After 17 years of supporting my wife's career, am I wrong to expect the same?

any sacrifices that have been made have been for the benefit of your entire family, not just your wife. I understand why you feel that you should be free to go and pursue your career now. If that’s what you really want then just do it, if you don’t it’ll probably cause all sorts of resentment that will poison things in the longterm. But I don’t think you can expect your wife to instantly loved the idea, as I’m sure you wouldn’t if she’d left the family home for a year.

If it was a woman wanting to leave her DH, teens and 8 year old for year everyone would say don’t be s9 bloody stupid.

Its selfish to disrupt the kids. You go and take on the responsibility for travelling back monthly to every 6 weeks. Even if it is only for a few day at a time and longer time during holiday. They can come out to see you.

People all over the world make short and even longer term arrangements like this work.

Don't think of it as tit for tat, its taking turns to support each other. She doesn't owe you, you don't owe her, it's a partnership.

"There are times when it’s 70/30, there are times when it’s 60/40"

Michelle Obama

What have you sacrificed exactly? You have a great career, 3 healthy kids, a good relationship. If you’d like to negotiate some time living in ND that’s fair enough.

If you haven’t been happy with the choices that you made and you resent some of them, the time to say it was then. It can’t be recalibrated now with this choice as form of ‘compensation’.

When you commit to having kids you kind of are committing not to go and live in Mexico on your own for a toot. Ditto getting a dog. You could call that a sacrifice but it’s also a gain isn’t it? It’s a balance.

The question is if the sacrifice in this case turned out to be your marriage not your career, would you still be willing to make it?

Frankly if you have two teens and an 8 year old you categorically did not make all the sacrifices for the past 18 years. They didn’t appear in a bubble of magic smoke.

Also, be aware OP that a lot of MN don’t like men. You may have gotten different responses if you’d posted as a woman saying it was your husband who didn’t want you to go.

Going away for a year is very different to going away on a conference for two weeks and occasional work trips here and there though isn’t it?

Just because you agree with something 17 years ago, does not mean you can never reevaluate your agreement. A decision made may no longer serve you and it is perfectly valid to do want to change things.

Plenty of women take the foot off the pedal of their careers while kids are young and then want to switch it up later and realise their full career potential. This is really no different. The OP is only getting so much stick for it because a) he is a man and b) a high earner.

I think you should go OP. My only caveat being that (with your wife’s blessing) you ask your kids how they’d feel about a new arrangement for one year. They may leap at the chance to visit you in LA or they may not. But I would at least try to involve them in the decision making and neither you nor your wife should sway them either way.

You keep doing this. You keep saying how you feel then trying to add something to make it sound like you care how this works out for your wife’s career. This ‘I thought if we all moved it would hurt my wife’s career and I really don’t want to do that’ is just bullshit in the same paragraph as what can be paraphrased as ‘you don’t understand!! She’s away for months a year in total!! Months!! I do it all! She owes me!!’

friends at school are moving because he took a job where he could get one, 6 hours flight away, they’ve done seeing him weekends and on the odd week up there and down there and it’s not fair to the family, they are upping sticks and moving. They make decisions together for the family. Unlike you.

You seem to be missing that you agreed, that is the crucial point. If you weren’t happy, you could and should have said no long before now. She doesn’t owe you anything here.

Tell that to the kids. A year is not a bleep in time.

If this is all it takes to ruin a marriage, it is not a good one.

If not doing this one year job is sacrificing everything then just fucking drop them all like hot potatoes and go. You sound like a sulky petulant child.

stay. Make time to see your parents more, go to therapy and get over this sulk.

Still, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel that our relationship is unfair.

It is not unfair. This is how many families operate; and it is usually the other way round. Either is fine. It is about sharing tasks as needed.

The worrying aspect is your bitterness and resentment that has built up and is now focused on your job offer which makes it difficult for the two of you to take rational decisions about this.

