Obviously I don't know you, but take what you can from my similar experience.
I moved from Calgary to Toronto to be with my ex. Like you and your partner we had lived together and then had to live apart (she had an opportunity in Toronto). Also like you, I had some pretty significant reservations about it. Unfortunately, I believe that the time we spent living apart did nothing but teach us that we could survive without one another. Once I made the move she had already developed a whole other life with a different group of friends and my arrival seemed to unbalance what she had in place.
Since I sacrificed my own opportunities to support hers, I think that she felt guilty and it skewed our relationship (I also think that guilt eventually turned into contempt for the source of her guilt, but that is just an amateur psychological diagnosis from a biased party). It took me a very long time to develop new friendships and that put a ton of pressure on her. Our relationship basically disintegrated and she eventually moved away from Toronto for an internship overseas and I experienced by far the worst year and a half of my life as I ended up alone and friendless thousands of kilometers from home.
Fortunately, your situation is not quite so risky since you are within driving distance of family and friends (though, I wouldn't count on those friendships lasting).
My advice:
Don't do it. She sounds inflexible. We're all risk averse and worried about losing what we have, but try to remember to consider the possibility that you will find someone who wants to live where you want to live, or at least someone who you would follow to the end of the world.
Are you doing it anyway? Okay here is what I can offer from my own experience:
-get involved in the community right away... join a beer league team or a karate class or something so that you are developing an independent social network
-have a serious and frank discussion with her about what you feel she is asking you to do... it's convenient to avoid it, but neither of you will actually be able to ignore it
-also make sure that she realizes that her life is going to change too, it is possible that she likes her freedom and independence from you more than she realizes
-stay in tight contact with people back home... you're going to get bored and/or lonely and if you bring those problems to her every time it is going to change how she sees you. Right now you two have plenty of space from each other, that space is going to disappear and you're going to want to keep negativity out of the much smaller box you'll find yourself in .
-Here is the advice that I wish I had taken:
The problems in a relationship don't go away. You just learn to deal with them. I honestly thought that making a big romantic gesture would prove that our issues were just small things that would disappear, but I was wrong. Our issues were just a consequence of how our personalities fit and living together again (for me, the second round of living together was far different as we had changed over the course of 14 months apart) was great in a lot of ways but it exacerbated some problems too much.
Sorry for the long post (catharsis!). Hope it helps some and good luck either way
