Marriage or career?

Why do i have to choose?

for the sake of simplicity

Of course, there’s really no reason any woman should have to make this choice in today’s world… but if I had to, I’d chose marriage. Without love, the career wouldn’t matter much to me.

I chose both but without children because I viewed raising children as a career. One that I was obligated to stick with until the youngest one left home. Simply was not my cup of tea, and I never regretted it.

Money is overrated. I’d take love over it twice on every day of the week and three times on Saturday.

If I were a girl, I’d choose a very rich man to be my husband and make a career of spending his money.

You don’t have to choose. Creating this FALSE DICHOTOMY does NO ONE any favors. It just reflects a mentality that is stuck in the dark ages. Society tells women: oh, you have to choose, your career or your family. It’s utter bullshit. And this question reinforces that stereotype abysmally.

My choice: Both. I don’t have to choose, I’m on the path to both.

And frankly, the fact that you’ve limited it to the ladies is bizarre. After all, this is a choice we’ve grown up with, being told we’d have to make someday. Even from “feminists” or those who were supposed to empower us, we’ve been told this. Why not ask the men? It’s not something that’s been shoved in their face daily their entire lives. They might not have thought about it as much. Maybe they are the ones who need to consider it.

You really don’t have to choose. My wife didn’t, and neither do you.

If you truly love someone there’s no question

Agreeing with @EmpressPixie.

And I’m not a girl (but I would look excellent in pigtails)

Really weird question. Why even postulate that women have to choose? Why women and not men? Would anyone even pose this as a hypothetical to men?

My answer: I refuse to choose. I have both. I like it that way.

I would have to choose both! If I left my husband for my career, I would be sad, but if I had to quit my career for my husband, I would go crazy.

Woh, guys/ladies, settle down. This is a pretty open question and doesn’t seem to limit to just choosing family or a career, but more or less a choice if it had to be made.

Example: One spouse got a great job, but it was in another state. Would you give up your career to go with them? Or, vice versa, would you give up that great job to stay with your spouse where you currently are?

Example 2: You are working constantly. Nearly always away from home on some business trip/meeting. Could you give up at least some parts of your career to be with the one you love?

Let’s try to turn it away from just women, and at least keep an open mind.

As for me, I would choose love over money any day.

Example: You don’t have to give up your career to stay with your spouse. He moves for his career. You then work it out with your company to transfer to that area or find a job in line with your career interests in the area or work out a telecommuting deal where one of you is on location some days and with the spouse other days. It’s hard work, but relationships and careers usually are.

Example 2: Why can’t your spouse come with you on some trips? Or surprise you at the office with a lunch picnic one day? Your spouse knows that there are times when you need to work. These periods pass. Again, they can be hard on a relationship, but if you are in a solid relationship, you get through it.

My parents very recently went through about four years of example number two. It’s hard, they missed each other terribly, but they got through it. My dad had to work literally across the country for increasingly long periods of time culminating with flat out moving there for the last two years or so. My mother stayed at home until it was right for her to follow him. But they talked about it at every step. They worked out a plan. When hiccups happened, they worked out a new plan.

If you can’t see all the available options, maybe you do have to choose. But that is a choice you impose on yourself from not opening your eyes.

Ok, so I didn’t think it through thoroughly and mistook career for job. Yeah, you’re right about the first, but some may not be able to get through the second. Some may not even be able to get through the first if they are too attached to their current job. Sure, maybe you could, but some people can’t.

Personally, I would sacrifice to spend time with someone I loved. Maybe some just wouldn’t.

I think you’re still missing the point. Love isn’t all about sacrifice. You don’t have to sacrifice for the people you love. You never do. There are always options.

You can always get a job doing the exact same thing with another company. You can often get your company to help you figure things out so you can stay with them while staying with your spouse. And if your job is one of the exceedingly rare jobs where you literally cannot do the same thing somewhere else (I can’t even imagine what job that could possibly be), then your spouse is the one who must be flexible. Perhaps he takes the out of town job but only for a while—a year or two, until he can ask to transfer or telecommute.

If you are “too attached to [your] current job” then you’ve already valued your job—not even your career, but your job—above your relationship. And if you have to stop working entirely to save your relationship, it’s probably not that healthy to begin with because you aren’t compromising and working together.

I think you are being a little naive now. There aren’t always options. Life throws curve balls all the time, you can never know what to expect.

