<p>Kind of a strange question, but that’s what the Cafe is for, right?</p>
<p>I’m a nontraditional student, single, no kids. I sometimes read about nontraditional students who can’t do something they dream of (go to med school, go to law school, move abroad, etc.) because they have a spouse and/or kids.</p>
<p>I get why kids are an issue, as you are obligated to support them and you have to keep their best interests in mind regarding moving, income fluctuations, etc. </p>
<p>But why is that an issue with a spouse? Shouldn’t a spouse want you pursue your dreams? It’s not like a spouse needs you to support them – they’re adults and can work to support themselves. Why can’t you just take out loans like a single person does and get through grad school or whatever that way?</p>
<p>Sorry, it’s just one of those things I have difficulty understanding, since I’ve never been in that situation. Can any of the parents/married people here shed some light?</p>
<p>“Why can’t you just take out loans like a single person does and get through grad school or whatever that way?”</p>
<p>Because your debt also becomes your spouse’s debt. Many times many spousal partners have crazy ideas of a dream. A dream of one partner could be a nightmare for other.</p>
<p>Also, spouses often have jobs, roots, responsibilities. One cannot necessarily pick up and move to the grad school that has the program one wants when there’s someone else to consider.</p>
<p>And often, both salaries are needed to maintain the household that the spouses have set up. Spouses do support each other, both emotionally and financially.</p>
<p>Yes, and it would work both ways: “you” would want the spouse to pursue dreams as well.</p>
<p>If the two sets of dreams are mutually consistent, life is good. If the two sets of dreams are hard to pursue simultaneously, then there is a need for a negotiated solution or compromise–which might be summarized as “I can’t go to the University of Vanuatu because of my spouse.”</p>
<p>Returningstudent, No one can explain these things to you. I hope you can get past your current issues and understand what it means to love, to care, and to share…</p>
<p>Couples often have goals that are in conflict with following a dream, particularly financially. If they plan to start a family or buy a house, they might see it as irresponsible to take on a lot of debt and burden their future family with that when they don’t have to. Life is all about tradeoffs, and when you meet the right “other” and are both willing to give some over time to allow the other person to be a complete human being, those tradeoffs are worthwhile. If someone is all about pursuing their own dreams and doesn’t want to compromise, then getting married probably wouldn’t be a great idea for them…</p>
<p>When I was in grad school, I was a few years behind my H. He was finished before I was. He got a post-doc in a different state. I followed him, but from my perspective, it was a bad move. I had no peers to talk to, the university where my H got his post-doc did not have the kind of materials I needed; I felt badly about leaving H to conduct research abroad for several months at a time… After a few more moves along these lines, we’re both in a town where we can find work in our respective fields. But each of us have turned down opportunities elsewhere. Even when spouses work in the same field, problems such as these arise. It’s so common it’s often referred to as “the two body problem.”</p>
<p>Edad, I find that remark quite condescending. Just because an unmarried person doesn’t understand some of the issues of married people does NOT mean that she needs to “get past [her] current issues and understand what it means to love, to care, and to share”. I think that’s an incredibly rude thing to say.</p>
<p>I married very early (literally, two days after completing my bachelor’s degree), but my husband and I didn’t have children for 10 years after we married. So I think I can speak to the kind of situation you’re talking about.</p>
<p>In our experience, for a young couple (as we were in our childless years), the limitations on pursuing your dreams are mostly geographic. We were unwilling to attempt a long-distance marriage for more than a few months at a time. Therefore, we had to plan our graduate education and careers around each other by seeking opportunities in the same geographic areas. It worked out OK, but it did limit the options for both of us. </p>
<p>In addition, married couples often develop mutual long-term goals. For us, eventually, this meant saving enough money to buy a house – something we both wanted. At one point during the period when we were saving for the house, I thought about returning to school for a Ph.D. (I had completed a master’s degree earlier). But drastically decreasing my income by living on a graduate student’s stipend instead of the salary from my full-time job would have conflicted with our already-established goal of buying a house, so I dropped the idea.</p>
