What really matters in a long term relationship?

He wants to live in the country, I want to live in the city - so we compromise on the suburbs, but then neither of us is truly happy. I have friends who have done that and it has never worked. At what point do you compromise away your entire relationship until you are left with a middle ground that leaves no one happy? Well, you need to realize that this type of thing isn't a compromise. A compromise that makes no one involved happy is really just a shit choice. It's the type of thing bitter parents/teachers/other childrens caretakers do to prove some point. I have an analogy i regularly use for this type of question; So imagine a group of people sitting in a room reading quietly. In some sort of space like the loft at a coffee shop, whatever works in your mind. It's close to silent in there, and everyone is happily reading. Then someone walks in with a couple of their friends, and a boom box cranked all the way up to 11. Everyone in the room is annoyed, but those guys are grooving on it and having a great time. So someone goes and asks the person in charge of the place to do something about it. They come up, listen to the noise, and talk to both groups, and concludes that the solution is to tell them to turn it down half way. Now NO ONE is happy, but this solution was "fair" because they "compromised". This sort of thing is not an actual compromise, ever. A lot of half way point solutions aren't. And they often engender a whole bunch of bitterness on both sides. From this, I also really get the feeling a lot of the time that they're chosen a bit out of spite, in a "fine, you know what, we'll do both" kind of way. In this context, it worries me. Because it makes me wonder if you're approaching more situations in your relationship this way. Both with that stubborn bitterness, and in the super transactional sense of "Ok, i gave and took XYZ in this situation, what are you going to give and take?" when in reality if you look at relationships as that kind of give and take, you're going to have a bad time. These are the types of situations in which one person has to give and one person has to take. As in, yes, one of you would have to move to either the city or country. Later on i'm sure similar situations would present themselves in which one of you would concede and agree on another major splitting point. A real compromise here would be agreeing to spend time in the country every weekend, or every other weekend and regularly rent a cabin out there. Or finding a "country" type place ala parts of new york, or some areas in the pacific northwest where you're just a quick commute on mass transit or a When you reach a major fundamental difference of where you want to live, or what you want to do in life, or kids or something like that... this can be a dealbreaker. This of course isn't what people want to hear, so they choose crappy "compromises" as discussed above. A solution that makes no one happy is not a solution, it's cutting off your nose to spite your own face type territory that is rarely done with eyes fully open. If you're at a point in your relationship where you're butting up against fundamental differences in goals in which the "compromise" would make neither party happy, then i think it's time to move on. This is of course ignoring the fact that i think there's many other good reasons in your comment that this relationship needs a fork stuck in it, but i really wanted to just zero in on that mindset.

wants to know that if it came down to it, I would choose him over my career My mother pretty much raised me to do whatever I wanted, but the one thing she drilled into me over and over again was this: Unless you intend to marry for money and take the trade-offs in life that go with that, ain't nobody going to take care of you but you. It's barely economically feasible for most couples to live on a single income unless you're lucky. So my interpretation of his request is "he wants to know that he is more important to me than my own security and well-being." If that's how you want to live your life, go on then, but accept that you're doing so and stop trying to figure out how to make him change to please you. If you're not pleased now, it is very unlikely you're going to get over it. I actually think it's a benefit in relationships when one person is more career-oriented and the other is more flexible. Even without kids, that's been an advantage sometimes in my marriage. But that does mean that both people have to support the career of the Career person. Your guy doesn't appear to want to do that. I think you need to stop making this guy try to fit in the space where your boyfriend goes. Someone out there is better suited for it.