I’m a marine biologist of sorts, if my SO moved further inland, I would have no career there. Would I still give it up? Of course. And yes, I know love isn’t all about sacrifice, but you have to be willing. It isn’t always as simple as finding another way, but to choose with what has been given.

Some people can’t just walk away from a job either. It’s not always because they value it over the relationship, but because they already feel secure. Some people don’t want to give up security for the unknown.

Don’t assume everyone can handle long distance relationships either. Some have physical needs, believe it or not.

Like I said, maybe you could find some way to deal with it, but not everyone can.

If your SO moved inland, you’d have two options: you could teach in your field or she could work inland for a while then telecommute or ask to be transferred. Didn’t I just go over this? Or you could have a home between both jobs, so you both had long commutes. Or one of you could live inland or outland for the week and go home on the weekends.

If you aren’t seeing the options, you aren’t looking hard enough. Well, either that or your spouse is moving inland to get away from you.

If you have physical needs, masturbate. Visit your spouse. I didn’t say it was easy. In fact, I said it was hard.

If you value your job security over your relationship, then you’ve already made the choice about your relationship. “It’s only good enough for me if s/he chooses to sacrifice her/his options for mine.”

I would choose love over a career but I wouldn’t be happy or complete

There are no teaching options for such a low level biologist that I am.

I never said it had to be easy either. Some just can’t handle it. Not everyone is as stable as you are.

I still stand by “Not everyone can do it”.

It’s a negotiation. You’re not the only one balancing a relationship and a job: your SO is as well. If he decides that he needs to move inland, he’s deciding that his job is more important than your job. You can accede to that belief, or you can object to it.

And it’s troubling that you seem to think it’s the woman’s task to decide between her job and her relationship. What’s stopping you from digging in your heels, saying, “I like my job. I would prefer not to move inland.” You seem to think that your SO deciding to move without considering its ramifications on you is perfectly acceptable. That, more than anything else, is the root of this problem.

@Phobia: High schools always need more science teachers. And so do middle schools. You could do kiddo programs at a science museum or a kiddo museum.

People should be able to handle being away from their SO without the world ending. It will happen at some point in your relationship no matter how hard to trying to plan to avoid it. But you are right—not everyone can do it. Not everyone feels it is worth it to put the time and energy into a successful long distance relationship. They choose the easier path. So they would fall under “choosing the job”.

I fully agree with @cwilbur‘s comments.

@cwilbur The whole SO deciding to move inland was a hypothetical situation, and I never said it was the woman’s job. I said “Let’s try to turn it away from just women” on my first comment and used “SO” and “spouse” on other comments to try to avoid that. But you are right, it is a negotiation. The question wasn’t about a negotiation though, but if you HAD to choose, which? I simply tried to present situations in which you had to choose.

@EmpressPixie I’m sorry, but I still don’t think its that simple. If it was that simple, why are there still so many people filing for unemployment claims? Why are people’s unemployment claims running out while they still haven’t found jobs? Times are hard and jobs (at least in their career field) can be hard to find in some places. Even that might be enough to deter some from wanting to move away.

@Phobia – Actually, I know several marine biologists who moved inland for various reasons. One teaches science in middle school, one represents a pharmaceutical company, one represents a company that wholesales natural tschochkes to museum gift shops, one became a restaurant inspector for the health department, and one got a job with the wastewater department. So, there are options, even if the scenario is hypothetical.

@Phobia: the problem is, the only way to make a scenario where I am forced to choose, where there are simply no other alternatives than to decide between my job and my relationship, is to make it so ridiculously convoluted that it’s nonsensical.

There is no situation that is likely to arise where the choice will be that stark. And if there is, my decision will almost certainly hinge more on the circumstances making the choice that stark, rather than on the decision itself.

I guess I kind of look at this question from the angle of “which do you put first”, as opposed to you can only have one or the other. Or maybe you can only really be successful at one or the other, or you can really only dedicate your energies to one or the other. I think a lot of people, men AND women still DO make that choice.

I think of it in these terms. I didn’t have my first “relationship” until I was through with college, so I made my vocational decisions really based on an idealized picture of what I thought I wanted in the real world. When I was younger, I thought money was the way to go…I knew I had a good math acumen but wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for a living, but then I took an Accounting class in high school. During that class I realized that I really enjoyed it, it was incredibly easy for me, and (through having our small town’s one CPA speak to our class), that you could make an assload of money doing it.