<p>edad, even though I am married and have been for 33 years, I don’t quite see where you’re coming from. I don’t think the answers to the OP’s questions were obvious, and I don’t think that having individual dreams necessarily conflicts with the ideals of marriage – especially for a childless couple.</p>
<p>I think that edad meant that regardless of who legally “owns” the debt, when two people marry, they join their lives. That does include their financial lives. I think that being married certainly doesn’t preclude pursuing your dreams. But it does, in my opinion, mean that you have become part of a team, and that the pursuit of those dreams becomes a team project. So rather than “we live in California, so my debt is my own, and I’m going to grad school,” the conversation might be “I really want to go to grad school. It will cost $100,000. That will set our house dream back 5 years, but then my earnings will accelerate that.” Then there is a joint discussion. Etc. And compromise. And the person you have chosen to spend your life with wants your happiness, and will work with you to make that happen if at all possible/realistic. But $100,000 debt mortgages your joint future, no matter whose name it is under.</p>
<p>I think that edad meant that if you want to live an entirely independent life, then marriage is not the framework for doing so.</p>
<p>I have to say this is where upbringing and individual’s family life come into play sometimes. If a person, may it be a woman or man, was brought up to think his/her needs come before someone elses, then that person may not be as ready to compromise. It is also true if a person was brought up to think career/monetary achievement comes before family life, then he/she may not be as willing to get attached to someone who may stand in the way. </p>
<p>Between my husband and myself we have traded off when someone would take a back seat to our careers. I took some time off when he wanted to pursue his dream, and now I have asked him to take a back seat to what I want to do. Our goal was to provide the best education and living environment for our kids, part of it was to always to have someone available at home for them. We waited 5 years before we started our family. We both love to travel, so we spend much of our disposal income on that. My H is very different than me, Ying and Yang, because of our different family background. Over the last 30 years, there has been a lot of give and take, but our goals were always very similar</p>
<p>returningstudent, it can also be a problem if one spouse’s dreams are now “new” and conflict with the dreams of the other partner (the “This isn’t what I signed on for” syndrome). If both partners were working when they married, and had joint plans, having the other go to school and lose the salary, delaying the “joint dreams” or forcing the other spouse to delay/give up his or her own dreams can be a real problem. Delaying or abandoning one’s own dreams for the dreams of another can lead to resentment and damage to a relationship.</p>
<p>And many spouses are leery of the “Let me go to school now and later it’ll be your turn to follow your dream” promises. There are too many stories about spouses (usually women) who supported the other through graduate or professional school, only to be told that the newly minted professional has “outgrown” the poor shnook who supported them and limited their own horizons, and were unceremoniously dumped. </p>
<p>For the marriage to remain healthy, each partner must get something sustaining out of it. Too much “I’ll support your dreams” while giving up on your own is not healthy for anyone.</p>
<p>My favorite analogy for marriage is a two people on a long car trip. If the final destination is pretty much agreed upon, then all the decisions along the way (fast car or junker? highway or scenic route? where should we stop? etc…) can be worked through, even if feelings run high at times. </p>
<p>It’s a whole different story if one of the folks wants to end up in New York, and the other person in L.A. Or if they both started out wanting to go to New York, but halfway through the trip one of the travelers decides that L.A. is now where he or she wants to go, and the other person should just adjust accordingly…</p>
<p>I was lucky. DH and I wanted to end up in the same place. And we’ve traveled there together. </p>
<p>I highly recommend having a really good idea of where you want to end up before marrying and looking for someone who wants to go there with you.</p>
<p>“My favorite analogy for marriage is a two people on a long car trip. If the final destination is pretty much agreed upon, then all the decisions along the way (fast car or junker? highway or scenic route? where should we stop? etc…) can be worked through, even if feelings run high at times.”</p>
<p>Keep in mind, however, that as people age and grow in wisdom and experience, their ideas may differ about what’s the best final destination. In addition, things like illness, disability, caring for ill children/parents, the economy’s collapsing may alter their ideal final destinations, and eventually each person’s idea of ideal final destinations may be very different.</p>
