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Eventually I graduated, and before too long I had a fresh new graduate job, well paying, based in London. We had 3 months left of the tenancy, so I decided to stay put for now, assess the commute, and work towards a move in December. Flat searching was hellish, and was worsened by disagreements between us. She understandably wasn't keen on overhauling her life to live in a little London flat. At some point around this time she loses her job, and suddenly I am paying for everything. All plans of moving are shelved, and I continue my expensive, draining commute.
At its worst, in our peak part of the year, I was in the office until 9 or 10, taking the train back for 2 hrs and then waking at 7 the next morning to go 2 hrs in the other direction. Meanwhile she is moping around, unemployed and depressed, the house in the same state when I come home as when I leave it. I don't think the relationship was ever more strained than it was here. But she had nowhere to go back to, and I am a soft weak little man, so the miserable stalemate continued.
She finds a new minimum wage job a while later. She argues that if a move to London isn't possible yet then we should move to a bigger place within the same town we were living, leaving the door open to a move in the future, when we'd saved up and she was done with studying. I have given up on all of my hopes and dreams at this point, so I let her.
We stay there for 6 painful months, her enjoying domestic life with a proper house and a little garden and me regretting every decision I'd ever made. When the time when we can end the tenancy arrives I put my foot down, and I find a small flat in London. She comes down with me and immediately hates it. I tell her she can go back without me if she wants, and she decides she will. Within a day or two she has changed her mind and hangs around instead, and a miserable few weeks of mutual loathing proceed.
Before too long she gets a real grown up job as an estate agent. I am able to actually travel to work more than twice a week. For me, life is well. For her, the choice of flat gives rise to a certain low-level resentment which rises up from time to time, but I don't think she has ever been in a better place. We are currently preparing for our next move, the last for a good while, to start next week. 10 minutes walk from where we live now, the same area, slightly more expensive but much nicer. Working in both of our interests, a place we can stay for a while to end our days of constant moving. This was the state of play two weeks ago, before things began to teeter.
It is coming on 3am as I write this, so I will finish the story off tomorrow. I'll try to be more concise - this took me like an hour to write and it was just covering old ground