TLDR: Bf(30m) tends to take the chill road in life, currently still doing his bachelors, and talks a lot about how he can’t imagine having a normal 8-5 job and has plans on road-tripping around the world in a camper, to give an image of the kind of person he is. He is from a wealthy European family. I (26f) am already finishing my masters and my plan for the next years are definitely to find a good job and build a strong career (that I enjoy of course) and living life comfortably (and not in the back of a makeshift camper not showering for days). I come from an Asian immigrant family with educators as parents. Am I setting myself up for a frustrating life ahead with a partner who shares such different goals? VERY IMPORTANT POINT: We otherwise can have lots of fun together and share the same hobbies and generally are stable.
I met my bf during the pandemic when nothing was going on for anyone. In this time, we spent A LOT of time together due to well, the pandemic. I then moved away to a different city for a year but we managed to make long-distance work pretty easy thanks to online classes. Then came the semester abroad. He wanted to do one for the experience and I decided that I didnt want a different country kind of LDR and applied to a uni to do my thesis there too and it worked out. But after coming here, with uni back to normal and me basically having a 9-5 kind of day due to my research-based thesis, some major differences got to us and the semester abroad didnt turn out as fun as we imagined.
He barely had classes and would go out with his friends often and stayed for three months longer after his semester ended to spend summer break there since I had a longer programme and had to be there anyway. What initially was sweet ‘Ill stay longer to be with you’ became stressful. He had nothing to do with his days and would spend the vast majority playing video games or going surfing. I gave suggestions on how he could maybe volunteer or find a job to make use of his time well to which he initially showed interest but never pursued. And instead of using this time as well as an opportunity to do chores more often so I wouldnt have to or to cook, he would very often suggest eating out when I was too lazy to cook saying he didnt like cleaning up in our tiny kitchen which doesnt have a dishwasher.
I confronted him about this and he said it was only a temporary thing because he really just wants to chill and enjoy his summer but I for the life of me cannot imagine still doing my degree at 30 and being so chill and spending time doing nothing. I get some people are like this, but it doesnt suit my ideas. Anyways, since he said it would change once he’s back, I waited to see how it goes and he generally has been very consistent in going to classes and stuff but would always make comments on how he doesn’t like the idea of having a normal 8-5 job, and it makes no sense to him. I met a friend of a friend last night who happened to be from the same city as my bf and I told him about this guy. He has a normal IT job and ended up quitting it and is now driving around in his camper van at 30 surfing along the coasts of Europe. Sounds like a cool life and story, but never something I can imagine for myself. I told my bf about him and he said “cool dude, sounds like something I would do”.
And that is making me wonder. If I already know that we want different lives in the future, is this worth pursing further. I do love him very much but I fear becoming so invested that I can’t leave and become bitter and sad about it. Otherwise as I’ve mentioned, we’ve had amazing trips together, our time together is mostly very nice and we share hobbies and have a stable relationship. (the negativity that might be portrayed earlier is to only clarify the point of the difference). Maybe its just something people say and not necessarily do? Because I also can’t seem to imagine him living an uncomfortable life either. Despite his free spirit, he is also used to a certain level of comfort and priviledge, like never having flown long distance in coach, etc.
Anyone with similar experiences or ideas on how this would work or what to think about, feel free to help out 🙂
3 comments
“…but I fear becoming so invested that I can’t leave…” Look up what Sunk Cost Fallacy.
It sounds like he embodies the play side of you which balances out your immigrant imbued work ethic.
He is a child of privilege where he has the luxury of not doing a 9-5 job and not having to worry about making a living. As you are well aware that you two of differing life goals and orientation. Right now he is balancing out your serious work-oriented side of you.
Frankly in the long term I cannot see your relationship working because of the divergent life values and orientation.
So many people have bought into the idea that, if two people simply love each other *enough*, any relationship issue can be worked out.
And it just isn’t so.
Before *love* even becomes a useful and helpful factor in a relationship, what the couple actually *must* have is Compatibility.
People have needs, and people have wants. *Needs* are things that a person literally must have in his/her life in order to feel as if that life was fulfilling. Those needs differ from person to person: some people *need* to have children in order to feel fulfilled, and some *need* to be childfree so they can pursue other things. Some *need* a stable life and career track; others *need* the peripatetic lifestyle.
For a long-term relationship to work between two people, their respective needs *must* be compatible. That doesn’t mean that they have to have the *same* needs. What it means is that *none of their respective needs can be mutually exclusive*. For instance, if one person *needs* to live in the big city, and the other person does not have that need and does not *care* where they live, then that’s not an incompatibility. But if the other person *needs* to live in a rural, quiet place far away from others in order to have a life that is fulfilling, then the two *do* have a fundamental incompatibility, because they cannot live in the city *and* in a rural place at the same time.
So you need to sit down and figure our whether your desire for a stable life and career track and so forth is a need, which you *must* have in order to be happy, or if it’s a “want” that you *could* do without and still be happy. Likewise, it’s important to determine whether his expressed desire for a peripatetic lifestyle is a *need* that he cannot do without, or a “want” that he could give up and still be happy.
If one of you has an actual need for your expressed lifestyle, and the other one has a “want” that s/he can give up, then there’s the *possibility* of things working, but only if both of you agree to live the lifestyle of the one that *needs* his/hers.
If, on the other hand, both of you realize that you each *need* the lifestyle you’ve each talked about, then the two of you have a fundamental incompatibility and there is no healthy, workable long-term path forward; you cannot have the stable career track that you need while he has the nomadic existence that *he* needs.
And no amount of “but we love each other soooooo much” can fix it. In an incompatible relationship, all *love* does is cause two people who *cannot* work to cling to one another for far longer than they otherwise would, because they hope in vain that if they love each other *enough*, they can overcome that fundamental incompatibility. And what ends up happening is: one or both of them (by *definition*) cannot have one or more things that s/he *needs* out of life, which means that s/he *cannot* be fulfilled, and so s/he begins a long journey that starts in frustration, makes a brief layover in resentment, and (if things are allowed to go on long enough) strands him/her in bitterness, because s/he has spent years or decades living an unfulfilling life “for” the other person, while the other person “got to be happy”. It’s a recipe for disaster.
So. You and he have to figure out your respective needs, and determine whether any of those needs are mutually exclusive, such that for one of you to have everything s/he needs, the other one *cannot* also have everything s/he needs.
If you have even *one* mutually-exclusive need, then no, the relationship cannot work in the long term.
> tends to take the chill road in life, currently still doing his bachelors, and talks a lot about how he can’t imagine having a normal 8-5 job and has plans on road-tripping around the world in a camper, to give an image of the kind of person he is.
Who pays this guy’s bills? That is the thing that blows my mind about the, I can’t imagine a 9-5 type job. Where does he think food, rent etc comes from?
Surf boards aren’t cheap.