He wants to move back to his country - decision making.

So you have decided then. You pick living next to your parents, over the love of your life and future family.

I don’t reckon he IS the love of your life. If he was, you would have made an effort by now to truly get to know his country and culture. You haven’t. He has with yours though.

There is no right or wrong in this. You are not wrong, and neither is he (even though many on here try to make out it is). Hopefully you will find true love one day. It’s worth waiting for!

FFS! Please don't do this.

Spot on. When I read about childcare costs and that there even is the saying heating or eating, makes me understand why the men from UK over here are adapting quickly to family life.

I have two friends who had children abroad, in USA and France. In both cases, the children, now adults or teens, consider themselves to be American and French. The French kids are bilingual but would consider French their first language.

So this goes beyond the relative advantages of child-rearing in Scotland/Denmark and into the very identity of your children.

The friend who moved to USA is currently getting divorced, would love to return to UK, but her adult child is American and wants to live in America. She doesn't want to be so far from them.

I can't see the other friend ever retiring back to the UK for the same reasons.

This is a big big decision for the shape of your future. Similarly for your DP of course.

I wouldn't want my children to live near cold grandparents. I wouldn't want to live near cold in laws. I wouldn't give up my career and family and friends and hobbies to live in a country I'd only visited once.

How often has he gone home in the time you've known him?

I think many previous posters have been unkind to your partner, assuming he has bad intentions based on his change of heart. You don’t seem to understand his change of heart about where to live either. Maybe it’s to do with the next stage of his life. He’s looking at having children and settling down and he doesn’t want to do that here. I have had similar thoughts myself. I moved to the UK ten years ago and I was perfectly happy here until recently. Not being able to afford to buy a house and paying a large chunk of your salary for childcare are crazy to me. I’m from a Nordic country where most people are homeowners and childcare is 50-100 euros a month! And children play outside and walk home from school alone and are home alone while parents are at work etc and it’s all perfectly normal and safe.

This. All the feelings that you have about moving abroad are likely what he feels too. You had a few years in Italy and went home. He's had a few years in Scotland and now wants to go home. You could be a truly bilingual bicultural family with a foot in each country. DK is so near and so accessible.

I think this is a very valid reason to not want your kids to grow up in Scotland to be fair. Wiith poverty comes lots of other issues such as anti-social behaviour which is already a much bigger issue in the UK compared to Denmark. It's quite a stark difference between the freedom Danish kids have from a much younger age than UK kids do because the risk of being a victim of a crime is so much lower in Denmark. It's definitely a serious consideration for most parents and it will be for you too. For him it's obviously a no brainer as he has experience of both places and stronger ties to the safer option that will most likely benefit his future kids more. No idea why he's throwing Ireland into the mix though but it does show that his ties to Scotland are a lot weaker than you thought.

I am not saying she should. But it’s only fair to see his side too. I met my DH in the UK where we both stayed at the time. We lived in opposite sides of the world. I stayed for 6 years, and he knew I would want to go back to my country which we did. He had a great job in the UK, to say the least. So he had to start over. It’s not easy. I had stayed in his country for a while before I met him though, so knew the culture, people and humour etc. And it has helped SO much, now that we have children (they are young adults). I think both should get to know each others countries if possible before having children. I can see both sides. It’s not black or white unfortunately.

But she met him in her country. He chose to move there and took the risk of starting a relationship with someone local. That was his choice. Why should she be forced into a reciprocal arrangement?. I met my husband in my hometown not his. I was never going to move to his hometown ever and they are only 2 hours away.

It seems like neither of you are completely happy with the idea of living in the other person's country, so I think this will be something that keeps rearing up in the future as one of you will always be the person that has given something up to make the other happy. Having kids will magnify that resentment. I would call it a day now. Be grateful for the nice time you both had and the love you shared, but if you are serious about wanting children and wanting to be around your own family for that, then cut your ties now and look to the next chapter with someone new.

Not saying you are wrong. But to be fair, he HAS lived in your country for many years.
You have not tried living in his.

Just adding - the fact that DP says that he’d compromise by moving to Eire instead suggests there is an issue with his perception of the UK that has changed in the last few weeks (again, has something happened at work, is his job less secure, is he fucked off with what Labour and the SNP are doing?)

I can understand a desire to move back to Denmark and be with his family, even if he is asking you to choose between him/his family and your family…. But I don’t understand the logic of moving to Eire at all as it means his desire to leave Scotland is precisely that - a desire to leave Scotland NOT a desire to ‘return’ home. I think you need to dig deep and have a very honest conversation as to what is really going on in his head.

I only read your comments so apologies if I'm repeating.

