Is it feasible to live ~2 hours from your SO?

[R2R_MD]

The town where I am set to begin residency is rather small. My wife has been working and building her career for the past 5 years and I’m afraid there may be less opportunity for her to flourish. We’re going to be about 1.5 hours from a major metropolitan area where she can really prosper + she could take care of family members that need it. We’ve been apart for nearly 4 years do to med school and managed to make it work pretty well.

Has anyone had experience with semi-long distance relationships like these?

Thanks for the feedback

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[ddjamb]

Looks like you have your answer in your own post. You guys made it work during med school...for 4 years.

 

[R2R_MD]

Looks like you have your answer in your own post. You guys made it work during med school...for 4 years.

Residency is certainly different from medical school, both in terms of schedule and dedication.

 

[Piebaldi]

The town where I am set to begin residency is rather small. My wife has been working and building her career for the past 5 years and I’m afraid there may be less opportunity for her to flourish. We’re going to be about 1.5 hours from a major metropolitan area where she can really prosper + she could take care of family members that need it. We’ve been apart for nearly 4 years do to med school and managed to make it work pretty well.

Has anyone had experience with semi-long distance relationships like these?

Thanks for the feedback

If you made it through 4 years of med school I think you can make it through residency. I felt residency was better than med school in terms of academic demands and even free time. but then again it depends wha tresidency you are in - if you are doing NSG it will be hard to spend 7 years away. If you are doing something that's 3 years then it's doable. I personally lived away from my husband for about a bit less than a year when I did rads and it sucked for me. I missed him tons even if he visited on the weekends. So it's really a personal choice. But if you made it through 4 years of med school and it worked I would say it's likely feasible you can make it again.

 

[PTPoeny]

The answer to this question is different for every couple. I had co residents that lived across the country from their SO and I had one co resident who ended up transferring because he and his wife couldn't figure out being an hour apart. For you, history is probably the best predictor. My husband and I were long distance part time when I was an intern and it worked very well.

 

[AMEHigh]

Yes many people make it work.
I did it for intern year and am doing it again for fellowship.
Currently in my program 2 residents have a spouse in another state and another one has a spouse in another country.

You gotta do what you gotta do!

 

[Needing_helppls]

The town where I am set to begin residency is rather small. My wife has been working and building her career for the past 5 years and I’m afraid there may be less opportunity for her to flourish. We’re going to be about 1.5 hours from a major metropolitan area where she can really prosper + she could take care of family members that need it. We’ve been apart for nearly 4 years do to med school and managed to make it work pretty well.

Has anyone had experience with semi-long distance relationships like these?

Thanks for the feedback

I’ve been living over 5 hours away from my spouse through intern year. It’s been hard and I regret the decision to do this in retrospect. The good news is that in my opinion 1.5 hours apart would be totally doable! Especially if you can still live together and see eachother most days. I think even if separate housing is the plan right now you would be close enough to change your mind down the line.

 

[AdmiralChz]

I’ve seen this work well and fail miserably for couples. Really depends on your family dynamics and how things are between you. It certainly won’t be easy.

 

[Carlin]

I lived across the country from my husband for the entirety of my 5-year residency program. It was hard, but we made it, and I don’t regret it.

 

[lulu09]

The town where I am set to begin residency is rather small. My wife has been working and building her career for the past 5 years and I’m afraid there may be less opportunity for her to flourish. We’re going to be about 1.5 hours from a major metropolitan area where she can really prosper + she could take care of family members that need it. We’ve been apart for nearly 4 years do to med school and managed to make it work pretty well.

Has anyone had experience with semi-long distance relationships like these?

Thanks for the feedback

In med school we did cross-country and it was doable. The time zone difference was actually the most annoying and not so much the distance.

I hope you've looked into living in the middle if you have to live together? A 45-minute commute is really nothing. I did an IM residency and my commute was about that daily actually with no issues regarding scheduling or calls (didn't have home call anyway in residency). Not sure how long your residency is but 3 years passed by in a flash (in the beginning I thought that the commute would be unsustainable but I quickly got used to it).

But yeah, only you can really answer this question although it seems like you have had some experience with long distance. Personally, I would find 1.5 hours in residency to be trivial after what we went through in med school.

 

[IMreshopeful]

I know multiple people who made it work. However if you want to start a family it may make that a lot tougher. That being said I know an OB resident who had a husband doing gen surg in another state and she was pregnant. Two terrible work schedules and somehow they managed to make it work enough to meet regularly (not that I advise THIS situation)

Also to some degree it depends on your residency. Being an IM, gen surg, NSG, is different from say, FM, rads or psych where work hours are simply much better on average.

I wish you guys the best