Should I Stick to Furthering My Career Or Risk Losing My Fiancé?

I come from a long line of engineers. Both of my parents graduated from HBCUs, one as a mechanical engineer and the other as an electrical engineer. Today, I’m an industrial engineer, and I work in Thailand, making a boatload of money. I’ve set a goal to put my career first for the next five years, build my resume, and then return to the States, find a husband, get married, and have children.

As life would have it, things didn’t work out in that order. My homegirl and I went out club hopping in Thailand one night and met a bunch of professional athletes on break from their various sports. One of the basketball players and I hit it off exceptionally well, and we ended up spending every day together until he had to leave to go back to Atlanta.

Serial dating
Black man with roses and Black woman in the chair (Pexels Image)

We started dating pretty quickly, and after eight short months, he made his way back to Thailand and proposed marriage in a spectacular way. He rented out a restaurant, shut it down for us, and had a private dinner catered. He got down on one knee after we had dessert and asked me to be his wife. I said yes and was ecstatic. However, we differ in some major areas. He’s ready to settle down and start having kids, and I still have my career plan to execute.

My fiancé expressed a sincere interest in having four or five children and keeping me barefoot and pregnant for the next five years. I am not down for that and told him so. He claims we’re done if I don’t leave Thailand and move to Atlanta to live with him. Should I call his bluff and renew my work contract for another nine months or start packing and picking out baby names?

The Center gets to the heart of the lifestyle, parenting, relationships and finance conversations impacting the culture. Convene here to express and share personal and poignant points of view that arise in everyday life.

Send us your queries to [email protected] and let our readers offer some perspectives on how to navigate these conversations.

Democracy needs journalism it can trust.

This election season, the stakes are higher than usual — and so is the pressure on newsrooms to soften their coverage, stay quiet, or just disappear. Independent reporting, the kind that answers to readers instead of advertisers or political pressure, matters more in a moment like this, not less.

For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed independent and reader-funded. We have no corporate owner and no shareholders telling us what to cover or how to cover it. That independence is also our biggest vulnerability: nothing protects it except readers choosing to fund it directly.

Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under in a moment like this, it's rarely the independent, reader-funded ones that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Back to top