If you love something; set if free.

If it doesn't come back; hunt it down and kill it.

This one sucks, to be sure. The odds of not jumping the fence in two years for two hot blooded twentysomethings is slim and none, and slim is in Texas.

You let her go, you guarantee one or both of you screw around and potentially grow further apart.

You put your foot down; she holds it against you for the rest of her life.

You go with her, and you resent blowing up your career to follow some tail more concerned with solving world peace than with building a life together.

My fippant advice is to start going to bars. You are going to need to drown your sorrows and look for a new partner. In between that you are going to need a few rebound partners. Those are best found poured onto a barstool.

Cary's nailed this one. Seven-year-itch it may be, which means it may also be an opportunity for divorce.

Who would willingly--even enthusiastically--abandon a spouse for two years without ensuring that the spouse was in agreement? Only an unhappy partner.

LW, your gut reaction is right. There's more going on than a burning desire to purify water in central Africa.

Modern people think they can have it all. Then that terrible day dawns when they realize they can't: that they have to pick the one or two things that are most important to them. Let that day dawn for you and your wife today, my friend.

It seems to me that your wife is saying that she doesn't really want to be married right now.

Yes, she will probably resent you if you force her to stay. And you will probably resent her if she goes away without you, or if she expects you to quit a job you love to go with her. It is hard to see a good ending for this.

The only possible good ening I see is if you go with her, given there is some way that you can be assured of getting the same or similar job after you return. And that is hard to imagine.

Wow, this one really sucks.

LW did not explain why or if going with her would be out of the question. Since they are young and don't have kids, he should consider supporting her desires/ambitions and going with her for two years. He is young enough that his own career ambitions are probably salvageable and can be put on hold. If marriage means to have and to hold, then maybe he could have and hold her overseas!

The Peace Corp will not accept a woman who is married. They require both partners to enroll together. My friend just left for Tanzania this morning for a two year stint in the Peace Corp and she had to go through tons and tons of paperwork explaining that she wasn't really all that attached to her boyfriend and that she wouldn't leave early to come home to him. They put a lot of money and time into each volunteer and are very strict about who they'll let go. Wives without husbands, absolutely not.

You need to go with her, LW, screw the job, it'll be here when you get back, but an opportunity like this only happens once in a lifetime. Looking back on my life, I reget nothing, but I sure wish I had taken more time away from work. What was it Eleanor Roosevelt said, when you are on your death bed, you will not regret not signing one more contract, not attending one more meeting, or not closing one more deal, instead, you will regret time not spent with a husband, a wife, a duaghter, a son, or a loved one. Surely you can find some way the two of you can go together...

then forget divorce, get an annulment. And even if you do want to go with her, she is sending you a message about where you fit in her life.

I quit my job and followed my wife (with our two young kids) to an overseas job of hers. It was exciting and mind-expanding. I was also unemployed for two years after getting back and fell into major depression. Jobs aren't growing on trees.

Recently she suggested doing it all over again. This time I told her she had to find me a job. She viewed that as a ridiculous demand, and I told her that she could go alone.

She's still here.

There are many reasons why people choose to be away from their marriages. It's funny which of those we decide to support.

LW's wife is going to resent the hell out of him some day if she gives in to his demands. He's asking her to give up her dream because he likes his job and has decided to dig in his heels. Unlike Cary, I think LW's asking way too much. Jobs are disposable, dreams are not.

I'm a senior woman and there are things I wish I had done when I was younger, even though I'm still able to do some of them now.

I hope LW's wife follows her bliss. It will be his loss if he chooses not to go with her.

I think you should go with her, LW. Not that you asked me.

Instead of actually telling her that Peace Corps == divorce, you'd be better off showing her Cary's article and then saying, "Here's the advice I got about this. I don't like this, and I really want to make this marriage work." You know, good cop/bad cop, with Cary playing the bad cop so you don't have to find one, and you get to play the good cop.

I am no fan of ultimata in relationships -- it turns salvageable situations into disasters, and even the situations where you get what you want, the other person will inevitably be resentful of the process. It may be that there is no other option than to let her go and ask for a divorce, but it also may well be that she doesn't really understand how strongly you feel about this. This column will bring that home, hopefully meaning you never actually have to issue the decree and can actually talk about it seriously instead.

Actually I think that a good amount of the time when Cary writes a column that people should just show their troubled S.O. what he wrote and talk about it. It's a good starting place for discussion, but I'm not sure you would be well-served by just following his advice in most cases.