We had always assumed that John would be the trailing spouse. When we met at a karaoke bar, he was working in tech support and I was a third of the way through my doctoral degree in medieval English literature at UC Santa Barbara, looking ahead to the roller coaster that is the tenure track (particularly in the humanities).
Post graduation, I expected to be bouncing across the country, ideally from postdoc to visiting assistant professor to full professor. In contrast, as an IT professional, he has a pretty easy time finding a job literally anywhere, and he made it clear very early on that he was in awe of my goals and would happily prioritize my career opportunities. The academic job market would control our destination.
Or, so we thought.