Graduate student dating/relationship poll

[MoJingly]

I didn't mean stay married for a short time. I meant be married for a little while then have babies.

 

 

Yeah, after I posted that I figured that was what you meant :-)

[LittleDarlings]

Yeah, after I posted that I figured that was what you meant :-)

What's the two body thing? Someone mentioned that in another post.

Nevermind I looked it up. No problem at all, I would live where ever my significant other had to live so if I was in Ohio and he had to move to where ever I would go and just try to find something there. I never want to apart from my SO when I get one.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Pinkster12

[juilletmercredi]

To be fair to Pinkster12 I do think people are making it sound much more complicated than it actually is.  I'm married.  Marriage IS hard work, not gonna lie - much harder than I thought it would be.  You think it'll be like dating on steroids and it's not, it's a completely different animal.  Buuuuut it's not like married people talk about every potential problem that might arise, or independently think about each independent issue and analyze how they will handle it.  And besides, human beings are terrible predictors of how they'll feel in a situation.  You can say "If my husband cheats on me, I will do _____" but if it actually happens...you may react completely differently than how you expected.

 

Marriage, at least in my experience, is about being able to take things one day at a time together and tackle the problems as a team.  That just requires open lines of communication - being with a partner that's as willing to listen to you as they are to explain, and vice versa.  And it means realizing that love doesn't mean that you won't ever want to stab your husband.  Or even that you won't ever (rarely) feel like giving up and moving out.  It simply means that you have the wherewithal to try again and again and again.

 

Anyway, I agree that the poll isn't well set up for married folks - I was dating my husband long-term when I started and we got married at the beginning of my fifth year.  I expect that if we have children it will be while I'm on the tenure-track or starting out at a non-academic job (haven't decided which way I am going), so in the next 5ish years.  I'm in my late 20s, and I'd ideally like to have kids in my mid-to-late 30s or early 40s.  When I was 22 I also thought the idea of having kids past 30 was horrifying, but as I've gotten holder I realized 1) there's just not enough time in your 20s to have children if you want to put education first, 2) I'm too broke to have kids and 3) despite all of the shock and awe surrounding having children post-35, there are thousands of very healthy women who have very healthy babies in their early 40s.  It's really not that bad.  And with the average woman living to be 80 years old, your kid will likely be middle-aged before you leave this earth.  Worst-case scenario she'll still likely be finished college.

 

So I am perfectly okay with waiting until I'm in my mid-30s to early 40s to have kids, especially because I would really like me and my husband to have the opportunity to be selfish with real incomes for a few years rather than popping one out the minute we secure reliable income, lol.  Travel!  Extravagant gifts!  Spoiling the dogs!

 

Also, the two-body problem isn't as easy as that if you really want to work.  For example, let's say that you meet a guy who's on a military scholarship to get an MSW and do counseling for the military when he's out (most of the male MSW students I knew were doing this).  After you both graduate, he gets stationed in North Dakota.  Great!  Except that there aren't any jobs for *you* in ND.  Many women are like "That's fine, I'll just be at stay at home mother."  And you know what?  That's great for them.

 

But not for me, and many of the other women in grad school.  And sometimes, it just happens.  I don't intend to live apart from my husband for any extended period of time, but I got offered a great postdoctoral fellowship in a location about a 4 hour drive from where I currently attend grad school, and where my husband is a non-traditional undergrad.  He won't graduate until next spring, though, so we'll live apart for at least a year (and possibly two) while I do my postdoc and he finishes up here.  I say possibly two because he may decide to begin his career back here in our home city - he's not really keen on the idea of moving to my postdoc location.  And you know what?  That's okay, or at least we've decided it is.  It's only 2 years and we've done the long-distance thing before.  Many professional couples do.