You're not being unfair, and you're not terrified of making a commitment, I think you're realizing that you're incompatible with your bf and it's making you anxious and freaking you out. As a fellow planner, I know what it's like to have all your boxes tickes. Great job-------Tick! Boyfriend-------Tick! Great location---Tick! So here you are, with your boxes ticked, and you're ready to move forward with the next stage: Get Married------Tick! Have Children-----Tick! Buy a House------Tick! Only you're really wondering about that tick on Boyfriend, because frankly, he's not making you feel comfortable about moving forward. He can't get his shit together on the job front. He's half-assing the move to where you are. He's vacillating between one thing and another. You're slowly coming to realize that as shallow as it sounds, that it's fundamentally important to you that your boyfriend should have his job sorted out, and he should be moving to be with you, not so that he can continue to dither about his career, but so that you can both move forward with the plan. Only he doesn't have a plan. If you want a partner who is as career driven as you are, then this man, as wonderful as he is, isn't EVER going to be right for you. He's not career driven. It's not going to matter if he goes to grad school, or gets his dream job or any of that. That's not how he's wired. I suspect that if your BF had a job that was "meh" but that he spent all kinds of time on a hobby that he was nuts about, that you'd be much more satisfied with him. "Sure, Randy's job as a Sales Manager isn't all that prestigious, but his Roller Derby Blog is super-popular." I think you're discovering that he's just not that kind of guy. There's nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing right about it for you. It's okay to decide that after a few years that it's not going to work. You're having a hard time because he's not doing anything wrong. He wants you to choose him over your career. I think you realize that this isn't something you want to do. I think you know you'd be miserable if you did this. I think you know that you wouldn't choose ANYONE over your career. And the right man wouldn't ask you to do it. Go with your gut. Break up.

Lack of respect is a real death knell for a relationship and it doesn't sound like you look up to this guy very much. I can't identify with your priorities and I think your boyfriend sounds thoroughly reasonable, which is...meaningless, to you. You don't support his way of viewing work/life balance, and he doesn't sound like he's ever going to high-five you for being career-oriented. Since neither of you are genuinely looking at this as an "Awesome! She'll hustle for $ while he stays home with the kids; this balances out great!" situation, one has to suspect that this might be a red herring for less easily definable incompatibilities. "I find passion very attractive and important - it's a value I would want to instill in my children" does not seem compatible with the apparent lack of passion for your partner. This doesn't sound like a wretched situation, but it does sound like possibly "settling," and you don't sound very happy about that idea. Unless loads of wonderful, wonderful things are being left out here, I would start trying to work towards a break-up that optimises the chances of a future friendship. That may be a little pessimistic because I work hard to avoid "career" and find the idea repugnant for myself, and while I don't disdain the job-ambitious I know I would never move beyond a "That's nice, dear" about somebody's bog standard work accomplishments -- unless somebody was accomplishing truly wonderful things, I wouldn't be excited by a job. And I imagine I would be fairly repugnant to somebody who was very driven by those sorts of things, so this does seem like a fundamental incompatibility rather than a real estate inconvenience. I'm sure there are couples who sort this out just fine. But you both sound like you're on opposite ends of the spectrum, with no respect at all for the other end.

Hmmm, I don't know how much you actually respect your partner, and I think part of the reason you bridle at the "choose your career or me" question is because you would actually not choose him (there is nothing wrong with this, per se). I think you are also being blinded by comparing your relationship to imaginary relationships that don't exist. There is a lot more to different relationships than just tweaking one variable: you may very well hate being in a relationship with someone ambitious because they'll be the ones who won't move to the city for you, make the time/sacrifices for you, etc. I get a sense from these questions that you may not have a had a lot of serious relationships, is this the case OP? If it is, you may be like some people - many people - who need to have a few relationships to figure out what they really value. In some cases that means you let early relationships that could have been successful go, because you don't know that they could be successful, and you need knowledge of yourself and your needs to make them work - knowledge that you don't have. At what point do you compromise away your entire relationship until you are left with a middle ground that leaves no one happy? I'm just one dude, and no relationship expert, but I will say this: for me, my successful relationship is all compromise. All compromise, all the time. Times a billion once you have a kid. The thing is, in a successful relationship, you should want to compromise. It shouldn't hurt - or at least the pain/resentment should be fleeting. In a good relationship, you always feel the compromise is worth it, and that this is a person you can work it out with; at least all the good relationships I've seen. Is it that you don't want to compromise in relationships or you don't/can't want to compromise with this guy? To me, it seems like you don't feel what this man gives you is worth moving to the suburbs, or frankly changing much about your life, and the rest is just guilt because he's a nice guy and you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. OP, I would move into an anus for my partner. A literal anus. That's what she gives me, and on a more metaphorical level, I'm sure both of us feel we've made sacrifices for each other that were nearly so big. Again, I'm not a fan of rules, but if moving suburbs in the same city would be a relationship deal-breaker, for me, that's not one worth holding on to.

