We were talking about moving in together sometime in the next year when my boyfriend said he expected me to leave my career and get a ‘real’ job. Until then, I had thought we were discussing where we might live. Apparently, we were also discussing which parts of my life would be coming with me.
I’m 39, he’s 42, and we’ve been together a little over six months. Things had been going well. Well enough that sharing a home seemed like something worth talking about, even if it wasn’t happening immediately. Then he described a future that involved me giving up work I love, and suddenly we seemed to be having two different conversations.
I manage a restaurant full time. I work Tuesday through Saturday, from three in the afternoon until around eleven at night. He works the more familiar office schedule: Monday through Friday, eight-thirty to five. Our hours don’t line up neatly. I know that. I’m the one working them.
When I asked why he wanted me to change jobs, he gave me two reasons: our schedules clash, and I make less money than he does. Neither explanation made his expectation easier to hear.
From my side, we already have time together on weekends, and I regularly meet him for lunch during the week. I also like having some independence. I haven’t been experiencing our different schedules as a problem that requires one of us to abandon a career. It bothered me that he appeared to have identified both the problem and the person responsible for fixing it.
If matching hours matters that much, why is my job the one that has to change? He could look for work that fits my schedule. I don’t actually want him to do that. But reversing the suggestion makes it much harder to treat his office hours as the obvious starting point for our shared life.
The money argument didn’t persuade me either. He earns about 12,000 more a year. That’s a difference, but it doesn’t tell the whole story of how we handle money. He likes brand names and the latest gadgets. I spend much less. I don’t think comparing our salaries alone says who would bring more financial breathing room into a shared home.
And I’m not waiting for an opportunity to escape my job. The hours suit me. I like being active, the salary is decent, and I have paid vacation and sick leave. Most of all, I enjoy what I do. Hearing it dismissed as something less than real work hurt in a way that a practical conversation about schedules wouldn’t have.
I told him clearly that I had no intention of quitting. We left the conversation there.
A few weeks have passed, and neither of us has brought it up again. But the silence hasn’t put things back where they were. I’m angry, and I find myself wondering how much my happiness figured in the future he was describing. I don’t know whether he has reconsidered his expectation. I do know that I’m now unsure about continuing a relationship I had recently been imagining taking further.