<p>“Keep in mind, however, that as people age and grow in wisdom and experience, their ideas may differ about what’s the best final destination. In addition, things like illness, disability, caring for ill children/parents, the economy’s collapsing may alter their ideal final destinations, and eventually each person’s idea of ideal final destinations may be very different.”</p>
<p>Absolutely. And that doesn’t preclude a successful marriage. Like I said, a lot of it is luck. But at least starting out with the same destination in mind helps. And in our case, the destination was pretty general - a middle class life, with a family focus, raising kids with solid values, getting them educated, etc. We could have done that in many places, in different jobs, etc. Had one of us decided we needed to be a “rock star” in our field, we probably could have worked through that. </p>
<p>Also, the level of commitment to the concept of marriage itself may determine whether folks will work through those destination changes together. I think those that successfully come through the kinds of challenges you describe can end up with richer relationships for it. </p>
<p>I just wouldn’t recommend that two young people hop in that car if they have no idea where they want to go, or already have a good idea that they want to end up in two completely different places. It’s hard enough when you are just deciding whether to stop in Dalton or Chattanooga on the way to Chicago… Especially when you’ve been driving for 12 hours with 3 cranky kids…</p>
<p>It’s often about compromise…you can pursue the degree you want, but you might not be able to go to school full time or move across the country to do it, for example. When someone says they “can’t” pursue their dream, it probably means they can’t immerse themselves in that dream to the exclusion of all else, because they have another person in their lives to consider. Each situation is different…do they have previous debt, do they have a home they’d have to sell, is the desired degree something that will provide a better future or is it something risky, like acting? Like previous posters said, it’s good to know where you are going when you start out on this road of a life together.</p>
<p>My two cents’ worth on how to live a married life that does not limit your dreams:</p>
<p>1) Make sure you have clear communication about your goals–mutual and individual–<em>before</em> you enter into a marriage. Two or three years into a marriage is the wrong time to find out that your dream requires living in the heart of New York City, while your partner’s is to fight rural poverty in the Appalachians. Ditto if you’ve always imagined yourself with a big family and your partner isn’t sure if he/she ever wants to have children at all. </p>
<p>2) Do not assume that if you have major differences now, that will change if you’re persuasive enough or you love each other enough. Especially if the differences involve fundamental issues like religious beliefs, how close you’ll be to your families, where you prefer to live, and whether you will have children. Yes, compromise can and should be possible in a marriage. But your odds of success are better if you marry someone who’s on the same page about the big important stuff.</p>
<p>3) Don’t live a married lifestyle that takes two incomes to support. Many, many dreams die because of money, or lack of it. If you buy a home with your spouse that can’t be paid for with one income, what happens if one of you wants to go back to school? Or wants to stay home with the kids while they’re little? Or pursue a dream of writing a novel? What if you want to switch to a job/career that’s a better fit for you but brings in only half the salary? </p>
<p>You’d be surprised by how much more flexible your life will be if you’re living a lifestyle that’s a good bit smaller than your income.</p>
<p>4) Be sure both of you know what your dealbreakers are. Would you be willing to live far away from your family? To put off grad school? To quit your job and move to a new place with more opportunities for the other person…and if so, how many times? If your passion is global travel and your partner is a homebody, are you both OK with separate vacations? Etc.</p>
<p>“Be sure both of you know what your dealbreakers are. Would you be willing to live far away from your family? To put off grad school? To quit your job and move to a new place with more opportunities for the other person…and if so, how many times? If your passion is global travel and your partner is a homebody, are you both OK with separate vacations? Etc.”</p>
<p>Keep in mind, however, that people change and what may not have been a dealbreaker at first may become a dealbreaker later.</p>
<p>I’m convinced that there are so many divorces now because people live so much longer and because the world now offers so many options.</p>