‘He’d love to build a house in the countryside, but I wouldn’t live there if someone paid me’

Question

I am in a happy three-year relationship. We are both 27 and met during Covid-19 on a dating app, which was the norm at the time. However, we are from separate counties that are 35-40 minutes away from one another and have never lived really close by or together. Throughout our relationship, we both moved to different cities in Ireland for work purposes, while climbing the ladder for our careers and enjoying living with our friends.

Now, we are both in happy jobs, both back at home living with our parents. I moved home 12 months ago and him about four months.

To put it into perspective, our friendship and family set-up is slightly different. I went to college in a different province and travelled every summer through college, living a free, independent, single college girl life. I was living abroad when Covid-19 happened and was forced to come home, which, in hindsight, I am happy about.

However, due to the moves I have made throughout my 20s I don’t have a large group of friends close by. I still keep in touch with my different friends – however, with life getting in the way, I may only see them twice a year. I have two good friends from school who live locally, which I am grateful for and since moving home I have joined new hobbies and find myself busy during the week being part of a new community through hobbies. I have a large extended family, however, the side I am closest to is on one side of the family who don’t live locally, but value my time when I can see them.

Himself, meanwhile, has played sports all his life. He went to college locally and has a large extended family and big group of friends who all live locally. The majority of his friends are single and some still live at home.

Although I know we share the same values and interests, I can’t help but feel I am 100 per cent happy for the first time in a while due to making connections for myself and keeping myself busy in my hometown after being lost for so many years through different moves.

We both want different Eircodes. He would love to build a house out the country, however, I am a townie and will never live out the country even if someone paid me. I can understand in his hometown we would have more people to see. My argument is my mental health comes first, as I have previously felt lost and lonely in this relationship and don’t want to go there again, and am now feeling happy and secure with the life I am building outside this relationship.

Is love sometimes not enough when we both want different locations to settle down in?

Please help me as I feel that I have everything I want in a relationship but I am not willing to pack up my bags and start all over again – leaving behind the new journey and community I am building for myself.

Answer

Being in a couple requires some compromise – this is why is it a developmental process and in general this is a very good thing for us. There is no doubt that all relationships involve sacrifice, and this surprisingly enhances the relationship: think of the sacrifices it takes to become a parent and how delighted people are in this role. Sacrifices such as giving up your own family and friends to go and live in the country of your partner’s choice or moving to another location to further your partner’s career, can all be relationship-enhancing choices.

However, fairness and reciprocity are central to the maintenance of any relationship and our sense of fairness is most likely innate in that we know when there is an imbalance or when things start to slip into injustice, so if there is no reciprocity over the course of the relationship this can create a sense of imbalance that can be hard to repair.

This does not mean 50/50 in terms of everything but both people have to feel that, overall, there is justice in the relationship. Fairness means that while one person compromises now, later that is reversed, and the other person’s needs get priority. This requires lots of conversations and discussions. Conversations about long-term plans for meeting the needs of both people are imperative and these need to happen on a regular basis so that one person’s dreams are not being met while the other’s are ignored.

Everything does not need to be sorted immediately, you have your whole lives to engage in this relationship, to be curious, daring and adventurous. Rather than thinking you need to have everything sorted or “fixed”, you could take the attitude of seeing the relationship journey as an opportunity for further development and enhancement.

There is also the danger that the romantic relationship becomes the repository for all the emotional and security needs that a couple has, and it is unlikely that it can or will meet all these requirements.

[ ‘I have not had contact with my siblings for many decades, nor did I attend my parents’ funerals’ ]

This is a time when you need good friendships so that the relationship is not creaking under the weight of every emotional need. Friends will also offer you some objectivity if you need to question the relationship or any aspect of it and they may also spot traits that you do not notice in the throes of romance. Keeping up social contacts with your friends needs to be a strong component of your romantic life, these times with friends need to be sacrosanct and not subject to change.

The loyalty you show friends will be evidence of the same loyalty you will demonstrate later as the relationship progresses. In your conversations, you might take all this into account and take your time looking at all the needs you both have and which are presenting as most important right now.

[ ‘My wife wants another child, but I would be in my 80s when they go to college’ ]

If you make good decisions now as a couple, it will enhance your future chances of making good decisions based on the changing needs that will arise.