different sort of commitment

Just got a phone call from my wonderful boyfriend – he checked with University of New Orleans and it looks like her should be able to transfer there with no problem.  He’s thinking that he’ll go down in spring of 2012 and then I can move down after I finish my dissertation in June of 2012.  And then I freaked out.

See I’m not so accustomed to the boyfriend taking that kind of initiative.  Thus far, most of the initiative has consisted of buying elaborate board games, wanting to grill meat for dinner, and going on a bike ride or two.  It’s to the point that just about anytime he suggests we do something, I react with shock and confusion.  ”You want to do what?  Buy shorts?  Really? (pause) Well – I guess we could do that.”  Like that.

So when he decided that he was going to move to New Orleans and get our grown-up life together started about 8 months before the previously agreed-upon schedule, I did not react with the sort of warmth and support that I perhaps should have.

Just a week and a half ago I was pissed at him.  PISSED.  I have been asking him every couple of weeks when he was going to work out his transfer to the local State U and he kept  shrugging like he had lots of time – and then I went ahead and did what I had been afraid to do – I looked at the State U’s website and learned pretty quickly that he’d already missed the transfer application deadline by about 6 months.  So for not the first time his lack of initiative was setting back our plans to start our grown up life.  When we had a slightly teary dinner about it at PF Chang’s, he said lots of things that I had suspected but never heard him say – that he doesn’t always take care of himself like he should, that he only started to get his shit together when we started dating, and that he was nervous about the responsibility that our long-term commitment implied.  I started giving all sorts of options for him – that he could start subbing at schools to get some teaching experience under his belt, that he could go to the far away State U, that he could transfer to UNO.  Somehow that last one stuck and I didn’t even know it.

And now, how do I feel?  Well, I threw down the gauntlet at a meeting with my advisor, telling her that all I wanted to do was move back to New Orleans, whatever that meant for my career.  And I’ve been talking a big game about that – that I’ll take any job in New Orleans just to be back there – but this move by my dude makes all that much more real.  It’s a different sort of commitment.  If he makes this move and I encourage him, then I really really really am going to get a job in New Orleans.  Then I really really really am not going to worry too much about the academic career track.  That’s some crazy shit, yo.  And i don’t know if it makes sense to make that sort of commitment all because he wants New Orleans to help him get out of his rut.  But that’s not really the only reason – I already made the commitment to some degree – but – I – and – argh!