My (24, M) girlfriend (21, F) of one year wants me to quit my job and move back to our home state

A little back story on me:

I had gotten laid off during the early stages of COVID and when I returned, I knew I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. So, I quit and started planning. I moved, alone, from northern Indiana to Denver, Colorado in July of 2020 with nothing more than what fit in my SUV at the time. I got myself an apartment and started building from the ground up, as I had to buy pretty much all of the furniture other than a bed and TV. I quickly got a job with a relatively new company (less than 30 employees) and started training in a new trade and have since been fully trained and recently promoted to an upper level position. My new position has benefits, such as rent assistance and higher wage, plus I’m in upper management of a rapidly growing company. I’m very proud of myself and the hard work I’ve put in to get where I am now. It wasn’t easy.

The situation:

In January of 2021, I began talking to a girl from back home in Indiana. We connected really well despite the distance between us and in March of 2021, she came to visit me for the first time and brought her mom and one of her two younger sisters along, too. She started to fly out to visit me a week or two at a time about once a month after that and in late April, we officially started dating.

By August, the long distance thing started to really suck (flights got more and more expensive) and she proposed coming for an extended stay – 4 months (December) – to solidify our relationship’s foundation and really see if the relationship would work. I agreed with her and she and her cousin drove her things out in late August.

I didn’t think much about it at the time, but I’m surprised she wanted to basically move in so quickly because she always talked about her close-knit family. I guess I ignored it at the time because I was happy to finally have some company in my new state.

During the four months, her mom and sister came to visit multiple times and we also made several trips back to Indiana. Her and and her are both very emotional people when it comes to just about anything and they would always cry when meeting up or dropping off at the airport. She would also occasionally cry during holidays or big family functions that she wasn’t able to attend.

When the December deadline finally came up, she was employed as a nanny with a family in Denver and she said didn’t want to leave me or her job, so she decided to stay. Fast forward to this month:

Completely out of the blue, I get a text from her while she’s in the bathtub. She tells me that she can’t live this far away from family anymore and at the end of the lease in October, she wants to move back to Indiana.

She told me that my job and the active Colorado lifestyle that I love (I do frequent hiking) can wait but memories with family cannot.

I left Indiana because I didn’t see any growth in myself for too long and I knew I needed to struggle to better myself. My mental health wasn’t the best in Indiana either, even with family around, but I feel so much more like myself out in Colorado. I feel like if I moved back, I’d inevitablely fall right back into the same rut I was in before. At the same time, I do love this girl and we’ll have been together for a year and a half by the time the lease is up. I haven’t really connected with someone in the way I have with her.

I tried to explain my thoughts on things with her and asked her to compromise with me and to give me one more year to see where my career path goes and to better prepare mentally and financially for yet another move across the country. She told me no and that she wouldn’t want to do long distance of I decide not to go.

Is it fair for her to ask me to give up my career and everything I’ve built because she suddenly decided she can’t live so far away from home? Would I be a fool for leaving Colorado to go back with her?

Please help! 🙁