Moved to Aus from the Uk

[mummaAusUk]

Hi,
I'm posting in here as I don't have anyone I can't talk to who won't judge. I moved to Aus from the UK with my partner of 10 years and 2 children. We've been here a year now and I've really struggled since we arrived. I've made friends and really tried but I just feel like this isn't for me and I made a big mistake. I miss my family so much and I miss being able to share my little ones with family.

I've tried explaining this to my partner and told him how unhappy I am but he just keeps telling me how much he loves his job and that I need to give it longer. I've explained that I know I want to go home and no amount of time is going to change that. One of my children also wants to go home and isn't loving life here. My partner as said he resents me for trying to ruin his dreams and that I should head home with the kids and he will visit. That really hit hard and I don't understand how he can say that. We're such a close family. im struggling so much. I feel so alone and upset.

sorry that was meant for @Scar88!

Geez Louise!

I'll start by saying I'm Australian...and I haven't lived in Australia for 30 years. Why? Because I don't like it, I prefer the UK.

If I'd had a pound for everytime over the last 30 years that I've been told I must be mad etc...I'd have about £20K. Seriously.

I ended up in the UK because my parents bought me here when I was 14. I had no choice, I hated it here for about a decade, we never had any trips 'home' in that time. Got divorced at 25, decided to go back 'home' to Oz, permanently. Lasted just over a year before I was back in the UK.

I'll add that my father hated Oz, my parents dragged us back and forth between the two countries THREE TIMES before he finally got his way. It was a shit stressful childhood and frankly I'll never forgive my parents for what they put me and my brothers through. My parents divorced when I was 21 and my mother moved back to Oz. Been there ever since.

So yeah, I'm living proof that you can change your mind about a country - even the one you were born in. Australia isn't paradise, it's a lot tougher to live there in many ways than the UK. The people are a lot more 'blunt' (which can be seen as rude) and yes we have the sun, but where I'm from we can have times when it monsoon rains down night and day for weeks at a time - funnily enough, that's never shown on any of the 'go live in Oz' programmes...

If I was you @mummaAusUk I'd move back to the UK. Like many others have said, I wouldn't wait any longer, before the kids get too settled and you are then stuck. My father was 'stuck' in Oz for a decade and our family life never really recovered from it. My parents alienated us from extended family on both sides and those relationships never recovered, either. All my grandparents, all my aunts and uncles (and I had over 10) are now deceased and my cousins on both sides are complete strangers to me. I'm in my late 50s, and I have no family in the UK. It can feel lonely at times, but I'd still rather be here than in Oz.

@mummaAusUkI haven’t read past the beginning of your thread because it reminds me of all of the threads I posted when I was in your situation.

Being told that you should be grateful and that Australia is the bees knees. And that you will be living in the gutter if you come back to the UK.

I was ripped to shreds when I posted. People who have never been telling me how great it is. I used to ask them if they wanted any help to emigrate and they always had a reason why that would not work for them. . An elderly mother or something. I was also attacked by two posters in particular who did live in Australia who thought I should be happier than I was. Both now have returned to the UK.

I think your DH is being very selfish. He's leaving you alone for long stretches of time, and broken your agreement to give it a one year trial and then guilt tripped you for not wanting the same as him. He's fine with you staying and being miserable and missing your family as long as he's happy. I'd get out before I found myself trapped.

I think in general men are less fussed about family than women, and he lacks the empathy to put himself in your shoes.

Hi, you sound like a deeply loving mum and partner. The fact you’ve made friends, supported your family in a huge move, and are being honest about how you're feeling — that takes a lot of courage. It's okay to feel heartache, to feel out of place, and to want something different from your partner. You're not ruining anything — you're being human, and you're trying to find a way to live with honesty and love for your whole family.

1. This is not about failure — it’s about fit.

Here might good for us and full of opportunity, but that doesn’t mean it’s home for everyone. Missing your family, your culture, your support system — that’s not something time necessarily “fixes.” You’re recognising a deep truth in yourself. That’s brave.

1. Your partner's words likely came from fear, not cruelty.

When he says you should go home and he’ll visit — it sounds harsh, but it may be coming from panic. He’s probably terrified of losing his dream or his family — and he’s maybe lashing out because he doesn’t know what to do. It doesn’t make what he said okay, but it is explainable.

1. You don’t have to choose either guilt or resentment.

This is a shared family dilemma. Your voice matters. If you keep sacrificing your happiness for someone else’s dream, you risk long-term resentment. Same for him. But there is a middle path — and it might involve some kind of phased return, longer holiday back to Aus, trial separation to feel things out — together. Not just splitting paths.

1. Have a structured, not just emotional, conversation.

Consider a sit-down where you plan a time-limited return to Aus (say 3 months) with the kids — not as a breakup, but as a chance to reconnect with what’s missing. Frame it as a trial to understand what you both really need, with dates and intentions. That might help shift the dynamic from "you're leaving me" to "we're exploring options".

