OP, my first marriage was like this.
Married the summer before senior year of college. She had just graduated nursing school.
First wife started griping about moving to start medical school, even before we moved (it was in a different state than college).
Her pushback against time spent studying got worse once medical school started. Her expectations were very unrealistic.
First wife pushed me into having our first child halfway through medical school, even though I did not think it was a good idea and we did not have the time or wherewithal for it (we didn’t live near family).
She left and moved back to home state with my daughter one week after she was born…while I was on my IM rotation.
She didn’t follow me to residency, which was in a third state. We lived apart for years, with me driving back and forth almost 5 hours each way whenever I had a free moment to try to bail out what was clearly a sinking ship. Divorce followed when I was in fellowship, after we hadn’t lived together in 5 years.
My second wife, who is an academic, actually “gets it” and is amazing. She works hard herself and values my hard work. First wife, on the other hand, was an exploitative manipulator who did all of this to try to trap me into paying an insane amount of child support each month. I haven’t seen my kid in years, and I fork over a stupidly huge amount of child support each month so she can live with her new abusive drug addict husband with my kid…it appears that most of my support payments are getting blown on his drugs and booze every month, while my kid is getting abused. We are still in family court fighting about all of this, years later. (Sadly, there is more going on here that I don’t even want to get into.) That marriage took a major toll on my health and wellness, and continues to be a distracting waste of energy and money even years after it has ended.
As the old song goes, “know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run”.
I wish I had gotten out of that first ****show marriage before it turned into a chronic toxic mess.
Also, do not - under any circumstances - quit medical school because of this. This is a career YOU wanted, YOU pursued, and YOU deserve. This marriage may not go the distance. Your career will, if you apply effort to it.
My ex brought up the idea of quitting medical school on several occasions. One of the best decisions I ever made was firmly, repeatedly, saying “no” to that idea.
I think family is really important, but I also think it’s really important that they be on board with your career goals. Especially when the career as as many potential benefits as medicine.
I agree with all of this, but I also caution people about putting all their life eggs into the career basket.
The reality is that this isn't a question of which is "more right" for you or not. They are in some ways independent elements of your life, the decision of which to keep or not has more to do with how you relate to them independently.
The issue is that the person asking you to make this kind of sacrifice on their behalf... I mean this can be a red flag of the relationship regardless what your job is. If that is true, no job choice in the world makes a big difference. In which case quitting medicine will not fix it.
Not sure I went into it, but med school is not actually the biggest challenge a lifelong relationship is likely to meet. Having children, being ill, death, moving, disability, relatives, aging parents, children struggling, financial troubles... these are all potentially much more difficult, and you may face any number of them.
So a relationship has to be able to stand up to all these things, regardless of what they are, to last. So throwing in the towel to solve the current problem of med school is one approach, but not all the problems ahead will be so easily dealt with. So again, not being able to work through it is a red flag. Not just so you can follow this particular dream, but because this is not the last or tallest hurdle.
What this means longterm is the most significant thing. THAT is a reason not to quit medicine for this relationship. Not necessarily because career is the thing you can count on more. But because it might just mean you can't count on this relationship. And making certain sacrifices for something like that, is what may not be worth it long term.
That said, you can continue with medicine without giving up on your relationship. People have given some great advice this thread.
I'm probably some sort of naive or overselling, but I truly believe that two people who aligned well enough to marry in the first place, if both parties break down enough within themselves to really be willing to take responsibility and work on themselves, if you really embraced and applied the psychology and tips on Al Turtle's website, and had marriage counseling, could probably make things work. Barring certain incompatibilities (children or not, open relationship vs closed, etc).
I think being Christian and what that means for an approach to marriage, is a reason to bust ass trying to save it. But to quit med school would be trying to take the "easy way" now to do so, without doing the work that is needed to meet any number of challenges. This is a maturity thing too.
Your marriage will be much better if you two can meet the challenges without you quitting, is my prediction.
