I guess this feels a bit insensitive to me. I realize "boyfriend" can signify anything from "guy I just met who has good potential" to "my life partner," but I suspect this situation is closer to the latter than the former since OP bothered to post about it in the first place.
I mentioned above and elsewhere that grad school endangered my marriage. I moved and commuted back weekends. It was horrible. And all these goofy kids and dopy profs at school couldn't seem to figure out why hubby wouldn't simply move with me. "Uh, perhaps cause he's an adult with a career of his own, and I couldn't very well afford to be in grad school if he gave up his own job to work at a coffee house or headshop in Campustown...?"
Grad school/academia promotes a culture wherein work is valued above all else. I've heard suggestions from profs that beloved but ailing pets be euthanized, carework be farmed out to strangers, dying friends and relatives literally be written off and ignored because "you have to make choices." And apparently grieving once said relatives/friends pass should be postponed until school break or forgone altogether.
Again, I'm not saying that OP should or shouldn't move. But I am trying to provide a counterpoint to the "friends and family will always be there" discourse, which seems a bit glib to me. It's more complicated than that (amongst other things, will you always be there for them?).
As I had a similar situation with my spouse when I came to grad school (well, he must not care too much about you if he refuses to up & move to no where USA and work at Starbucks, effectively reducing his considerable salary and everything he has worked for over the years to . . . oh, a hill of beans), I can understand where you are coming from.
However, anecdotally, the vast majority of "girl/boyfriends" I have seen people enter into grad school tend not to last. I think some of these individuals truly believe that their "partner" may be considering the move. Perhaps I am being cynical, but I suspect that many of these individuals were never considering the relocation at all or were only half-heartedly considering it. Hell, as much as some grad students are dreading pulling up their roots from anything & everything they know, do they stop to think that they are expecting the same thing from their partners? Unless they've been in the relationship for a while, unless they KNOW that they are committed to one another (and then some), unless they're engaged, unless they're this or that, [fill in your own requirements here], many of these folks are not going to move OR are not going to last if they try to play the long-distance game. I have undergrads who freak out because they're in a "long-distance" relationship a whole hour away from one another. (Hell, I actually know someone who graduated just over a year ago who has the same mentality actually.)
And this is not an argument that anyone should or should *not* move based upon their "boyfriend." [I do not know the OP's situation, so this is (obviously) something she has to decide for herself.]
Again, based purely on personal experience and the others of those around me, most of those "relationships" were ummm, fledgling (for lack of better word that does not offend someone--and that will likely get someones ire up anyway) relationships that would not have lasted regardless of their location. I know entirely too many grad students who simply
expected their boy/girlfriends to move with them when the time came regardless of how long they had been together or where they were in their relationship with one another. This makes not one shred of sense to me. Nope, not one. Do some people make it work? Obviously they do. But to expect that everything is going to remain the same and be hunky dory . . . well, have fun if & when reality comes along. Hopefully it won't bite those folks in the arse too hard.