1. Get emotional support — regularly.

Whether it’s a local expat support group, therapist, or even weekly voice notes with a friend from home, you need holding too. You’re carrying a lot — mother, partner, emotional anchor. That’s too much to do alone. And you shouldn’t have to.

Hope it all works out for you, take care x

How about he supports you more? And why is it all on you to go home and care for the kids it's his responsibility also, to care for the children and if you are living separately is he going to be sending money to you? Is he going to be moving on with his life? Are you separating with you going home? And X2 lots of housing costs and bills will need consideration, is it even possible because if you are not together you will need finacial support as a single parent or him contributing all these questions need to be put to him! It's not as simple as just moving you need to think logically also. I feel for you I didn't settle when we moved for up north to down south very quickly but I also didn't have a supportive family so I soon just got used to the idea I needed to adjust and look at different opportunities within my new area and adapt.

Absolutely this- go while he is in agreement to you and the children going
and before the children have lived there longer than they were in the UK

OP I would strongly suggest sticking it out. As pp have commented, the first couple of years can be tough while you're settling in. But it does get easier after that. Be honest: have you truly given Aus a chance, or has your homesickness clouded your view of the place?

Breaking up your family should really be the last resort, once all other options have been explored. I'd advise you to give it another year and then see how you're feeling at that point. Try to build a social network for yourself. You might be surprised at how that changes your view of the place.

Yes, this a very good point. We constantly run Britain down, but to people like Bill Bryson this island is a sort of paradise. He loves the history and culture. He loves London and Oxford and Edinburgh. He loves visiting Shakespeare’s birth place, seeing where the Brontes lived, doing the Jane Austen tour in Bath, etc. The great Australian poet and critic Clive James moved from Australia to the U.K. because he wanted to live and write surrounded by that cultural history.

Because we live here, we take Roman ruins and Norman castles and the Oxford and Cambridge universities for granted. Britain has massive faults. It’s dingy and overcrowded, and the houses are too small and too expensive, but it’s an extremely interesting place. You can see the Oxford colleges where Oscar Wilde studied, or the Oxford pub where Tolkien read the Lord of the Rings to C S Lewis. You can wander round Cambridge and see where Issac Newton and Charles Darwin and Byron and Bertrand Russell lived. If you are interested in art and literature and culture and history, then the U.K. is a treasure chest. Of course, if you live on a run down housing estate in Luton, the idea of Britain as a paradise seems laughable. But to someone who grew up in rural Canada and is now studying art in central London - drinking in Soho bars and visiting the galleries and museums, etc - Britain probably seems the coolest, most interesting place in the world. It’s all relative.

Not everyone likes beaches and hot sunshine btw. Personally, I loathe the heat.

OP, you’ll struggle to convince anyone that Australia isn’t paradise. The way that Brits who have never lived there bang onto us for coming back to the UK is crazy.

It sounds like the OP loves her extended family - parents, siblings...- and she'd love to share family occasions and Sunday BBQs with them. Good for her and kind of refreshing in Mumsnet

Not everyone focuses on their "little family" only and pushes everybody else out.

I agree with @Piffle11 100%

He has shown you who he really is and is choosing his hobbies over his children.

My partner has said he resent me for trying to ruin his dreams and that I should head home with the kids and he will visit.

He said he can't find a job like this back home and all his hobbies are here

I can't work yet due to no family and support and I'm not willing to put in childcare. We agreed this before I came as my DH is also not keen.

He's got it all just as he wants it hasn't he? He sold you a happy-ever-after but really you're just there to facilitate his lifestyle.

That's correct he's always been a very close partner which this is why it's such a hard decision. We're usually a family unit and we work together. I was enthusiastic about coming here originally as I thought it would be a positive thing

Does this sound right: when you agree on things (when he gets his way) everything in your relationship is wonderful? He's caring, fun, you love him and you get on really well.

When he doesn't get his way it's a different story.

Look at the power balance in your relationship.

As soon as he's in a position of doing something he doesn't want to do, of sacrificing his hobbies for his children, he turns cold and tells you all to leave for the UK.

This is the man you want to marry.

It would be 3 years until training is finished. And even then I honestly don't think he will want to leave as he has said he probably wouldn't. I asked for a time scale we can put on it and he basically said we may as well stay. I just get the feeling he doesn't ever want to return. We can't find a compromise. I think he will just keep dragging me along "give it another year" until we've been here that long the kids can't remember different

Your instincts are correct, stop ignoring your gut feeling.

He will keep putting off a decision with 'give it another few months and then we'll go back'.

He had no intention of going back. It's his way or the highway. Right now, he's trying to have his cake & eat it - keep you all with him while he does what he wants, but if you force him to choose he won't choose you or the children.

He's told you this. It wasn't a random comment. He has shown you who he is and what his priorities are. You are not his priority, neither are the children.

Stop dithering and worrying about feeling guilty. Go home. It won't be you breaking up the family unit, it will be him because he is the one choosing to abandon his family.

