Wedding Blog

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Do you and your SO have the same life goals? How do you reconcile your differences?

Mrs. Cheese - Our life goals are very similar: kids, financial stability, engaging careers that don’t take over our lives. He’s much more tied to where we live than I am; I always assumed I’d move cities a lot. He wants to have a paid-for house and our very own vacation island; I want us to travel (and move to other cities). Our goals are all compatible. The scary part, for me, is that being with this man changed my future. My career is less fulfilling as long as I work from home, but I’m not willing to travel heavily anymore and he’s not ready to move to another city… and to be honest, neither am I. I’m feeling very settled, and while I appreciate the feeling of stability, it makes me wonder what that means for my career. But I’ve had the kind of job that took over my life and brain and although I loved it, I could not manage my personal life successfully. I’ll take this, thankyouverymuch.

Miss Ramen - I think in the overall scheme of things, we have similar life goals. We would like to have our own house, cute dogs, adorable kids, good careers, travel together…. and such. We like the same general locations, so I don’t think that we have differences in living locations - EXCEPT when Mr. Ramen teases me about living in Phoenix forever - I like the hot weather, but I’m a Seattle girl at heart.

We differ on things like how many dogs we should have (I want 2, he wants one), # of kids (I want 4, he thinks 3 is plenty). I think we’re pretty flexible in general, and we always come to a happy compromise, however long that takes.

Miss Frozen Yogurt - We definitely have the same life goals–we want to be happy, love our careers and work towards building a family together. We’ve already bought a house together in Austin, so we’re also happy with our current location, but we are open to other locations in the future. A lot of the differences we have are about minor things, and we are always able to come to a compromise.

Mrs. Bear Cub - Having and maintaining similar life goals is one of THE MOST important things in our relationship. I don’t think either of us could be with someone who had differing life goals. We both want 2 kids, we want to buy land in Oregon and build an energy efficient (and quirky/hippie) home, and we want to live in Europe with the kids at some point. We both feel the same about religion and politics, but we approach them in different ways (Mr. BC follows political blogs, but then he tells me all about it ). Most importantly, even though we wish for our spouse to find a career that will be fulfilling, both of us agree that our relationship and our new family is the number one priority.

Mrs. Mary Jane - Mr. Mary Jane and I have really similar life goals: it’s one of the things that brought us together. For example, we’re both motivated to obtain doctorate degrees, and are each working toward that goal. We also both wanted to be homeowners, and we achieved that goal together earlier this year. Our only little difference is our timeline for children. My biological clock has started ticking a little faster, but he won’t be ready for a while. We’ve talked about that though, and have come to the conclusion that the best solution is to wait until we’re done with school and re-evaluate our procreation goals at that time. While I’d love a child, I recognize that not only is it important for us to spend time as ‘just us’ first, we’re also working hard (both at work, and in school) toward providing a better future and toward being great parental role-models for our kids.

Mrs. Joey - We have a lot of the same life goals. We both really wanted a house and now we’re building one. That said, I really want to live abroad again for a few years and while he’s open to the idea, he’s not open to all the countries on my maybe list. We’re both on the fence about kids. We both really love kids, but I think right now, there’s so much going on.

Miss Potato Chips - In the grand scheme of things, we have it together. We don’t agree on everything, but it’s okay; it keeps things interesting. For instance, I love cities but Mr. Potato Head is all about the country. We’ve made a compromise by living in the suburbs. Eventually we want to live in a small beach town, somewhere in New England.

We both have ambitious career goals: he wants to work hard on his business until it takes off, I want to be a tenured professor at whatever institution will hire me and eventually get back to writing fiction. We want to buy a house as soon as we can afford to. We’ll have kids if it makes sense for us, but we’re agreed that it may or may not happen.

Mrs. Perfume - It’s interesting, I guess since we’re older, there might have been the real danger of having really disparate, set-in-stone life goals. However, what’s neat is that we have the same temperament when it comes to finances (savers and investors more than consumers), children (if it happens, it happens), and career (ambitious, but not to the point of pathology, with as much work-life balance as possible). We are both very involved in our community and are active in organizing community improvement and safety events. So I guess it’s really our values that are well-aligned. Our short and long-term goals of the usual real-estate purchases, retirement and family are focused and match well, too.

Mrs. Yorkie - We’re both paddling in the same boat when it comes to life goals. It was a priority of ours to purchase a house, so we continued with our pre-wedding savings plan. We’ll close on our first home in mere days! (More on that later, I promise.) When it comes to family, we’re in agreement on the timing and ideal number of children. Education is important to both of us. While Mr. Y has already earned his Ph.D., he’s encouraging and supportive of my pursuit of a graduate degree and satisfying career. The one thing that we haven’t quite figured out just yet is where we may end up location-wise. (I know that my Bay Area boy has a hankering to head back west to the mountains at some point during our future.) So who knows, someday I may trade in my flip-flops for hiking boots! That wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Mrs. Peep Toe - This is another question I had to think about, but other than the typical house, kids, and happiness thing, we both are committed to helping the environment. He’s currently in school for an MBA in Sustainable Business, and I work as an Environmental Analyst. Maybe this is less of a life goal and more of a shared value. But overall, I think, we push ourselves to be better people because of it.