 

I don't intend to do it as a long-term thing, but I'm definitely not just living wherever my SO needs to live and neither is he.  We intend to make location decisions jointly to make sure that we can both find fulfilling careers in our new hometown.  This does require some flexibility - for one, I'm not 100% set on being an academic, and he's not 100% set on any one career field either.  We just both want jobs that we like and can grow in, and a location we like.  But that's how it works - hopefully, you don't just up and move wherever your spouse tells you to; you make an adult joint decision together about what's best for both of you, both professionally and personally.

[LittleDarlings]

Doesn't it bother you to not live with you husband? I feel like I couldn't have a marriage like that, I would want to be with my partner no matter what. I mean I can't see me getting a job THAT great that would make me move away from my significant other. I just started kind of talking to a new guy who lives here in my hometown and I'm wondering if I should toss in an app near home so I don't have to possibly leave a potential relationship. I just feel like it would be so hard to not be with my SO, especially being married. I'm kind of a needier gf though like I have to be there and know what's going on all the time that's just me, you probably aren't like that. I do like the idea of military men getting MSW!! Yay!!

Edited December 6, 2013 by Pinkster12

[juilletmercredi]

The military offers a health professions scholarship that pays for a few of their officers to go get health professional degrees (MDs, DDSs, DOs, nursing degrees, clinical psychology, and MSWs depending on their service) in return for returning to military service for a few years as a clinical specialist.  It's been my very limited experience that most of the small number of men doing an MSW at my university were there for clinical social work (as opposed to community/child services type work) and many of them were there through HPSP, but that's because my university is a military-friendly institution. It may differ in different places.

Of course you aren't limited to your program, either.  All of the universities to which you applied have several graduate level schools - probably a medical school, maybe also a dental school and other health professional schools, definitely a graduate school with traditional departments (like biology, English, etc.) and maybe also some other professional graduate schools (business, architecture, engineering, international affairs, that sort of thing).  These graduate institutions probably have cross-school mixers.  I've gone to several of these and although my own primary department is predominantly female, the mixers are always more balanced because they bring in people from more male-dominated departments/programs as well as from more gender-balanced departments/programs.

 

I always joke that our mixers are partially intended to help students find a partner; while that's tongue in cheek, there's some truth to it.  A LOT of graduate students are at the point in their lives when they want to make a serious connection with someone else with the potential of it turning long-term, and they go to these mixers for that reason.  And there's nothing wrong with that, of course; I think it's good.  Graduate school IS a great place to potentially meet a long-term partner.  And if you're willing to move wherever your spouse needs to and potentially sacrifice your career for his (which I think is also a valid choice), then you may be the perfect academic wife, lol.  Academics tend to have less flexibility and control over where they move, and finding a faculty position might involve moving to the rural Midwest or suburban New England or wherever.

 

If you JUST started talking to the guy, as within the last few weeks, I wouldn't make any life decisions based upon that.  That's just me though.

 

*

 

Of course it bothers me - we're not doing it now (my postdoc begins over the summer), but we have done it before.  It's rough, and we haven't yet done it as a married couple so I imagine it will be rougher.

 

I think it all depends on the field.  I can't imagine getting a permanent job that's great enough that it makes me want to live apart from my husband indefinitely, but for two years, this is literally the perfect postdoctoral position for me.  It will help me advance my career in a really big way - I'll be learning techniques for my field and working with some big names in it.  The salary and fringe benefits are at a higher level than most other postdocs I can get.  It also helps that they are completely aware of my situation and are being extremely flexible on a work-life balance level (e.g., making arrangements with me to take some Fridays off or work from home so I can leave Thursday afternoons to go stay with my husband for a weekend every so often).

 

I also tell students that often more flexibility at the earlier stages of the career mean more flexibility at the later stages.  I chose my top 10 PhD program even though it meant living apart from my then-long-term boyfriend for a few years; we survived that and got married.  I also chose this postdoc knowing that it means a short period of time living apart.  But I have reason to believe that both of those choices - a top PhD program and a top postdoc - will mean that I have a greater variety of positions for which I am competitive when I go on the job market in 2 years, given my productivity so far.  That's because in academia, where you can seek positions is somewhat limited by the department in which you did your PhD and who you worked with.  It's not the same in all fields - social work isn't necessarily like that.  But other fields like law and business are also kind of prestige-driven, so a JD from a top 15 law school has more choices from a JD from the bottom 100, if you know what I mean.