I do not think you have anything to be resentful about. What you have done is not special in any way. It is no more than most parents (more usually the mother) do to share out the tasks to make sure their children are properly supported.

I think you need to stop feeling hard done by ... you are not ... and start reframing the whole thing. Two people who have managed family and work in one way have now been presented with the possibility of doing things differently. Neither comes to the table with greater advantage than the other ... neither has anything to be resentful about ... both have done their bit in their different ways.

Unless you can ditch the bitterness this is going to break up your family.

You have used the word "smaller" in reference to both your careers (yours as you think it is and hers as you think it might become) and this is very telling. It is a very loaded word. Your role in the home is equally valuable to any outside career. There is nothing smaller about it, whoever does it.

There are pros and cons to all of you in accepting your job offer and the outcome from this will only be positive if you jettison your resentment. If you come to the table unable to have a reasoned discussion of the pros and cons, it is doomed to failure and it will be your children who will suffer. You have to find a way of pulling together on this and properly listening to both sides of the argument.

And you cannot expect your wife to instantly leap at the status quo being turned on its head. She needs time to process this and a husband who is not seething with resentment.

First two sentences especially, but post absolutely nails it.

I think you are being unreasonable. If you go, you will leave her in the lurch with her job and the kids and it will affect your marriage. Many relationships won't survive being apart for a year especially if one party doesn't want it.

It isn't clear if you wife's job will work the same if she is unable to travel. I know she has been travelling regularly for years and you have helped make this possible, but presumably this is what you agreed, as was you moving to Spain to settle. You cannot continue to hold those things over her when they were decisions you made together.

You are already both very big earners, you really don't need to do this. I am frankly amazed you want to be away from your wife and kids for a year (and so much further away rom your elderly parents).

Your parents fulfilment is also important, even if they don’t have to financially, this seems to be an important move for OP. A year is a bleep in time.

@joshkenn I’m going to buck the trend here… GO!

it’s a year, not forever. We don’t tell members of the armed services, oil rig workers, pilots, or film stars that they can’t have kids or should change their roles. We make it work.

I also have kids, and am the main breadwinner and DH has had to follow me places too. if he asked me to do the reverse I would do it in a heartbeat (and take a sabbatical from work too if needed).

Your wife is established in her career, as long as the kids are well settled / no issues from them, then it’s an adventure… indeed I’d be taking the kids with me in your scenario.

But you should expect that all three kids and your wife also go for at least six months.

I would not pull a 13 and 15 yo kids out of school for 6 months. 8 indeed will probably manage, but I believe it's the most significant school year in Spain for the 15yo, really not the optinal time for 6 months out of the system.

Honestly I think you’re unreasonable OP, a year is a long time to be away from your family, especially the 8 year old, and the comparison to your wife travelling isn’t really fair.

Presumably she has always asked if these trips, relocating etc is okay with you and you have said yes? You have asked and she has said no- she’s allowed to say no. My husband travels similarly to your wife for work and I’m okay with that, but if he turned round tomorrow and said he had plans to disappear for a year the answer would be no, regardless of how much money he would earn, the answer would be no. There is a vast difference between the two things and it goes far beyond your “but it’s my turn now” thinking especially when you have a family. It sounds like you as a family are already wealthy with a great income- your kids don’t need more money or more stuff, they need present parents.

I really dislike the tit for tat mentality that the OP and some PPs are using to justify spending a year away from the family. I don't blame you for wanting to take the opportunity OP but your wife doesn't owe you anything. My DH travels for his work. I knew this when we met and I also relocated once we married. His job couldn't move where mine could. It made sense. In the future we will look at any relocation decisions together and discuss what benefits us all, on balance, as a family. No score sheet and manipulation, that makes for a shit relationship.

This
how would you feel if she proposed moving to the US for a year and leaving you with the kids?

what things would worry you about that arrangement? Now put yourself in her shoes. You’re making it sound transactional (“now it’s my turn to be prioritised”) but perhaps she is saying no based on what is best for your whole family, not just herself