April and I attended our new ward for the first time Sunday.
First impressions? Small, diverse (well, more diverse than any ward I've ever attended), and friendly.
There are two other law students in the ward, and we talked a bit in the hall before (and during part of) EQ. One of them graduates in a year, and his wife insists on moving back to Utah to be closer to family (meaning her mother). Since Utah has a small population and two good law schools, and since no one there has ever heard of the law school here, that means he'll have to take a significant pay cut to move back. The company he's working for this summer has offered him his dream job after he graduates, but it looks like he'll be refusing it and moving to Utah.
So, for those of us with family ties in a particular state...
How willing are you to raise a family far away from your extended family? I'm talking long term here, not just 3 or 4 years.
If you have a spouse, do they agree with you?
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6 comments:
Both of us grew up away from extended family - so while we would love to be close, I don't think it has ever been the determining factor on where we settle down (whenever that day comes). We will go where it is right to be for our family - and if that means away from extended family hopefully we'll be able to visit often! Being close would be nice, but it's not an overriding factor for us.
On a certain level, I've been leery of dating girls from Utah because I didn't want to deal with what you described. Really, that is kind of a silly thing to not date a girl over. But I'd really like it if that future wife didn't HAVE to be around family. I have nothing against being around family if work puts us in that position, but extended family is secondary. If a person cannot stand to be away from parents, siblings, and cousins, maybe they should think twice about getting married. Because when two people get married, that family is the most important and should come first in every consideration.
Visiting family is nice, but honestly I think it's harder on the grandparents than on the family who lives far out...they miss seeing the babies and that sort of thing. As one who grew up seeing my grandparents annually at best, I don't have a problem with it.
D and I obviously have chosen to live far away (we plan to stay in Alaska). If family loves you then you'll visit each other, but a dream job can't follow you, and Utah in specific is a crowded, polluted, over-mormoned, politically-stagnant desert. I mean, eww!
Family is what you make it. If the most important thing is each other then everything else comes after that--including extended family and where you live. Plus, sometimes it is good to have space and to figure things out on your own. You can still be close to family while living far away, so if far away is where the best place is for your family...then that is where you should live. (Plus that means that lots of family can come and visit you too because you live in the cool, exciting place for vacations ;)
It's been hard for us when we've been away from both of our families. Hard to decide where to go for Christmas, IF we should go anywhere for Christmas, whether we want to spend X amount of time and money traveling to see people when it's really hard with our kids (they don't travel well, and when they don't know the people we're seeing it gets really frustrating). So it's been nice for us to be near John's family for the past two years, especially because he has so many siblings still at home that we wouldn't have gotten to know. Long term...It's hard to know. Either way is okay with us, but it's been nice that our kids can know their aunts and uncles. We'll see what happens long-term. good question.
I, as a single person, decided that staying close to my family is something that I need in my life. But I also decided that as soon as I have a smaller family that is mobile and all lives in the same house, we can go anywhere and be okay. I think extended family is important and I hope that my kids do get to know them well, but I think that there's a lot to say about families that learn to depend on each other for everything. Siblings are closer, and parents are closer in my observations. The 2 couples we stayed with in China had gotten married and then moved there for a year, and I was in awe of how stong they had become from their codependency on just each other.
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