The Future Freaks Me Out
I don't know what other women my age think about when they daydream about their futures. No matter where my daydreams start, they all end up coming around to The Choice. It goes like this:
One day I get a call - my number has finally come up, and I start A-100 in a few months. In six months to a year I will ship off to an embassy or consulate in Parts Unknown. I rush home, jubilant, and give the news to The Perfect Man. He congratulates me, and then issues the ultimatum. He has his life here - job, family, friends - and he is not willing to give it all up. He will not follow me to some primitive third world hellhole. I will have to choose: the man I am madly in love with (because I am), or the job I have lusted after to the exclusion of all others for my entire adult life. Sometimes I choose the man. Sometimes I choose the job. It's always excruciating and I wonder for the rest of my life if I would have been happier with the other choice.
I am entirely aware that I am putting the cart before the horse. I haven't taken the oral yet and I have no man, Perfect or otherwise. I may (probably will) never have to make this decision, due to lack of man or job offer or both, or in the best of all possible worlds, being with a man who would be delighted to move halfway across the world for me. But that's not really the point. I fear this choice because I will probably have to make some version of it at least once in my life, if not the precise (somewhat theatrical) version I have described.
The whole love vs. career thing has been beaten to death in chick flicks. The leading lady always goes with True Love, of course, and the movie ends with her smooching her beloved at the altar with happy violins playing. You never see what happens later. My idea of later has room for regret: a bored corporate wife filling time with some meaningless job, or a heartbroken FSO alone in Africa with her cat. The Choice means that Happily Ever After doesn't really exist, that life is full of tradeoffs and requires making tough decisions. I'm a pretty practical person, but I still want to believe that I can have everything I want, or the big things at least. But I know that one day, one way or another, the career/relationship question will come up, and I don't have the slightest idea what the right answer is. I hate not having all the answers.
One day I get a call - my number has finally come up, and I start A-100 in a few months. In six months to a year I will ship off to an embassy or consulate in Parts Unknown. I rush home, jubilant, and give the news to The Perfect Man. He congratulates me, and then issues the ultimatum. He has his life here - job, family, friends - and he is not willing to give it all up. He will not follow me to some primitive third world hellhole. I will have to choose: the man I am madly in love with (because I am), or the job I have lusted after to the exclusion of all others for my entire adult life. Sometimes I choose the man. Sometimes I choose the job. It's always excruciating and I wonder for the rest of my life if I would have been happier with the other choice.
I am entirely aware that I am putting the cart before the horse. I haven't taken the oral yet and I have no man, Perfect or otherwise. I may (probably will) never have to make this decision, due to lack of man or job offer or both, or in the best of all possible worlds, being with a man who would be delighted to move halfway across the world for me. But that's not really the point. I fear this choice because I will probably have to make some version of it at least once in my life, if not the precise (somewhat theatrical) version I have described.
The whole love vs. career thing has been beaten to death in chick flicks. The leading lady always goes with True Love, of course, and the movie ends with her smooching her beloved at the altar with happy violins playing. You never see what happens later. My idea of later has room for regret: a bored corporate wife filling time with some meaningless job, or a heartbroken FSO alone in Africa with her cat. The Choice means that Happily Ever After doesn't really exist, that life is full of tradeoffs and requires making tough decisions. I'm a pretty practical person, but I still want to believe that I can have everything I want, or the big things at least. But I know that one day, one way or another, the career/relationship question will come up, and I don't have the slightest idea what the right answer is. I hate not having all the answers.