 

But yes, it's true that I am not very needy and I don't need to be around all the time.  That also comes with time, though.  As you get to know your boyfriend/spouse over the years, you come to trust them and know them more and more, and your need for your own independent space increases.  My husband and I dated for 11 years before we got married, so we know each other very well and I trust that we can work things out long distance for 1-2 years.  However, a long-distance requirement is a deal-breaker for me career-wise - which is why I am doing all of these inconvenient things now, to give myself more options later.  I wouldn't search for a job in places where my spouse couldn't live.

[i.am.me]

I feel like I should be worried because I'm closer to 30 than 29 - and single - my friends who are attached don't want to hear me talk about single guys and my friends who are single - well there are not a lot of them and I actually only like talking ABOUT guys and I don't actually like talking TO them lol 

 

I am getting heckled a little but by members of my ethnic community and...well by single friends who are actively dating (because I'm not - I don't think they are getting it that I'm immersed in my research...it took me a long time to get here). I'm kinda...really happy with my current single status, but I miss relationships too when my schedule is free hahaha

 

I don't think it's embarrassing to be single if you are pursuing other things in your life that are currently more important. I should point out that I believe relationships are extremely important in the long run AND my eventual life will not be determined by my PhD lol but that is what I am working on to ensure that I might have other resources and opportunities for any children I have. 

 

Yeah, with that said - I go to mixers and have agreed to speed date for a cause LOL but I'm not gonna fake - I'm currently chatting up a guy from back home to see if we like each other enough to move on further - of course this means that we must be willing to date long distance. Options, gotta have them. 

Edited December 8, 2013 by iampheng

[rising_star]

Huh, I'm currently single and almost all of my friends (except one who just had a break up) are currently in relationships. They rarely talk about their relationship stuff, I usually have to drag it out of them.  They still have tons of things going on in their lives that aren't relationship based.  Like literally everything else...

My experience is somewhere in between yours and Eigen's, raneck. I am single but most of my friends are married. I basically spend a lot of time hanging out with married couples and, you know what, that's okay. For the most part, we don't talk about their marriage. Sure, there are times when I'll be with one-half of a married couple and s/he will vent about something the other has done, but I consider that similar to me venting about something my dog has done.

[RubyBright]

This has been... a very entertaining thread, I must admit.

As for me, I'm in a kind of off, kind of on relationship, where we are waiting for school for both of us to finish, especially since he's attending school in another state... As for kids in the future? Maybe. Could aggravate some health problems, so maybe I'd rather adopt. And certainly that's a fine option for me if I don't get married until I'm a bit old to have my own children.

Regardless of how this relationship or future ones turn out, I'm getting this degree because I'm really interested in this field, and I want to be able to support myself. I'm not interested in using school as a hunting ground for a husband - I'm after my MA (and possibly my PhD), not a "MRS" degree. My three closest friends are married, engaged, and engaged, respectively, and I'm very happy for them (our relationship dynamics also didn't really change since when they were single, so I don't feel left out - they're just not as available as often to get together). I want that too, someday, but there's time. Besides, grad school is rather all-consuming right now. I'm glad my aforementioned off/on friend is good with being a supportive friend right now, and understands.

Honestly, I'm just excited to get a dog or two. Works just fine for me. 

[LittleDarlings]

A Mrs. Degree! I never heard that under my senior year of undergrad, in all honesty I went to college for that... I left with a degree and no boyfriend :/ but hey whatever. I feel like the program I'm applying for is intense but not so intense that it'll take up every moment of my life. Dating and finding someone is important to me and I will specifically make time for it. I'm probably going to try Eharmony because they have people who actually want marriage. As far as my friends.. I don't feel bad distancing myself from them, it isn't fun being the single friend sitting there listening to all that crap all the time.