he decided he wanted to go with me. thanks for everybody's input.

אייל שכטר, אתה מחפש את עצמך בגוגל יותר מדי פעמים. זהו הרגל לא בריא. כדאי שתחדל ממנו ויפה שעה אחת קודם

EYAL SHECHTER, STOP GOOGEL YOURSELF!

And bring me along! Its a great opportunity You need someone who is as adventurous as you are, and there are plenty of couples who have made this sort of life and relationship work.

the normal practice up there is to have an onsite mate

watch out for polar bears, though, they can smell female pheromones (esp. at *that* time of the month)

it sounds like the boyfriend has some very important rounds of warcraft to play down here in the states. i can understand if she'd want to stay to support him in his endeavours.

I say go. You have been working toward this your entire college career. How will you feel if you let this opportunity pass and in a year or so you and the BF break up, for whatever reason - it happens. Then how will you feel? Be wary of making sacrifices for a man, things don't always work out the way you hope. If it's meant to be you two will work something out long distance. Or who knows, maybe you'll meet someone in your academic field who shares the same passions as you.

Thank you. He's lucky, I'm lucky and we both know it, and we're both very grateful.

I hope you're re-united with your lover soon. I know it would be agony for me.

Have you ever done it in an igloo? What are you waiting for?

jeeze, just go.

maybe you'll meet an esquimau

if you really love each other it'll be wonderful when you return; if you dont, you'll be on your chosen life course, which you wont if you stay.

Jeez! It's not like somebody just turns off the sun for six months. Get some understanding of geography and the earth's position in the solar system.

At the time of the winter solstice, the sun does not rise above the horizon. At the time of the summer solstice, the sun does not sink below the horizon. Between December 21 and June 21, there are gradual changes in the daylight-darkness mix.

By the way, every place on earth is dark 50 percent of the time. That's called night.

-- An Alaskan

"The "He's just not that into you" theory sounds exhausting -- Off-topic: How did this theory ever get to be so popular? I'm not a guy so maybe there's some kind of brain-addling-testosterone thing I don't know about, but doesn't it sound exhausting to have to ALWAYS be CONSTANTLY ENTHUSIASTIC about your relationship and do ANYTHING AT ALL EVER to be with your love or make her happy AT ALL TIMES, and if you don't it's grounds to end the relationship? I mean I've been as mad crazy overenthusiastic in love as anyone (some might argue that I am right now), but shouldn't there be some room for just sitting quietly and feeling "Yeah, this is nice.""

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Agreed. If this guy was growing a business, if he had a great opportunity to become a partner in him firm, if he was going to med school .... then I'd understand his hesitance. HOWEVER ... he's a bum.

If you want exhausting, try supporting a couple kids and a zero spouse.

He's so lazy he doesn't want to even go along for the ride. He's so lazy at 2x, that she's already sure she's going to have support him for life. I'm a GUY myself, and the "20's" were a couple decades ago for me. ... BUT, all the shiftless guys I knew like this in my 20's (however charming) are still shiftless (however charming). And while they seem fun at 2x, they make miserable life partners before 40. Trust me. Bail out. There's OTHERS out there. There really are. And a large number of them are better. Life is about making judgements. Make a good one.

Your lover's a lucky person. I was waiting for someone to say what you said. I, too, would cheerfully sleep in a tent forever if my lover was in it with me.

And he is not. We are 7,348 miles apart. And we are both disabled and are having a very hard time figuring out how we are ever going to scrape up the money (and overcome the humongous amount of red tape) to be together. So far it's been 20 months and nine days of this torture. Some of the people who write in to Salon are more fortunate than they know.

("God who are these stupid romantics that think if a man or woman really really loves you they are willing to place themself (sic) in misery to be in your majestic presence???")

Hi, my name is Robert, and I am a stupid romantic who’s willing to place myself in misery to be in the majestic presence of my lover. But I wouldn’t be miserable. I’d be with my lover. Granted, we’ve been together longer than the letter writer has been with her boyfriend, but it would have been the same for me after two years together. I would rather be homeless with him, than live in a palace without him. Arctic circle for a year? No problem. Sleep under bridges? I’m there.

Maybe it’s genetic. My mother always hated the cold. When she was old enough to move away from her family, she went straight to Miami to live. She never wanted to be cold again in her life. Then she met my father, and fell in love. And moved with him to Montana. With no regrets. They’ve been married 55 years now, the stupid romantics.

(And they live in Florida now).

For me love trumps all else, friends, family, career. Certainly there are people who don’t want that level of devotion in their lives, in one direction or the other. It’s not for everyone. Some people don’t have that capacity. I don’t call them stupid. But you can call me stupid if you want. I don’t care.

I've been on the other side of this one -- boyfriend who wanted to travel to exciting locale, me wanting career of my own where I was living. The awful thing was, my then-boyfriend refused to set ANY parameters on how things would be while he was away, would only say he loved me and wanted to marry me "later." I was totally into this guy, and would have been willing to work things out, if he would have only made a commitment on such things as how long he'd be away, how often we would see each other, talk, etc. This was in the days before e-mail and IM, so communication was only by snail mail or very expensive phone calls. But not having anything settled in advance made for a terrible year for both of us, and eventually we broke up over it. I'm sure he doesn't regret going away, but when he returned, he wanted to get back together and pick up where we left off, and I had moved on.

So, what you need to do is decide whether you want to stay with him, and if you do, then you and he need to agree to some terms. One year apart with a couple of visits and frequent communication can work fine, if both people are committed to staying together. Longer than that is probably too long. Whatever you do, don't just leave it open. This will be torture for one of you. You need to work out in advance the level of commitment you have to each other, whether it's OK to date other people while you're gone, whether you will tell each other if/when you do date other people, etc. This kind of thing can work, but you both need to be on the same page.

Also, you don't say how old you are. If you're in your 20s, you probably will regret losing a big opportunity for a guy; if you're older, you may end up feeling the reverse. Depends on how important this guy is to you .