Stop choosing someone who doesn't care about you or his children. Choose yourselves. Value yourselves. Respect your selves.

Go home. Live your lives in a loving and supportive environment with people who care about you.

Immigration is not easy and one year is just not enough. You need to try building your own life outside children/family circle, find your tr8be, etc.

I lived in Australia for a few years, got citizenship, and came back to the UK.

I've also lived in three other countries for varying timespans - from 1 year to almost a decade - and am now back in the UK.

People moan about the UK, but it is still an amazing place for all kinds of reasons that are easy to take for granted until you try something different.

OP, you're in a tricky bind here. My job in Australia brought me into daily contact with women of all generations and the older ones often talked about being homesick but return to their country of origin no longer being an option because their children and grandchildren were now firmly Australian.

I found Australia just too bland. People imagine it like a holiday destination, but it's like a weird holiday in a 1980s shopping mall. Just because people speak English doesn't mean the culture is in any way similar. It's more like a sort of sanitised America.

It is also sad when you're enjoying something but realise that everyone you wished you could share it with is literally on the other side of the planet... and in some cases, you can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times you can realistically expect to see them again in your/their lifetime.

There are of course some things I miss about the place - snorkelling, mainly! (have you tried it?) But I don't miss flying cockroaches 🤣 or the weird news media... or the fact that night closes in by 7pm at the height of summer (and that's when the cockroaches crawl out of the drains...)

A year doesn't seem long, especially for your kids, to know whether you might settle into life there eventually. But the compromise of being so far away from so much that you love is always going to be there.

I totally sympathise op, we moved to Canada with 2 dc, lived just outside Vancouver which regularly comes in the top 5 of most desirable places to live in the world.
It just wasn't for me, we gave it 5 years, partly due to my ex's job, I ended up on antidepressants.
I had friends (all other expats) a job I liked, lived in a lovely house but just got more and more unhappy. I don't think it helped being able to facetime, watch iplayer etc, I think it just increased my homesickness.
Luckily for me my ex agreed to come back, we split later on but that wasn't because we came back. I have never regretted coming back, I regret going in the first place but it did give us some experiences we would never of otherwise had and my dc have good memories of it.

I think you do need to give it a bit longer though, your eldest is still young enough to settle back in the UK if you give it another year or 2. My dc were 11 and 9 when we came back and settled very quickly. At least that way you can say you did try, I know people who ping ponged back and forth not waiting long enough each time to be able to make a rational decision.

Dolphinosep0tatoes · Today 15:13
I agree with everything in your post.

He's told OP clearly what his plan is. She can't hear it though.

If their youngest is 1.5yrs then they moved when they were 6mths old? The little one has already spent more life in Oz than the UK.

The window of opportunity to leave is not slowly closing but about to slam shut.

Well, someone here is always going to lose. Why should you be unhappy there but then equally why should he be unhappy back home (now he's had a taste of the life he wants he'll likely be miserable back home).

Sometimes people just want to different things out of life and yes it's harder with kids involved but really it's only you that has the issue, its quite likely your children will settle and build lives down under. This is a catch 22 for you but only for you.

Some people love their DPs as well as their family.

As things stand the only way to get her aunty bbqs back is to push out her DP. How much of a win is that?

I’m thinking the same. I moved home from another country and it took at least two years before i stopped thinking what have I done. Now I can see it was the best thing for me.

I’d give it at least another year. I can understand why your partner wants to finish his training and I think if he returned home without completing his training it may be something he would always regret.

Does he love her?

why did you emigrate in the first place?

She’s posted seventy times, she’s already explained that.

That’s a silly attitude. Neither my sister or I emigrated, but my niece married a KIWI she met in the UK and moved to NZ. My son met his partner in Australia when he was there on a work trip and eventually decided to join him, so they are there for the foreseeable. You can’t hold your children back from pursuing their dreams and you never know what opportunities will arise.

OP, I would get on a flight and move back ASAP so your 6 year old can start the new school year in September. Seriously, waiting another few months to see how you feel?
If you return to the UK, your DP can then come and visit for Christmas holidays and then you can start to see how you both feel about the separation. Take it a term at a time with your child settled in school and you having the ability to think straight with family support whilst you have a toddler. Nothing has to be forever with regards to your relationship and perhaps he will miss you all so much he decides to return too. Nothing has to be permanent and no decision has to be the final one. BUT if you stay in OZ and your DP changes his mind about you returning to the UK with the children then that IS permanent and you are stuck there for another 16.5 years.

I would move home. Even if you don't do it now, it sounds like you will in the future because that's where you want to be, so you're just delaying the inevitable. Such a big difference between being homesick, and knowing that's where you want to be. You don't need to stick it out if you're unhappy. You've visited home and it's reinforced how you feel. You're ultimately not the one breaking up your family and you are allowed to be happy. The whole concept of 'sticking it out' and being miserable in the meantime is mental.