The high cost of great life decision

Your dreams never ask permission to show up. Your life is doing fine and then you suddenly find your life's mission. As I have said before it was great in my case, yet this new goal in my life has had some implications.

I live in Brazil. I have a great job, an awesome family, some amazing friends and a marvelous girlfriend. This kind of decision is very hard to deal with. I can't start telling everyone, specially because I am still in my job and if this get into my boss I would be in trouble.

But for some close friends, my family and, of course, my girlfriend I have decided to share them my new goal in order to hear the opinion of the most important people in my life. I imagined that they would support me and give me more strength for my everyday battle, but it was very different.

Some people really encouraged me and give me a lot of tips. However I noticed something very peculiar: my closest friends and my girlfriend became very sad and started to stop talking to me.

That was pretty tough. I have two friends who I consider brother to me. Both of them warned me a lot saying that I was making a stupid decision, that I would regret this and that, after I get to the US I would feel very lonely and desire to get back to my old life. Also, they both stopped talking to me and started to be very distant to my life.

My girlfriend, on the other side, never told me anything like my friends said. At first she got very sad, when she realized that it was for real and not just a crazy dream (a.k.a. when I started to sell my stuff). She started to cry a lot and talked to me. I know that for her it is pretty tough because any long distance relationship never goes well. But, differently from my friends, she supported me and said that I deserve to be happy and that I have a lot of potential to work in the Silicon Valley. But she can't stop thinking though that now our relationship have an expiration date.

I really understand her. At one moment we were thinking about marriage, having kids, living together and then, absolutely without any reason related to her, I decided to live in the US and everything that she was planning blew up. But, what should I do? I don't want her tied into my new plans and go to the US dating her and with no date to come back. In my opinion long distance relationships never work, the only exception is when your partner is planning to go too or you already have a date to come back. But this isn't my case, my girlfriend doesn't have any plans and I don't want to come back when I get there.

We've stopped talking about this, but sadly I know that one day this issue will come back. I can't give up my dream because I know that if I do this I could regret it my entire life. Also she can't leave her family because this isn't her dream.

As I have said, some decisions are great, life changing and awesome, but this kind of decision comes with a price.