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[profslacker]

Solving the two-body problem requires compromise, right? And compromises are often asymmetric as well, right?

Given that, I'm looking for perspective, experience, advice on how to lay the groundwork for successful compromise. Making sure that the partner who compromises doesn't feel potentially lethal resentment is certainly a concern that I'm worrying about right now. Are there any words of wisdom out there regarding doing this all successfully? Pitfalls to be avoided? War stories to share?

I'm intentionally stating this abstractly - the point is not "which decision should I make?" (although that might be a post in the near future) but "how do I manage this process successfully"..

 

[erzuliefreda]

There is no secret to managing the process, as far as I can tell.

Two people have to agree that their being together is more important than each one enjoying their ultimate living/work/etc. situation. They talk and talk and talk about the topic until the mere mention of it fills one (and perhaps both) with nausea and dread. Well, maybe that's just the lesbian version. They agree that A will follow B to the location of B's grand new job, where A will take up small, less shiny job, for instance. A follows B. All is fine.

Except for the guilt B feels for dragging A away from all things wonderful and into Less Shinyville. Or when A complains about a rough day at work and B snaps in reply, feeling defensive, and hearing in everything A says a potential critique of Shinyville and B's actions or shortcomings that brought them there. And they talk and talk and talk about the topic until they remember to be happy that they have jobs at all and that they can live together. And all is fine.

Alternately, a friend of mine had a good sounding system wherein he and his wife took turns compromising. So each move was based around one's career. He left the wife for a grad student he met at a conference, last I heard, but I wouldn't blame that bit on their system.

[sibyl]

From the hetero perspective, I agree with what erzuliefreda says.  (Hmm!  GLBT couples face the same kind of relationship issues as hetero couples.  Whodathunk?)

I think the key is openness, and reiterating the key values.  ("Dammit!  I hate this limited department!"  "I'm so sorry.  But at least we get to live together.  Let's get dinner from the Thai place tonight.")  My spouse found a line in Deborah Tannen that my spouse likes to quote, to the effect that men tend to listen to solve and women tend to listen to bond.  Be careful to ensure that you are both bonding and solving.  Don't let arguments be "about" something else; if you or your spouse is upset about being "trapped," don't make it an argument about suspected infidelity or the inability to have dinner on the table at a reasonable hour.

Good luck.

[tenured_feminist]

Communication, communication, communication.

And making sure that there is plenty of space for the satisfied partner to express satisfaction and get validation and support while the unsatisfied partner can express dissatisfaction and get validation and support.

It's leagues harder when the two people are in the same discipline and the supportive, mentoring senior colleagues are also the ones telling trailing partner that no opportunities are available. If you end up in this place, the trailing partner should (with the help of the primarily hired person) do whatever is possible to build connections and friendships outside the department, especially if they could lead to job opportunities.

[secretweapon]

I think creativity is important, too.  I followed Mr Weapon to our current city, where there were few opportunities for me; I was forced to get creative and ended up setting up my own business.  I was just starting to get it off the ground when I found an academic job; now it looks like he will be following me to our next location, and he is researching setting up his own consultancy in our new home.  It's funny (or maybe not) that I found a job just when I had found something else to do.  I think I would have found my own business quite satisfying; what I had to get past was not a sense that I had made sacrifices for my spouse, but the idea that I wasn't succeeding according to narrow academic standards.

This isn't for everyone, of course, but your options will look much less stark if you approach them with an open and entrepreneurial mind.  My frustration at being the trailing spouse was largely due to my own feeling trapped - my feeling that there were very few options open to me and I had no professional identity anymore.  I also hadn't been making compromises for my spouse; I had been forced to think outside the box by the realities of the job market.  We've never really actually made compromises, because we've never been in the situation where one person has turned down a good offer to be with the other person.  Your situation might be different.  If you find yourself jobless and following your spouse, it would be easy to pile your frustration and resentment about the 'compromises' you had made onto your spouse, when you're really not compromising, just facing unemployment. 

[monsterx]

Things don't always work out the way you think they will, either. My wife followed me for my T-T job.  But she found a better job than mine pretty quickly.  My department turned out to be a mess, and I want to leave, but now I pretty much have to suck it up for her sake.

[profslacker]

Thanks. This is all very helpful. Certainly, an open mind helps, and certainly, things don't always work out. More concerned about the "what-ifs".

I don't want this to go too far into specific details, but the concern is that the situation is just rife with that possibility. Spouse A has good-enough TT job in place where Spouse B can't get an acceptable job. Spouse B has an offer several hours away in a place where Spouse A doesn't have a job lined up. 

communication is definitely the key. Currently trying to work on having B accept the job and defer, giving A time to find a job near B's job...

[thundering_]

FWIW, no matter what the compromise, there is no guarantee that either career will be compromised or helped. The crap shoot element is the unseen third of the negotiation, and the one that does not compromise at all.

I think von Clauswitz' strategy for military campaigns is good here, except that you are not trying to inflict as much damage on the enemy as you can. You are, however, trying to avoid as many casualties on  your side as you can, and to advance to your target. So it is helpful to consider fog, friction and chance.

Fog: the communication mentioned already must be clear and open, and in addition to transparency it must be documented. Start emailing, so you have a record of your thoughts, with the understanding that you will each be developing your opinions. It is more important for the dialectical function that you both develop a shared and higher understanding of yourselves, your contexts, and your careers than the stubborn insistence on adhering to some statement that made sense at the time but lost relevance. The fog develops when you stay under cloud cover or you start sending messages to other parties.

Friction: things go wrong, fall apart, and in all forms of Murphy's Law, take longer than expected. Therefore, if your compromise solution is a juggling act requiring extreme precision, it is vulnerable to the smallest malfunction or delay. It's a good idea to make flexibility and resilience your major criteria, and to factor in twice the maintenance efforts  and budget (time and money) for your relationship and for your housekeeping/bookkeeping chores. These means calculating child-related resources exponentially, not arithmetically.

Chance: This is a lost cost estimate dimension, or a matter of degrees of freedom. New opportunities and solutions cannot be acted upon if the agreed solution is too rigid; by the same token you are wise to consider at least three possibilities for every eventuality. In this way you are not overly disappointed as you would be with a carefully rendered vision of perfection. Take a lesson from Galloping Gertie, the suspension bridge that buckled due to a design flaw that did not allow enough wind through.

But the greatest of these is the communication model. Using a simple model like this can be a tool for efficient and accurate dialogue, because you can frame your comments as pertaining to one of the three. Is this a fog issue, a friction problem, or a chance event?