So divorces just happen then? You should spend more time choosing the right person over choosing the right (wrong) career. Of course there is a poor life choice that leads to divorce. And if isn't your "fault" well then I guess you just chose wrong.
What I find most interesting here is the interplay between having a hardcore career (like medicine) and having the sort of relationship trouble that leads to a divorce.
I’m on my second marriage. You’d better believe that my medical training contributed to the end of my first marriage (it wasn’t the only issue at play, but it was the elephant in the room). In that marriage, nobody was cheating, but my ex gradually became more and more disenchanted with being in a marriage where the other spouse was gone 90+% of the time (you could make the case that people should be patient in these situations - that this was only a temporary situation, and would get better once medical school/residency etc was over - and I’d agree, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of folks out there will run out of patience in these situations, perhaps rightfully).
I think that doggedly pursuing medicine because you’re afraid of finances after a divorce only dramatically increases the chances of that divorce becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.
As I’ve stated before, UMC professionals tend to have a lot of blind spots around their careers, as well as how their careers can affect the folks around them. I find that there is also a bizarre tendency among some UMC types to almost believe that the career is
the most important thing in your life, almost to the exception of anything else (“A man
is his job” - Glengarry Glen Ross) and that marriages and relationships are disposable to an extent as long as the “crown jewel” - your career - is protected. I think this belief was more common among Boomers and such, but you can definitely still see it to an extent among Millenials etc too. I used to feel this way before my divorce, but the end of that marriage was the death knell for the “work like a dog” mentality in my life. I don’t like it or agree with it anymore, and my job as a doctor is now something I carefully contain to a corner of my life where it belongs. I don’t let it expand and balloon to contaminate and overwhelm everything else any longer.
There’s more to life than working.