>"both barrels of insecure, immature little girl"

My scientist husband and I married when we were both undergraduates, and although the marriage has survived 35 years, we did make a huge number of mistakes, and he limited many of his choices because he was getting both barrels of insecure, immature little girl.

Had I not been so insecure and had he himself not been so tenuous about his own ambitions, he would have taken a different turn in graduate school and with his own post doc, and would have been much happier in his career and, quite truthfully, in his life. At this point, while you are both starting out, you need to trust that your relationship WILL work out if it's indeed supposed to work out. The choices you must make right now must be focused on your career. Cary is not a scientist. In my experience, scientists are more profoundly defined by their specific career choices than many people. One can write an advice column from any city. That is not the way it works in specialized sciences.

In the final analysis, you and she need to bring out the best in one another if you're going to have a truly satisfying future together. And since you and she aspire to careers as scientists, you need to both be bringing out the best in one another as scientists as well as lovers. Otherwise, you'll be using her as your excuse why you didn't get farther in life, casting a pall on both your career and your marriage forever. Go to Toronto.

>No matter how much pain you're feeling, I just can't see a good reason to want to be dead. Why seek out death? It will come soon enough.

When I read gradstudent's letter, I was thinking, boy, this is written by a very young person who still has a child's fear of death without an adult's sad experiences with terminally ill loved ones. This post was quite similar to an essay I wrote in high school, when death was a terrifying abstraction. Sure enough, the signature line gave it away. I've watched two very beloved people die from cancer, am watching one of my most loved people slipping away now, and have a far greater sense of the tragic complexities of the issue. I'm glad people posted about the complexities on both sides of the issue.

>In the grand scheme of things, a lifetime of pain is still just a drop in the bucket...so you hurt for fifty years - you've got infinity to be dead.

This sounds awfully cavalier for someone who witnessed the agony of dying people who wished for a merciful end which they had some control over. That's why I assumed you hadn't had such an experience yet. I'm sorry you've witnessed such pain. I'm surprised you still value such an abstract opinion over a deeper, more nuanced and thoughtful approach now that you have seen people desperate to have their suffering over once and for all. In the grand scheme of things, a life of 87 years and 2 months is no shorter than a life of 87 years and 10 months, is it?

>It was still incredibly difficult for the rest of the family. My mother and aunt fought almost to the end to keep him alive, and his girlfriend considered us monsters and vultures when they finally gave into reality. To this day I'm sure she thinks we rushed him to an early grave.

When my father-in-law was dying, he was a very compliant person, and although the doctor (pretty clearly having thought this through) gave him plenty of morphine pills and told him how many would be lethal, my father-in-law wouldn't consider taking more than what was actually prescribed, and no way would my mother-in-law have given him more than what was prescribed. Although I saw how much weight my mother-in-law lost and how depressed she grew as the primary caretaker over the final many months, it seemed wrong to wish he or she would make a final decision based on her suffering, or any of ours. It was his decision to make, and by not making it, he really was making it, and sad as it was, this was his choice.

My uncle was in greater pain for a longer time, and didn't slip into a merciful coma until the last minutes rather than the last days. His religion prohibited suicide, and it was his choice to honor that religious belief. My aunt, who didn't believe in that religion, would have given him a higher dose of pain medication if he asked her. But she honored his beliefs even though it put her through hell those final, agonizing weeks.

These decisions have to be made by the dying person, not by the family. That's why living wills are so important. It's not fair for someone to carry out someone's express wishes and then to be held culpable for a death that was, ultimately, caused by a horrifying disease.

I agree that leaving the love of one's life would be foolish. But I don't think these lines indicate that the woman he calls his "girlfriend" is really the love of his life:

"I love her, it seems, as much as I can love a girl,"

"it seems sometimes that I get two barrels full of insecure, immature little girl,"

"We aren't the sort of people who especially want to get married."

Nope. I don't see her quite yet as the love of his life. He doesn't even see her as a woman. You don't change career paths for a boy or for a girl unless they are your children. You might do so wisely for a man or a woman. But not for someone who isn't quite grown up yet.

I'm afraid, though, that if the LW ends up unhappy in life, he's probably going to look with regret at this decision, whichever way he chooses. Even if his unhappiness is, at root, due to something entirely different.