I was preparing dinner, waiting for my girlfriend to come home from work. Her name is Gertrude. For her, it was either my cooking or corn…out of the can. In fairness, you should see what this girl can do with a can opener. She came up behind me, wrapped her arms around me and kissed my neck. I smiled. She said, “I have a question for you.” If I weren’t holding the largest knife in the house, I wouldn’t have been as comfortable saying, “Yes, Sweetheart?” You never know with her.

“I have finally decided that I am going to apply to business school.” This was great! She had been going back and forth for a while, and I thought that she would be brilliant in that environment. I was thrilled. She didn’t seem too confident, though. “That’s not my question.” I had guessed as much. “So if I get into a school in, like, California, are you going to come with me?”

I paused. ‘Of course’ is what immediately came to mind. And I said so. And I meant it. I had been in my job for around 6 months. By the time we left, it would be another 6 or 8 or so, perfect. I was definitely up for the adventure.

I think about that conversation every day.

Tomorrow, Gertrude is taking the biggest step in her life thus far. She’s moving to Texas to pursue her MBA – alone. After I drop her off at the airport, I’ll head to work, in Boston – alone.  And at that moment, our long distance relationship will begin.

The timing that led to this decision was…special, to say the least.

Not too long after our initial conversation about me joining her in this adventure, someone else asked me a question. “Do you have all of your personal belongings?” I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I walked out of my last day of work with only one thing: a picture of Gertie and me, stupid in love on vacation.

So there I was. Unemployed and waiting. Waiting for something to break. Waiting for Gertrude to get into a school. Waiting on life to decide the fate of our relationship. And then something broke. Actually, everything kind of broke all at once. I got a great job that I love, and she was accepted to a Top 20 b-school. All was good and right in the world.

Except for one thing. Our exciting next steps were 2,000 miles apart from one another. And I hate commuting more than 15 minutes.

At this point, you (Yeah, you, reader! I see you there chilling in the bathroom, reading my guest blog on your iPhone) have cause to question the depth of this relationship. Is this even a big deal? I’ll sweep away the mystery for you. Yes. It is. We’ve been together for three years, and though I have not yet expressed my love in the traditional ways that people on the street can spot (carat, color, cut, clarity), I love my Gertrude more than anything in the world.

But…wait a minute. If I love her more than anything in the fucking world, and if we assume that this job is on Earth (which it is), then by the transitive property – I love her more than this job. And therein lies the conundrum. How do you look someone in the eye and tell her that you love her more than life itself, when she can say, “…okay, then come with me?”

She hasn’t. Said that, I mean. Why? Because she is not selfish.

Yet what is more important than waking up next to the person who is going to give you the strength to actually get out of bed and go about your day? My heart says, “nothing,” while my head just shakes itself and thinks, “then what am I doing?!”

When I’m not all emotional about this, I can think about it a bit more rationally. In this postmodern world, where career and love have equal footing in the lives of men and women, these things come up. One of Gertrude’s mentors often says, “You can have it all, just not all at once.” So these choices need to be made – the thought behind it being that we can both invest in our careers for the immediate future, which will better equip us for our future lives together.

When someone asks us what we “do” now, Gertie can say that she is going to business school. Blah, blah, normal questions. Where, when, how long, etc. Then they look at me, smiling stupidly, thinking that they have a chance to unearth a really cute and romantic moment, and say, “So are you going, too?” Not as fun to burst that bubble as I had anticipated. So we put on our strong faces and smile and squeeze each others’ hands, and we explain how we are bravely enduring a period apart. To explore our individuality. To learn about the world separately, with the hope of hiding under the covers together and sharing our newly gleaned knowledge some day in the future.

And so I am starting to break out the old long distance relationship standards. Reset Skype password. Check. Put Austin, TX in my World Clock list, because it is so difficult to subtract one hour from whatever time it is now. Check. Download the Code Red app so that I know when to be a little extra nice. Check. Book plane tickets, plan surprises. Check and check.

I have to bring her to the airport to catch a 5:00 AM flight tomorrow. It will be an interesting scene. A would-be tearful goodbye. That is, if we weren’t going to be 15-20 minutes late leaving the house and yelling at each other the entire way there.

But if I tell her that this is one of the reasons that I love her the most, it will only reinforce bad behavior.

Jul 26, 2010

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