Jed flew off to the East Coast on Tuesday - by the time he returns to San Francisco in the second week of January, his career will be one step closer to its destination. He's long had the driving ambition to be a professor at a good university, and nothing will sway him from that - not even the prospect of ending up in some god-forsaken place like Detroit. And for the prospective economics PhD candidates on the job market this Winter, the job-hunt is a very regimented process. Behind them now is the massive mailing in response to lists of job-openings in universities and research institutes across the country. The next step is a series of interviews in a big conference in New Orleans in early January. And the fruit of that conference will be two or three fly-outs for final interviews. Assuming he gets any offers at all from those interviews, Jed will essentially ends up with very little choice of where he's going to spend the next few years.

I've known about this process ever since we started "getting serious", but as the decision point inches closer, I'm starting to wonder more about the consequences for both of us. By the time he starts whichever job he ends up with, we'll have been together for about a year. What will be my reaction when faced with a boyfriend who's moving to somewhere I'd never live in a million years? I'm quite happy here in San Francisco. Now, there are places to which I'd be willing to move - Boston, New York or Washington D.C., mainly. But there's perhaps a 5% chance he'll end up in New York, and no chance of the other two.

Lord knows, it's taken me five years to find someone I like - I don't want to lose him already. It's hard for me to imagine someone with whom I could be more compatible. He's sweet and tender, kind and considerate, smart as hell, loves classical music - oh, and he has a hot little body too :) Okay, he has his flaws too - it just recently dawned on me that he's ... well ... kind of a Republican. (To think I'd end up with a Republican!) And as the rose colored mist began to clear recently, it revealed other flaws - in both of us. Yes, the honeymoon is over, and we're both finding that the other isn't perfect after all.

Last week, when he came to visit, I detected a distinct coolness in his attitude towards me. It wasn't at all obvious, and I thought for a while that I was just imagining it. But late in the evening, I asked him if everything was okay. He insisted that nothing was wrong, but his body, in my arms, felt unusually stiff and tense. So I asked again and kept at it - I just knew something was bothering him; yet he kept denying it. What are you supposed to do in that situation? We lay there unhappily for a while - again I thought that perhaps it was all in my mind. I'm so attuned to the nuances of an affection that's so important to me, that I can overreact when I sense in it a diminution.

The previous weekend I'd betrayed an edge of selfishness in my behavior over something that must have come as a bit of a surprise to Jed, and in a flash of inspiration now, I realized that if anything was bothering him, it would probably be coming from that earlier incident. So I just asked him point blank if he was still bothered by what had happened last weekend. And, yeah, that was it; as if I'd pressed a hidden lever, his anger came out. There were some unpleasant moments, but the little barrier between us was opened. What it did confirm for me, though, is that Jed thinks he has to be perfect for me to love him. So I hope that my own shining examples of imperfection will impress him that the mole on Cindy Crawford's cheek is what makes her so sexy. If you follow my meaning :)