Letters to the Editor
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difficult to extrapolate
Cary states: "While in science many problems are difficult because they are complex, in life many problems are difficult because they are simple, but we are human and we want everything..."
I think both in life and in science problems are difficult because we don't have enough information. Information gathering is difficult and expensive. It requires risk, trial, and error. In relationships we don't really know ourselves nor our partners until we explore our feelings and responses under perturbations and trying circumstances. How can we optimise when we don't know how we are going to feel in the future? I agree with Cary that the LW needs to determine how each in the relationship feels now (and recognize and assign the appropriate error bars to that emotional determination.) Make a rough extrapolation and then do the experiment one way or another and get some data about yourself and your girlfriend.
BTW, I agree with Wonder Woman's comments, they seem wise and probably from experience. A good post-doc is temporary and can set the tone for a solid career. A separation also does not need to be a relationship breaker - especially when one is immersed in academic pusuits.
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two bodies? no problem!
How long will you have the postdoctorate position? If it's only a few years, I'd try to make the relationship work out long-distance. Speaking as someone who a) lives in the general vicinity of Toronto who is b) dating a man who lives in the Pacific Northwest and who c) has been dating this man long-distance for well over a year, I think it could work. It's difficult, but it's not impossible.
Also: I just accepted a spot at an amazing grad program (my dream school, really) & I'm staring down two more years of maintaining this long-distance relationship. But it will be worth it--my degree will be more competitive than the one I could have gotten if I'd opted to live closer to my sweetie (yes, I was accepted to a school only an hour away from where he lives), thereby making my job search easier (insert cynical laugh) when the time comes for me to move out West. Did I mention that my boyfriend lives in Canada? How the hell am I going to move to Canada?! Like I said, it's all very difficult. But it can be worth it.
You should take the postdoc if it's temporary & if it's the best career decision you can make right now. As an academic couple, you're going to have to get used to living apart sometimes. Relationships do survive. You both have to want it, though.
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Define the parameters of your problem
I have met other scientists who live in completely different places across the country for the sake of their individual careers, and get together from time to time. They make it work for them. It would not work that way for my spouse and I, who ended up sort of taking turns in our careers, from graduate school, to postdoc, to following paths to a career, including years of no job for one of us. We may have limited ourselves by not pursing some glorious high level position, but I think we are happier, as we are together, and not completely and utterly overworked like all those high level people we know. Our goals also changed as time went by, and I do not think we have regrets.
The parameters of your two-body problem need to be defined. Other letter writers have pointed out that you need to define what commitment you are willing to make, what commitment she is willing to make. How important is pursing your particular interests? Would you be able to instead of joining an existing group, find a university or lab who wants a new general hire, and you can get outside funding (gov't, manufacturer) to create a lab of your own for your particular niche? Could you settle for a Bay Area postdoc that may not be ideal, but good enough for a temporary stepping stone on the path to your ideal job? Where you can spend a couple years going to conferences and finding the people and labs you want to work with, and impressing them. There may be more possibilities than you can see. You may also be able to put off the Toronto job decision while you explore your options (ask them to give you a month, say something about weighing options).
And as another writer pointed out, a post-doc is a limited timespan, anywhere from 1-3 years. Love can survive that time apart. You need to communicate together, and learn what the each other wants and needs. It will be difficult, it will be painful, but that is life.
There are many possibilities, and as a scientist, it's understandable that you want to know all the options before you make the decisions. Do not forget, that we are human, and love is hard to quanitfy, to measure, to write an equation for, much less the complicated ways we interact with each other.
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take the long view
LW doesn't say this is the love of his life, he asks how one knows. He says they see each other "almost every day." It sounds like he dreads telling her about Toronto not because he can't bear to be separated, but because he's afraid of getting "both barrels of insecure, immature little girl". How's he going to feel when he's working at some boring job in Berkley and spending evenings alone because she's busy with school - they don't even see each other every day now!
The only reason to pass up your opening into your dream career, in what another LW called a "brutal job market", is because you can't stand being apart from her, even if it means working construction or teaching high school chemistry to be near her. If that's not the case, take this opportunity to further your career ( and she just has to look at her mom to understand the cost of not doing this, so if she loves you she'll understand), and use this time to explore the possibilities of the relationship long-distance, with the plan of getting to the same place after your postdoc is over.