To address your subject line, "what really matters" isn't being on the same page on every topic, but feeling like (a) you share some core values (about the world and our place in it, about how to treat people, etc.), (b) you respect/admire the way that the other one deals with their life issues, (c) you can put up with or be amused by each other's flaws. Can you work as a team in a host of different situations (and life will throw you crises on a regular basis), or are some sorts of trials going to tear you apart? Some of that you can only tell with time, but I feel like that list of three is a sina qua non. Only you can say how you add up (given that all the other good stuff is there)...

I have always know that he did not have the same level of ambition as I did - and actually appreciated the balance that brought to our relationship - but have felt for the past two years that he has been working to get to a job and a place in his life that he felt passionate about. I realize now that I was probably projection that onto him more than anything. He now says he will come to where I am and look for a job, but wants to know that if it came down to it, I would choose him over my career. A man in your position would rarely think this way. He'd either come up with some way of dragging his less ambitious significant other with him-- after all, she's the less ambitious one, so she should be the one who should be more flexible, right? -- or he'd realize that this particular significant other is incompatible with the vision for the way he sees his life. Possibly -- possibly-- one alternative scenario would see him pursuing his profession close to her family, but only if it were a fully-developed profession (eg, being a local suburban doctor instead of involved in academic medicine in a large city)-- not giving up a career as much as reorienting it to be compatible with family life. What you're trying to do is guilt yourself into seeing your basic incompatibility and his unwillingness to bend in favor of the person whose needs should be prioritized (yours, that is) into a benefit in terms of "the balance that brought to our relationship." So the question is, do you think that men in your position have that wrong? Or rather, is it possible that social conditioning has laden a certain level of guilt on you about what you should be looking for in a life partner and what he should be willing to do for the relationship, particularly how you regard your own vision for how you see yourself living in 10-20 years?

I said it in your last question, and I'll say it again. You know the answer to this question already, and I think that if you were to sit down and shut out all the other noise that is blocking you from hearing it right now, both your mind and your heart would tell you the exact same thing. It's time to move on. He doesn't sound like the right for for you anymore.

He now says he will come to where I am and look for a job, but wants to know that if it came down to it, I would choose him over my career This also raises a flag regarding the fact that he sounds miserable and in a dead end, and he wants you to be just as miserable as he is. It just strikes me that in the same way you're starting to see that you might like it if you were in a relationship where you were a "power couple" passionate about your respective careers, he is thinking he would see the appeal of being in a relationship where you were "two people starting out in life struggling and trying to figure out what to do with themselves." Plus, the pressure would be off him if you did that because he'd no longer be comparing himself to a successful, ambitious significant other but would have someone whose plight was the same as his, and he wouldn't have the extra knife-twisting of dating someone who had a bunch of things that he isn't going to have. It's all well and good to talk about "choosing love over career", but what would giving up your career for him gain you? As in, how would your relationship and your lives together be better if you gave up your career? Would it be because it was so beneficial to his career? (Probably not) In choices like this, there needs to be some tangible payoff that justifies giving something up, and I don't see that in his scenario. One of the things one should note is that the things you think you wanted at 20 aren't the same things you wanted at 30. Maybe you met someone at 20 whom you thought, "This is just what I wanted! He's good looking, laid back, and has great taste in music! The man of my dreams!" Then by the time you're 30, you might think, "Wait a sec... school and work isn't just one of those things I'm 'good' at-- it's something I feel passionately about, and I like people who have that same temperament, much better than those who don't!"