My husband and I immigrated to Scotland from the states almost 20 years ago now and had our children here. We aren't only children, but we have the only grandchildren on both sides and for various reasons, his sister and my brother aren't going to be in a position to help either of our sets of parents. So they just... won't have support at all as we are too far and our siblings are too incapable. That is hard to live with now that we are reaching that point with our parents getting older.

However... I'd think nothing of this if my parents were in Denmark and would just go back and forth regularly. I have lots of friends from various countries in Europe and they go back and forth in the school holidays and it's lovely. We only go back to the states every couple of years and our parents try to each come out once a year. It's nothing like the relationships my friends have for their kids for sure.

In the situation you're in, it's trickier as you are from different places so the emotional attachment is different for you both. Him saying 'I want to move back within 10 years' is a very theoretical wish - any number of things can happen in the next 10 years and who knows who we will all be by then. If he's saying 'I want my children to be culturally Danish and born there that's a today conversation - something that he might like to do once the kids are grown up is a really different thing.

There's no real reason to pick Scotland versus Denmark that anyone can advise you on. They're both lovely and safe places to live, you have family and friends in both places, and you are both employable in either. Usually it's an easier call for one of those reasons. So it's really just about both of you being open to picturing both futures and seeing what feels right - there's no version of this where you are both 100% 'winning'.

I'd say that it's very isolating to live in a country you aren't 'from' and it can feel even harder when you have children who are more at home 'here' than 'there' - so maybe thinking seriously about children is what prompted this in his head. Being fun and young and travelling is great but once you're talking about mortgages and school systems and things as simple as what foods your kids will grow up eating it all gets much less fun quickly!

One thing I will say OP as someone who has lived there is I would only consider it if it was Copenhagen . A lot of Denmark is lovely , but it isn’t exciting , it’s ordered and a lot of it is quite dull and jobs where you wouldn’t need some Danish are fewer. Copenhagen I love and you can get by very well without Danish .You mentioned your hobbies- Copenhagen has a great comedy house that is all in English - with kids it’s an unusual situation, it has fantastic and cheap childcare but most parents work - so the amount of ‘activities’ out there for daytime babies and toddlers to me seemed very low compared to UK -being honest Copenhagen was a place I would have been very happy to stay even if I was no longer in the relationship , but we are all different and I’m not mega family minded ( in the sense of relatives apart from my own children) I certainly wouldn’t go to Eire over Copenhagen.

I wouldn’t have kids first when you don’t know what you’re going to be doing or where you’re going to be living. Bringing children into the situation isn’t ideal.

Agree with this - if he says the relationship is over unless you are willing to move to Denmark, then the inference is that he has actually decided to go back. I would wantto understand what is behind this sea change - has something happened at work, is he hacked off with the way things are going economically/politically in the UK, has he had a conversation with family back home and had his conscience pricked by something they’ve said? If may be that this sudden change is a knee jerk reaction to something he’s not acknowledged consciously or hasn’t shared.

Either way, it’s not a conversation about ‘whether’ you would consider living there, it seems to be a thinly veiled ultimatum that has come out of the blue. I think he needs to explain his thinking more and leave space to reach the compromise many have suggested - you remain in Scotland but spend summers in Denmark as any children grow up so they have access to their Danish roots and language too. This would be such a privileged position to be in, raising children with a foot in each country and access to the EU for their university education etc.

I can't stop thinking about you and your dilemma, OP.

You could move to Denmark now, with water-tight, iron-clad contraception, and see how you get on. You might love it. You might pick up the language, find a great job, make lots of friends and start new hobbies.

You will also see your boyfriend in his home environment. See his family dynamics over more than just a week. I didn't pay close enough attention to my ex's family dynamics (we didn't live near them, the language/culture barrier was still there in the early years) and in hindsight I really should have done because they were very telling.

You'll get a feel for how things work in Denmark and get to judge for yourself whether it's the place where you'd like to spend the rest of your life.

I think you'd need to give it a couple of years to give the newness a chance to wear off and the reality of daily life to sink in. You'd also need to see how the relationship develops in the new context. The dynamics will certainly shift as you risk becoming more dependent on him, financially and socially. You'd need to do your best to make your own friends and have a job that could support you and any future children, should you decide to stay and then later down the line split up.

Then, and only then, would you be able to make a decision about where you can see the rest of your life.

At that point you'd be on a more equal footing, having both experienced the other's country.

However you may find that you still feel the way you do now, only you'll be two years older.

Breaking up and starting over then won't be any easier than now. It would arguably be even harder as you'd have to move back home, look for a job etc. You will probably be in even deeper with your dp by then and might find the sunk costs fallacy will keep you in Denmark, even if it's not what you really want.

But it is probably the only way that I, personally, would be prepared to consider moving to Denmark.

As Loopytiles says, don't start trying for a baby until you're sure.