When a Body Meets a Body

Patrick Bigsby is an alumnus, former employee, and lifelong wrestling fan of the University of Iowa. Sometimes, he tweets.

I’ve previously written about my fervent belief that grad students shouldn’t feel compelled to put their personal lives on hold in favor of academic milestones. Those who intend to become career academics will always have that next publication in the works or that next course to design. While those professional accomplishments are valuable, waiting on them would fly in the face of accepted wisdom.

However, all you fools rushing in will be rewarded with yet another obstacle that is apparently so pervasive that someone (not me) made a Wikipedia entry for it: the two-body problem. The two-body problem is essentially a side effect of the bleak academic job market wherein young academic couples have to make a Sophie’s choice between their life’s work and their life’s love. Anyone reading this is probably already familiar with the daunting combination of skill, luck, and persistence necessary to land an academic job. Now try to do it twice within an hour’s drive.

I won’t mince words: I hate the two-body problem. I hate that it’s an expected sacrifice for academic workers. I hate that it is normalized to the point that doofuses can write about it on higher education websites and readers can only nod sympathetically and shrug because its an obvious, even passé gripe. While it can be logically and dispassionately reduced to economic factors and simple math, the two-body problem feels unfair and horrible and cruelly designed to foment resentment in relationships or stymie promising scholarship. And I say this with the benefit of being a heterosexual man — antiquated ideas about breadwinning and hiring and gender mean the two-body problem is even harder on others. So what are young lovers to do?

To start, don’t give up hope! We know, anecdotally at least, that couples do get hired together. I doubt spousal hiring is as common a practice as academic couples might like, but it does happen and that means it’s a reasonable subject to bring up when applicable in your job interview.

I realize asking about the possibility of some sort of joint hire is easier said than done. Applicants for entry-level faculty positions don’t typically have a lot of leverage and might be understandably reluctant to bring up something like a spousal accommodation lest they appear pushy or less-than-fully committed to taking the job if offered. However, as I said, everyone involved in the hiring decision knows that spousal accommodations do occur in some circumstances and therefore it isn’t an inappropriate topic for a serious candidate to broach. Search committees can presumably discern between a simple fact-finding question about what is possible and a deal-breaking demand. Even if a committee responds to the former with “Sorry, but we don’t have that kind of flexibility,” then you’ve learned more about the logistics of the position, are better able to decide if the position is right for you, and likely didn’t offend anyone.

If you and your significant other are, like most, unable to come up with that dream combination of tenure-track positions in your respective fields at the same university which just happens to be the right academic and cultural fit for both of you and located in a town you’re both eager to live in, it’s time to sit down with that person and prioritize and strategize. Once again this is easier said than done but, in my hopelessly romantic opinion, is preferable to divvying up the appliances or completely subverting half of a couple’s career ambitions.

Discussing your respective priorities with your spouse is a way to fight the cruel math of the two-body problem with some helpful math. Assuming you didn’t land that ideal marital-professional fusion in some sort of hiring miracle (and who did?) you should still try to maximize opportunities for home and work satisfaction. I see this prioritization as a two-stage process. First, identify what you each of values the most. For example, would you rather hold your dream job in East Nowheresville or break rocks in Cooltown, USA? Your particular situation is unlikely to reach anything so extreme, but it’s worth contemplating whether your life is more enhanced by a rewarding career than it is eroded by an unpleasant setting, and vice versa. Other GradHackers have offered some helpful strategies for measuring your goals and priorities if you’re having trouble getting started.  

Then, prioritize relative to each other.This isn’t a contest to be the pack’s alpha but a chance to identify what is and isn’t available for compromise. Perhaps one of you is under particular professional constraints as to equipment or environment. If your husband studies marine biology, for example, moving to Iowa probably isn’t on the table. On the other hand, your Ph.D. in psychology could be put to roughly equal use at coastal or landlocked universities. It might also be wise to take a realistic inventory of your respective worths at this stage. There’s no shame in recognizing that your wife is a breakout star in the realm of art history whereas your work as a chemist, even if notable and excellent, stands out less. This isn’t a reflection of your respective abilities so much as your respective levels of fame; Jessica Biel didn’t stop being “one of the Jessicas” when The 20/20 Experience hit number one. Your worth, expressed in economic terms, isn’t the same as your value.

Once you’re both on the same page as to what situations would feasibly allow you both to thrive as much as possible, draw up a plan of attack. This can be a detailed blueprint that accounts for specific job openings and potential hiring permutations or a broader philosophy to guide your two individual job searches. Only you can decide what strategy is best for you, but I take my strategic cue from a couple I admire even more than Harry and Sally or Salma Hayek and Chandler: Coach and Tami Taylor. In the final season of Friday Night Lights, Coach and Tami are each offered significant professional advancement opportunities, though one is in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the other is in Dillon, Texas. Ultimely, the two decide that it’s okay to take turns and be flexible in their professional lives because of the positive effects doing so will have in their personal lives. Most importantly, the Taylors recognize that moving for one spouse’s career doesn’t preclude later moving for the other spouse’s career or guarantee always moving for the first spouse’s career. In addition to explaining why I watched so much television in graduate school, this touching marital moment imparts the ultimate strategy for combating the two-body problem: whatever you do, do it together.

Is the two-body problem weighing on you or your future? What solutions and strategies have you tried to resist it?

[Image by Flickr user Eric Fleming and used under a Creative Commons license.]