Letters to the Editor
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Absolutely take the Toronto Job
I've had 2 body problems my whole academic life, and have sacrificed--I've stayed and broken up, I've have followed and maintained a thing, done it all.
But take the Toronto job. You're really young. You've had 4 months of real happiness with this person, and you don't even call it happiness but intensity. Meanwhile,she gets to be intense while you have to absorb her lack of skills at emotional self-management. Plus, you're her first real boyfriend, and she's going to want more of them.
She keeps your life interesting, I get that. But it's not a stable or reciprocal enough thing to risk your dream job for.
I think you fear being lonely, regretful, and stupid about love, and who doesn't? It is hard to move some place alone and not have anyone intimate there to share with. But people find love where they live. In another lab, you would have met someone else. And you will.
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Go to Toronto
Ok, never mind that.
Imagine going to Toronto and starting your dream job and seeing sweetie pie long distance. How does that make you feel?
Good/Bad/Sad/like throwing up/like dancing the Mazurka?
Now imagine dumping the Toronto opportunity and going to be with sweetie pie in the fabulous bay area. How does that make you feel?
Pick the one that makes you feel the happiest at a gut level or failing that the one that makes you want to throw up the least.
Good luck.
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DTMFA
Hiding behind your wordy veil of learned-ness and know-it-all-ism, I see two highly immature and emotional undeveloped college kids that can't piss straight, much less make sound decisions for the BOTH of you in this relationship.
The biggest problems in most relationships stem from a lack of communication...and you both seem to have it in spades on this topic, because she might not have been so quick to take this postdoc position if you had indicated that you had other plans AND BTW, I really do love you and want to make this thing work. But if she's made it very clear that this freight trained called her career isn't going to stop, then you need to start thinking more about yourself and plan the next step.
Also, don't bother with long-distance relationships. They seldom work, unless the 2 people specifically have plans to go their separate ways, keep in touch, see each other every once in a while, and plan to get back together and some identifiable point in the near future...none of which seems to be the case for you two here.
As for 1st loves...I've known only one couple that were high-school sweethearts that actually ended up marrying each other (still are to this day)...your relationship doesn't really qualify as such, and since you are her 1st. real boyfriend, the idea that this girl will be able to resist the temptation to meet someone else out on the West Coast (just to see what the 2nd. or 3rd. relationship is like) is patently absurd. Not to say that you are any less likely to do the same in Toronto, but given the lack of emotional maturity in you two, just the thought for either of you that the other person far away may be cheating will just eat you both alive...if you both care about each other that much.
See, I don't think even the LW is that into her...there's a lot of unanswered questions here that I can't seem to figure out from the verbose prose of the LW. So, to make life easier for both of you, I say unto thee: DTMFA.
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Undefined boundary conditions.... :<)
Look, you are asking for advice from people who "haven't been there." Your problem is an extraordinarily common one in the sciences and academia ... and you will be a lot better off listening to your peers than the general public ... because the general public just doesn't see a bunch of the realities here. And these realities depend on many factors you don't express.
That being said, there is one really basic thing almost every respondent has noted -- it's the "is this really a relationship" question? You need to answer that. If it isn't, then there's no problem/issue .. is there? And this question is for the both ouf you. "Going to Berkeley" might == "goodbye." On the otherhand "going to Toronto" might == "if you love me you'll make this sacrifice." Better to get the emotional factors out in the open, and separate from the practical ones, and avoid games.
If you two really want to make the relationship go, then compromises will be necessary. That's always true. The really serious questions aren't ones you ask the public, they are questions YOU ASK EACH OTHER, and you get on with it.
Be thankful that you aren't trying to get an academic apppointment at a university ... in say Anthropology, and the woman in your life has an academic appointment in Poetry. Good luck in that case trying to find some place where both of you can avoid major sacrifice!
You also need to come down off the fantasy of "dream job." Damn few are.
Most lives and most relationships involve willingness to accept change, and the inevitable balancing act that deals with a lot of things. If you think you have "hard choices" now... wait till you are middle aged and have kids.
You and she should sit down and really talk. If you are so committed to this "dream job" that you can't see beyond it -- take it, ditch her. You both will be much better off for that.
If you and she can really sit down and talk it through, then make whatever decisions come from that. Asking the public is a waste of time.
And the only thing I'd tell you, from the vantage point of being nearly 60 and having seen my life as a scientist, and seeing the lives of many others male and female ... is that jobs are never as permanent or decisive as you think they are. Far too many times people think that there's this one "brass ring" and if they pass it up, opportunity will never knock again.
That's mostly nuts. The job almost certainly has drawbacks/problems you don't see, and unless you are worthless/incompetent there are other opportunities you don't see at present either. Don't turn this into some sort of "do or die" proposition, because it isn't.