Looking back on a former relationship I gave up for my career.

I was in a multi-year relationship with a girl I thought I had real potential to go on and marry.

I won't bore you with the details on our relationship but put simply, she got a job elsewhere in the country and being an international student it was her only choice to leave our city/state for the offer or leave America. This happened to be in a new city with barely any institutional real estate presence as opposed to where we were from - a place bursting at the seams with REPE firms, development activity, etc. Naturally I thought I'd have a terrible outlook career-wise in this new city, I'm only 26 and lucky to work at a BB in REPE (former non-target student with non-target grades lol)... felt like following her would've been throwing in the towel on the career opportunities that'd been suddenly placed in my lap... not just that but I could easily have been unemployed for months longer during this COVID pandemic.

I know it's not PC but I also felt pressure as a guy. She told me repeatedly I could move in with her, she'd support me like I did for her with the great salary she'd been offered. I could take a few years off to study something I was passionate about or get an MBA at a local non-target university. I'm by no means broke given my last few years of aggressive saving, and here was somebody who loved me unconditionally and who was basically offering me the life of a trophy husband lmao with a golden ticket to an all-American white picket fence life with the upper-middle-class suburbs opening up in front of my eyes. It felt like settling and becoming an accessory.

I didn't tell her that.

She felt pretty let down by me, and I couldn't adequately explain it both out of fear of judgement and honestly poor communication skills in the moment. 

Seems so sexist when I think of how I paid for all our dates, trips, and occasional gifts for her while she was still finishing college, she was no accessory to me. And she always offered to pay in the more limited moments she could. So why do I not feel worthy without a career, an income, an economic contribution, and a clearly defined role in society when she clearly did? This pandemic truly makes me feel frozen in time, it bugs me even months later when I have bad days at work, and I think about the solid life I probably gave up for the chance to feel like somebody - not necessarily be somebody - just to feel like somebody for a bit. A husband, a dad, an engaged member of the community, that's somebody to someone too right? That's the most important kind of somebody one can probably ever be. 

She never knew it, but dating her helped me get over some debilitating anxiety and depression in the past. I know I'm only 26, I get that there are a 'million fish in the sea' but feel like the even scarier feeling now is that I'm mentally fine but fickle and wrong. Maybe as I age and start to feel the limits of my career, my earnings, my capabilities, I'll only realize even more strongly how wrong I was to give up someone like that.