Mrs. Penguin - I’m ashamed to admit that I think I’d be the kind of person that if I was wildly attracted to a man, and he didn’t have the same life goals as I did, I’d overlook it and deal with it later. I KNOW that this is a huge no-no. But I do think that Mr. Pengy and I have the same life goals… now. I really think earlier in our relationship, I was much more in a rush than he was to move forward, but I also think this is sort of a “girl thing”. I’m happy that we’re in line as far as the next big step—having a child—and we’re both willing to put the discussion off for a few more years. But I kind of want to move to a more suburban area sooner than he does, I think. I’d like to move back to his hometown and be closer to his family (since my parents plan on retiring out of country) and he’s more hesitant to do that, mostly because he is smarter than I am on this front (I hear Minnesota winters—to truly live through them—are unbearable. And my naive California butt refuses to acknowledge this.) and knows we have it quite nice here in the Bay Area with mild summers and winters. So our next move—and whether we make it or not—might be a point of contention in our relationship. It’s hard to admit out loud that I want to move to the suburbs, but I do… eventually. I am scared of getting shot and mugged all the time, even though we don’t exactly live in a rough neighborhood, urban is urban. I will miss the amazing food in Berkeley, though!

Mr. Peng and I haven’t dealt with a lot of differences between us. We oddly live a peaceful existence, despite how feisty I am and my only-child ways. I’m usually really passive-aggressive when I want something my way. Sigh. It’s childish, but it’s how it works around here. I’m not gonna pretend like we are totally harmonious in all aspects, ’cause we’re not! I just slowly simmer in my ideas and suggest that we “move to the suburbs” or “get married” or “have a kid” until he can warm up to the idea enough and we can both get it done.

Miss Beagle - Our life goals are very similar and it was part of the attractiveness that drew me in! In my last big relationship, our goals couldn’t have been more out of line and it caused a ton of problems and our eventual downfall. Mr. Beagle and I have always been on the same page and I absolutely love it! We both graduated from college within 6 months of each other. We both want to pursue further advancement in our careers—either through grad school or certifications. We both would like children one day, but are not ready for them yet. We want to travel more and buy a house together. We love Austin and want to continue living here. We both want to get another dog when we move out by ourselves. We value our family and want to make an effort to spend more time with the people that are important to us.

Miss Rainbow - Our life goals are virtually identical. Not because we made them that way, but because (even before we were together) we both generally wanted the same things out of life. We wanted to get married young, but not too young. Young enough to where we could really enjoy traveling and being newlyweds for a few years before we start thinking about kids. We both have two of the strongest cases of wanderlust I think I’ve ever seen. We want to go everywhere and experience everything, we both have such a strong respect and curiosity of the world outside of our “world”. We both want pets, a beautiful house, and two kids, and neither of us are in any rush. That’s the best part, we want the same things, and we’re both content with working at our own pace.

Mrs. Deviled Egg - I think are life goals are very similar. We both have similar ideas on career plans and both want to have children. At this time, neither of us have expressed interest in moving out of the area where we currently live, so that’s similar, too. I think our timelines for achieving various life milestones are on the same page, as well.

I like to believe our life goals are pretty similar, mainly because I don’t really have any huge life goals for myself. Family and relationships are our number one priority. In our careers, I’d love to own my own creative business and Mr. Eggplant wants to save the world. I just want to support him. We want to be financially sound, but we aren’t big spenders. Having a lot of money isn’t something we’d sacrifice time and relationships for. We just want enough to not worry.

Mr. Eggplant would prefer to start a family and move to the burbs earlier than I would. I’d love to stay a city girl forever. That’s our main difference. But I figure I have two years while he’s finishing his MBA for the idea to grow on me.

Mrs. Mouse - Our goals are pretty similar. We want to work only as much as we have to to make a living so that we can enjoy life as much as possible. We want to travel together and spend time with our families. We’re both undecided on kids. There are times when I really want to get out of Texas and move to Los Angeles, but I’m not sure if the Dude will ever want to go back there. (He lived there for a couple years after college, before I met him.) Whatever happens, we’re in it together!

Mrs. Gloss - Our goals are very similar (although he’s a few years ahead of me in our life plan course). We both want kids, a dog, to travel, and to stay in New England. He’s ready to move out of the city and have babies, like, yesterday, and I’m not quite there yet. Financially, our goal is to be able to buy whatever we want, whenever we want and not have to worry about it (within reason of course - we aren’t talking yachts here ).

Mrs. Duckling - Our life goals are very similar and we share each others dreams for the future. Mr. Ducky is so supportive of me and my personal and professional goals. I hope to do everything I can to help him meet his goals as that will also be part of mine.

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Do you and your SO share the same life goals? How do you deal with your differences?