Did you never talk about your plans after the PhD? It seems a bit odd to me that expectations go this far apart. I would expect that my girlfriend can tell if I plan a career or consider to be a stay-at-home dad. It's a bit like the question whether or not you plan to have children.

I would also not restrict the search to PhD graduates. I think it is pretty natural to lose patience when your partner is about to finish a PhD. This phase just sucks for the partner. With a PhD you might understand that better but it does not make it easier as it will affect your life. People tolerate that only for a limited amount of time. Most professors (male + female) I worked with had a partner with a non-academic job. I guess it just makes things a lot easier with children as academia is very time consuming with often unpredictable working times, frequent relocations and temporary contracts.

I would rather clearly communicate that you are planning a career in academia. Some will like it, others won't...regardless of a PhD ;)

I agree with Treeoflife. At least in biology this is quite common. You apply for a funded project, therefore there is usually already a project proposal or at least a rough plan. You might have scope in how you address the respective objectives but it is usually not completely up to you. I think that's fair, as your supervisor is at least paying for the materials you are using to conduct your research. It depends a bit on the supervisors. I also had a clear planning when I started but my supervisors are open to input and some things will be abandoned while other side projects will arise. Simply depending on how it goes. Other PhD students will maybe use stuff I've done or I will help other PhD students with their experiments (really large experiments are sometimes just not feasible for one person) but in return I will then have my name on their publications if I contributed. I think that is pretty common for a biology PhD. Letting other PhD students continue with projects you started is maybe not nice, but it happens. As long as your supervisor acknowledges your contributions to that project by including you in potential publications I see nothing wrong with that. However, especially if we are talking about the establishment of a method in the lab, then this is just how it is. It would be a bit stupid to let 5 people establish the same method. We have one student here establishing Crispr/Cas for a certain organism and I am sure once it is working, other students will use the method as well and use his results to save themselves time.

Ah ok. Didn't know that!

I don't see why that should change anything. Your relationship status has no influence on the application. It's just personal information such as birth date or gender. You could have been married when applying and divorced again by the time you start or sign anything. That's life.

It is a bit unusual to go from single to married in a couple of months but it will not affect the admission.

Funny. It sounded a lot like you are a bit unhappy and needed a valve to exhale in your first post ;)

Anyway, feel encouraged and virtually patted on the back.