I went through college, took courses designed to get me a CPA license, and sat for the exam…even passed it. I knew what I needed to do to make tons of money….get a job with a CPA firm or a governmental agency doing auditing work, so I could get 2 years’ experience auditing, which would get me a license to practice. After that, I could work my way up in a firm until I was an owner/partner…within a few years I could be making 6 figures and I could retire by the time I was 50.

That didn’t happen…life did. I met someone, and basically, I had a choice. I could kind of settle into working for companies, not really doing auditing work, but using the myriad of other accounting skills I’d picked up…have a decent 40 hour a week job that paid the bills, AND have a life outside work. Or I could throw myself into my career working 80 to 100 hours a week (which is what people wanting to become successful CPAs MUST do) and basically not be able to do a lot of fun things with my significant other.

So, I’m 38, haven’t broken 6 figures yet, won’t be able to retire at 50, but I’m married with a son and I’m happy. That was the choice I made…marriage, NOT career. To me you should like your job, but at the end of the day, that’s not the life that is the most important one to me.

However, I do not look down upon anyone who feels that career is the one of the two on which they should focus. It’s really a personal decision, and you have to know what matters to you.

Marriage. Relationships far outweigh a career in my life.

I don’t believe in marriage, so I will generalize it into “long term relationship”.

You need to have some amount of both. A career without a relationship would leave me with tons of money but no one to use it with. A relationship without a career is a life without purpose and a life with strife and conflict.

At this very moment I have both, but even that isn’t enough. I’m discovering that I really feel the need to go out on my own after so long in a relationship. But this would not be actively choosing my career over my relationship, it’s simply choosing what makes me happier in life.

Alright, just a quick explanation. Love is not in the question. Marriage and career are general preferences. It’s a superficial question. And it is directed to both men and women. I know that most women do both, my mum does and so would I. But if you were in utopia and “your statutory rights were not affected”, which would you choose. No malice intended. Chill.

And I’m not good at relationships so I’d like career. I know you can’t have a career without good realtionship skills either but one-on-one relationships are too boring for me. I like families, but dyads are not my ballpark exactly.

@atlantis – look at my example. If I’d chosen the businessman route, I’d probably be married today. I might even have a kid still. But they’d rarely see me, and they’d have to be OK with that. It would be a different quality, it would be choosing a different priority.

I’d suggest that a better question would be, ‘which comes first for you, career or marriage?’

I’d choose the career. I’ve been married and I’ve also had long term live in relationships so I know about love existing without the marriage part.

@dalepetrie that is what the question means. It’s a pros/cons debate or comparison or anything else.

Going of on a tangent but had to ask now that you spilled it, if you had kept at the CPA route, you would’ve given your children a better start then the job you have now? I’m not trying to meddle or anything, just curious :P

totally understand if you want to play the personal card

@atlantis – I can’t say that. I think my child has everything he could need and most of what he wants. He attends an extremely good public school that I’d send him to even if I could afford private school. If anything, at age 7, his problem is more one of feeling that he should get something just because he wants it…if I had more money, he might well get more things, he might not learn the value of a dollar as well as he will.

Furthermore, I’ve switched jobs many, many times. I’ve been laid off repeatedly, through no fault of my own. I’ve had several long stretches of time where I wasn’t working, and money was tight. No guarantee that wouldn’t have happened had I gone the other route…I could have been unemployed more or less than I have been. I could have also had enough stress to give me a heart attack and kill me. And let’s say, just for the sake of argument, had I gone down path a, well, I wouldn’t be with the woman I am with now…she has no desire to be a widow to her husband’s job, which would mean I wouldn’t have the son I have now. So, let’s say I took the CPA path, worked hard, still managed to get married to a different woman and have a different kid who didn’t expect much out of me in the father department, I became really successful, made tons of money, and 12 years from now (when my son would be starting college), I could retire and live life on my own terms. Well, by then I wouldn’t even know my wife anymore, I would never have really gotten to know my son and he’d probably resent me for it. I might well end up divorced because my wife is so used to being without me that she can’t stand to have me around 24/7.

Now, when I’m out of work, it means I can pick my son up from school and drop him off some days, it means when he’s out of school I get to spend full days with him, it means get to take him places and experience things….it means I get to be there for every bedtime, every milestone, everything that makes my life enjoyable.

I suspect that a child would much rather have a father and live in the real world, then grow up with an absentee father, but live in a fantasy world where toys were for the taking. Just a hunch.