Life's hard. It's full of difficult decisions that pull us in all sorts of directions. Sometimes, when we come to a crossroads, it's hard to choose which route to follow because so many people's lives could be impacted, especially when it comes to a career move. At the end of the day, you have to be true to you.

Being a woman in today's society is hard enough. Add to it the pressures of student loans, career growth, paying the bills on time, and maintaining relationships, and now you understand why women are natural-born multitaskers.

Juggling all of this while attempting to stay true to who you are and what you want is another obstacle entirely. Temptation to conform to societal norms start to look really friendly when you're watching your peers go to grad school, get promoted, get married, and start having children. But what about the women that are dedicated to a dream? What about the gals that have worked so hard and sacrificed so much just for a shot at scoring that dream job? What about the ladies that are on their way to achieving it? On top of that, what about those of us that want the dream job and the happy family?

Society as a whole still tends to view women that aren't married by the time they're 25 as women who are wasting their time. I can understand this perspective if I put myself in the women's shoes that didn't have any specific career goals and were just looking for a job to pay the bills upon college graduation. I totally can see why you'd think we're wasting time, especially if we want children. The reality for us is, however, that those of us putting our career goals first aren't satisfied with just any job. We want both. We want the dream job and a healthy marriage and family. To be honest, I don't see why that's so difficult to comprehend and achieve.

The truth is, though, that most of us gals with specific career goals ARE in fact going to have difficulties in our relationships. Why? The problem lies within our choice of partner. A tough pill to swallow, sure. Nevertheless, it's accurate. During this time in our lives when we're putting our careers first, it's a challenge to also maintain a healthy relationship. It's difficult to maintain a healthy relationship sans the career goals, but add to it the pressure that comes with both parties wanting to continue to climb the corporate ladder or further their creative positions and now you're walking on really thin ice while you're attempting to cross over to the promised land of long-term relationship fulfillment.

If you're a career-oriented woman, it's important to make sure your partner believes in your goals and wants to help you achieve them. This will, most likely, require sacrifices for a while on their part. Finding someone that's willing to put in the work maintaining a healthy relationship requires is the challenge. Make no mistake though, ladies, the pendulum swings both ways. You're also going to have to sacrifice sometimes in order for your partner to achieve their goals as well. The key is to communicate with each other to identify each other's hopes and dreams. From there, you come up with a game plan and stick to it. Of course, life doesn't always care about your plans, so you have to keep some elasticity within the playbook. But, if you're both willing to put in the work and make the sacrifices necessary for the sake of your relationship, then everything should fall into place.

Don't forget, love is a choice. If you're currently with someone that's not willing to choose you and your relationship over every single little comfort they're used to right now, chances are that person's not the one for you. For example, if your partner wants to eventually move out of state and you're supportive of that, but they have no interest in doing what it takes to make the relationship work while you guys figure out what comes next for you, then you're doomed.

Sacrifices must be made by both parties in order to achieve both career and relationship fulfillment. Don't forget, nothing worth having comes easy.

For those gals that have had their share of heartbreak due to an unwillingness from someone else to put in the energy necessary to make it work, keep looking. Someone is out there looking for someone like you that knows what it takes to have it all.

Keep going. You got this.

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