How do people make their marriages work?

“Does one person in the relationship has to be doing a lesser paying, normal job so they can travel wherever the other person wants??”

Honestly, I think yes. If you have the type of high-level, high-paying job that requires you to move cities constantly, it will be very difficult to partner with a man who has the same type of job. In my own family, I have sisters/cousins whose careers have taken a back seat to their husband’s high-paying job; their husbands have jobs that required them to move around the country, and my sisters/cousin sacrificed their own careers to maintain their relationship/marriage. If they didn’t, their relationships would have had to end.

I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, it’s just how they did it. Both people in the relationship can’t have the type of job that requires you to move regularly. Someone has to be flexible and willing to move with the partner that has the higher-level job.

Likewise I have a female friend who is climbing the corporate ladder and has moved around a lot (3 cities in the past 5 years). She has resigned herself to casual relationships (at least for now) because she knows she will most likely be moving to another city in the next year or two.

So I don’t think you can have your cake and eat it too. “I want to be with a guy who earns well, at least as much as me if not more. But that kind of guy will generally NEVER compromise on his job and move around according to my convenience.” Honestly in this case I think you’re stuck. There’s no resolution. If you can’t be with a guy who has a “normal”, flexible job, who is willing to move where you move– I don’t see how you will maintain a relationship.

I know someone who moved to be with her bf from one European country to another and now she is there on her own, while he has all his family and friends around him. one person always has to sacrifice and from what I have noticed women are more inclined to do that than men.

it is a very common theme for men not to sacrifice. You rarely see men staying in unhappy relationships, but plenty of women do. You rarely see men staying and taking care of someone who can’t walk/eat/is seriously ill but again a lot of women stay even when their partner is telling them to leave.
You rarely see men sacrificing their careers to raise kids but most women do.
Men tend to be more selfish than women , they tend to think what is best for them not for the relationship and it might seem heartless but most men would sacrifice their relationship if they were offered better work opportunities etc.

And when these popular narratives try to fill the head of a woman with self-love theories, they should talk about these things too.

Loving yourself also means not making sacrifices for others who wouldn’t make those sacrifices for you.

I know plenty of men who stay in bad marriages. Usually for the kids. I’ve also seen men make “sacrifices” for their wives and families. My BF is a high earner and he works remote so he can work anywhere – there are lots of people out there who work remote or hybrid these days. We once moved to another city so I could take a job. Now we’re both remote and it’s great. We can do whatever we want. That job didn’t work out well for me so we decided to move again and we worked together to select a place we were both happy with. There were places I would have liked to live but he didn’t want to and there were places he would have liked to live that I didn’t want to. We crossed those off the list and decided between a short list of three that we both agreed on. Nifty, huh?

Tik, I take it you don’t plan on having children either because that can significantly slow down a women’s career trajectory.

You say: “And tbh that’s also one of the reasons why I’d rather my career than a man. My career will never wake up one day and tell me that it doesn’t love me anymore and is leaving. Also, i always question myself would your bf leave his job for the relationship? And the answer is always no.”

Sadly, it sounds like you’re meeting a lot of the wrong men. But when you’ve made up your mind about how the world is, the world tends to deliver just that to you. It’s not you’ll believe it when you see it, it’s when you believe it you see it, all over the place. Your belief is going to keep attracting the same thing so you can say, aha, see that’s what they’re all like. Your belief guarantees you won’t get a man who says, yes, I’ll move.

How old are you, may I ask? Women with your attitudes about men and careers often wind up very lonely by their 40s and 50s.

I’m not dismissing or disagreeing with some of the points you’ve raised. Women should be prepared to take care of themselves financially. You’re right, your career won’t leave you for someone else, but it won’t love you and keep you warm at night either. There’s a kind of love and happiness your career will never, ever bring you. Anytime you enter into any kind of relationship you’re opening yourself up to being betrayed or let down. Sounds to me like you’ve made up your mind to put on the armor so no one has a chance to hurt you again. But it seems to me like you’re setting yourself up for unhappiness by focusing on just a high earning corporate type of man. There are other types of high earning men. Your focus on this whole issue just seems so narrow that you’re blotting out all the other possibilities. Your first priority is protecting yourself against a selfish man. It feels rather hypervigilant.

And I repeat, what you fear most or are dead set against is what you will attract. You’re trying so hard to control and and direct plan everything out in advance. Life just doesn’t work that way, you know? You sound like the lawyer who posted here last week and had all her dating criteria and timelines laid out so tightly. Trouble is, human beings are all individuals and we are messy. We don’t fit into neat little boxes.

I know you’re not going to change your mind, just presenting some devil’s advocate perspectives that maybe someday might be of use to you.

I’m very pleased to see you’re taking what I said in the constructive spirit I mean it!! I’m reading and I’m all, whoa, you’ve already gotten yourself married and it not working out because he needs to move for a job and divorced and demanding alimony!! Don’t program the crystal ball like that!

Great idea – back off dating for a little while and recalibrate yourself. Relax and start enjoying your life. Look for the positives and be grateful for what you have. Just doing that each day can turn your thinking around 180 degrees and get rid of your anxiety about the future.