’t make time for him and our (future, hypothetical) kids. Somehow we got to the point where he perceived me as such a workaholic that he convinced himself that having a family wasn’t one of my priorities. And while I would like to say that that perception is unjustified or that he set me up for it (I had been working a lot of part-time hours to pay for things while he was unemployed), I think there is a learning opportunity here. Sure, I can argue my way out of believing that I such a workaholic that my own boyfriend couldn’t be sure that I would spend any time with my future, hypothetical children, but it might be better for me to consider what I can do differently in the next relationship to make the person I’m with feel like they’re valued.
Because, really, being cast as a workaholic incapable of a happy family life is my greatest fear.
You see, all those years ago when I first started thinking about law school, I wasn’t afraid of the reading assignments or the exams–even the big, bad bar exam. I was afraid that if I went to law school I would never end up with the happy family I so badly wanted. I was afraid that the more educated I became, the narrower my dating pool would be. I was afraid that, even if I did find someone to marry, I would never get to be a stay at home mom because I would have too much student debt to quit my job, stay home with the kids, and let my husband pay off my loans (with a clear conscience, at least). I was afraid of ending up married to my work.
And, really, those are mostly irrational fears. Many of my classmates have gotten married or had children during these four years. But I haven’t done any of those things. Instead, I appear closer to realizing my fears than ever before. I need to do some thinking about the kind of guys I’m dating and the way I’m balancing relationships with work. Because, really, there’s nothing I would like more than to be part of my very own happy family.
Read the full article: Law/Business School and Personal Relationships