Flow,
Y’all are young yet. Life is confusing. It can be tough to figure out priorities in the midst of major life decisions. You are both full of passions but neither of you have the wisdom to put your priorities in order. What order? How to figure out what is MOST important? You don’t know. Neither one of you can see that far into the future...
That’s ok. We all make the best decisions we can at a given time given what we do know. It’s confusing as hell. It takes into account all this “stuff” we were taught growing up, all the programming we were imprinted with. It is subconscious in many ways.
I recall being her age and getting accepted to medical school in Budapest. It’s a long story but I had a lover there and I knew he wanted to get serious and live together and all this stuff. He wanted to marry me. He was sexy AF, ambitious, passionate, masculine and delightful. He wanted me to be his woman, his muse, cook for him, very traditionally minded man. I’m from US. I didn’t speak the language, I had no friends or social network...despite medical school I would have been utterly dependent on him socially, at least at first. The idea of dependence terrified me. Terrified me. After getting an apartment, securing a student loan, buying a one way plane ticket, getting my visa and so forth...I had a serious soul searching. My family and my father didn’t want me to go... I knew nobody there but him...I loved him but I was too afraid in the end. I scrapped medical school, Europe, him, the whole thing. Broke his heart. Broke mine too.
Once in a while I recall him fondly. Once in a while I wonder what became of him, how has his life developed and so forth. It’s nostalgic.
Once in a while I wonder what if I had gone...what an adventure we would have had...
But at that time in my life my individualism was more important than a relationship. ANY relationship. You see I broke off a 5 year relationship with a gorgeous man who was himself an incredible person who had proposed himself (I deferred, as awful as that is) but I deferred that proposal for the same reason I bailed on Lazlo...I was afraid of commitment. I was afraid of being “trapped” of being dependent. I had internal work to do on myself.
This fear was so visceral that when I married my husband a few years later I was nauseous on the way to the wedding. We got married in Vegas & I (who flies ALL the time, even then) was airsick the whole flight. It wasn’t because it was the wrong man...it was me wrestling this deep seated fear of losing my own independence...it was preconditioned BS that my mother had programmed into me since youth and because of her contempt for my father.
It had nothing...NOTHING to do with the men in my life. I ran into the same issue in different ways in each relationship. I simply at the point I got married, had realized this. So I went straight through my own fears and got married in spite of them. Even though those fears were still there, deep and visceral and seemingly real. Best decision ever.
But my point in relating that is this:
I didn’t have the wisdom or perspective at the time I had the opportunity to go to Budapest to go for it. I opted for familiar terrain out of my own fears & my own stuff. I sacrificed two relationships with 2 amazing men along the way. This idea that love conquers everything fails to mention that as an individual we each have to own our BS and be ready to concede ourselves to the relationship and to the journey.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve realized for me that really all that counts in life is your health, yourself, and the people you are close to (your relationships). Everything else is distantly second to that.
Therefore my top priorities need to be self/health/relationships. Not money, not stuff, not career, not status, not anything else (maybe religion if that’s your thing but I include that in self because that involves one’s spiritual journey)...but in youth I could not arrange my priorities. I didn’t know how to align my life and INDEPENDENCE was the overarching driver of my behavior at that time. On a subconscious level. I couldn’t see it at the time.
Your GF reminds me of myself in various ways. Her issues are different but similar.
She yearns for the familiar. She struggles with discomfort and the prospect of being away from her frame of reference. She is rational, pragmatic and independent. Emotion frightens her. Emotion is hard to contain.
Her relationship with you is picking at all the stuff she will eventually have to face and go through to progress as a person. That is scary. You are further along the self awareness spectrum and you are more emotionally connected to yourself. You are more able to love...knowing she may leave.
@TheProspect is absolutely correct. Relationships are impermanent. They all end. You are already in deep Flow. Will it go sideways? Eventually it always goes sideways. If you have love enjoy it. Enjoy the journey. Grasp less tightly and why not enjoy the ride.
Will she break your heart? She might. Will she come around? It’s possible.
People are dynamic. They grow. They change. You cannot know everything about another person’s path toward growth. Great relationships can exert positive influence but great relationships foster growth and in that sense can stir up fear, expose limitations...bring us to face ourselves in all our imperfect glory.
You are wrestling with all this because you love her, but also because the relationship itself is a crucible growing each of you as individuals in the background. She loves you too. I believe that. But she has a harder journey to make within herself. You are largely separated from that process for it is internal to her. But your love and acceptance encourages her as an influence.
Love requires courage because when you choose to love you risk hurt and pain. When you love from a place of strength (as I believe you are) you accept that risk and you do it anyway. In this way great love is sacrificial.
Nothing lasts. That is an illusion. But why not enjoy the journey. It might devastate you (in which case you’ll survive) but it might surprise you.
Life is uncertain. Embrace the uncertainty and enjoy the journey. Therein you’ll find something deeply meaningful.
Cheers -BE