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AIBU?

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Original poster

To have a weird sense that I am not living where I am meant to be?

174 replies

ocelot41 · 12/10/2014 18:57

OK, I know this is a total First World Problem. I have a healthy DS, a job which is ok ( not great, but ok), and a decent relationship with DH. Lots and lots to be thankful for.

But... I never wanted to live where I do. I have lived in places which I genuinely loved in the past and it brought something really important to my day to day life.

It isn't awful but it just doesn't feel like my home and never has - it was always meant to be temporary. But ten years on, we are still here. It works for everyone else and DH thinks I have a bad case of 'the grass is always greener' but... I don't love it. It doesn't feel right.

I have just turned 40 and the thought that this is it for the rest of my life just makes me want to cry. Does anyone else get this?

WWYD?

OP posts:
Castlemilk · 12/10/2014 20:06

You need to move.

Place is VITALLY important.

I have a different issue - we have moved lots of times, and there are so many places that I miss, for different reasons, and friends too - scattered everywhere: we'll NEVER be able to live somewhere and be at peace, really - there will always be friends we end up far away from and some aspect of place which is missing, and which we will crave. Currently we're more rural, and by the sea, which is wonderful... but I miss being in a bigger city, one or two cities specifically! We will finally end up in one of those big cities - I look forward to it already, and already feel the sense of loss I'll have then for the coast :)

The point is, though, that all our moves have very much taken place into consideration, and we have followed jobs or opportunities to places which we would also like to move. As I get older, I'm ever more aware of how important it is and would now not be willing to move to somewhere I don't want to live in order to take a great job, for instance.

You must move!!

Original poster
ocelot41 · 12/10/2014 20:08

My ideal would be to move out of the SE altogether but that isnt going to happen because of DHs job ( he doesn't want to consider a career change which is fair enough). I have found a range of much better options which are within commutable range ( 30-45 mins) and I thought I was pretty clever in finding two affordable options where the trainline terminates a couple of streets from his office. I am just about to finish a qualification which would give me much more flexibility about where I work. We do discuss it a lot and visit one particular place a lot, but basically he doesnt want to move and he doesn't want to join the boarded of commuters. So... I don't know what to do really.

OP posts:
Original poster
ocelot41 · 12/10/2014 20:10

Hoardes of commuters rather...

OP posts:
Original poster
ocelot41 · 12/10/2014 20:16

I am not a SAHM but did career change before DS was born to get more flexibility and I work from home most of the time. So yes, even without a buggy I feel like I more or less LIVE within a five street radius which perhaps makes it seem worse.

OP posts:
Electriclaundryland · 12/10/2014 20:16

I feel like this. DH and I argued for two years about where to live. He wanted to go back to his home city and me my home town. He won and I'm still not at home here 4years later.

stubbornstains · 12/10/2014 20:17

It doesn't sound like he's willing to compromise Sad.

Original poster
ocelot41 · 12/10/2014 20:18

Hug Electric. Its rotten when you don't share the same dream AT ALL isn't it?

OP posts:
Original poster
ocelot41 · 12/10/2014 20:27

On paper, yes but he's so unhappy about the idea, his heart isn't in it at all. That makes me feel very sad because I spent over 7 years commuting an hour and a half either way across bloody London because this is where he wanted to be, and I have spent five years getting this qualification and v soon could work in the Highlands or Wales or Dales... In theory it would give me so much freedom. It is just all so frustrating.

OP posts:
stubbornstains · 12/10/2014 20:30

Ah, so you made sacrifices so you could lead the life he wanted, and he's refusing to return the favour? I'm starting to think this thread needs to be in "Relationships".....

Original poster
ocelot41 · 12/10/2014 20:38

I think you might be right...

OP posts:
Original poster
ocelot41 · 12/10/2014 20:42

Well it isn't 'refusing'. Its making it clear that it would be under serious duress which makes me feel like the Wicked Witch...

OP posts:
MoreBeta · 12/10/2014 21:26

ocelot - I was born and brought up on a farm in the North, went to university in a cathedral city, lived in central London 13 years, moved out in 2000 when we had DS1 and now live in another cathedral city again. I know exactly what you mean.

I now work from home, walk everywhere as we live in a garden square near the city centre but still it is on the edge of the countryside. We have black and white houses, and cobbled streets, warm beer and cricket fields. I ring the bells in most of the churches in the city and I walked across the river this morning to ring them at a church near us. There were swans and fish and the sun was just rising behind the cathedral as their bells were being rung up. My son goes to the private school there and rows on the river and plays rugby on the fields nearby. It is several hours from London and we bought our house last year for about 10% of the price of a similar house in central London.

Sounds just lovely doesn't it? But there is a major downside.....

For the next week I will commute to London at 6.15 am every day or stay up in town in a budget hotel. I have friends who live in Oxford who commute like that every day or stay up in town. I would never do that long term and your DH is right. It is no life. Plus my wife hates it where we live. Its a beautiful place but economically in the dumps. Our shopping centre is being bulldozed as there are no shops left open in it. Like Brassrubbing said, there is no chance of symphony orchestras here or art galleries and culture. Its all a bit 'nice tea rooms' and slightly parochial, local petty corruption, nobody ever goes outside the county and everybody knows each other.

My feeling is you are right to be unhappy but you need to change your lives - you and DH together not just your house.

That said the London taxi driver who drove me on Friday night said he moved out of the East End of London to somewhere near Portsmouth and he works for 4 long days each week and stays up in town. His wife wants to be near her parents and he says he never thought he would ever want to be out of London as he is London born and bred but now he loves living away and hates driving back to work there. People can change.

Maybe your DH can think of commuting but I personally would choose somewhere like Brighton or Surrey on a really good train line if he does.

Don't leave the South/South East. The economy is not strong elsewhere and your children will have a better chance of jobs where you are.

carlajean · 12/10/2014 21:31

This time last year, I'd not have known what you meant. We had lived in a beautiful part of the countryside for about 20 years, and, while I wasn't very happy there, I thought that it was my fault (how could anybody not love living in the country?). We moved into the center of a city a few months ago it, and I feel great, as though there was a me-shaped hole waiting for me, that didn't exist at our previous place.

SpidersDontWashTheirHands · 12/10/2014 21:33

I've lived in quite a few places and only one has ever felt right. I've been in Scotland for sixteen years, got married here, had kids here but it's not my home and never will be.

We put the house up for sale last week. If it sells we're going to uproot the kids and our lives to chase the idea of living in our my favourite place. I hope to fuck it's the right decision but I don't want to regret not trying.

rattlesnakes · 12/10/2014 21:59

Unless you live really centrally, often it is just as quick commuting on a fast train line as it is commuting within London. I commute from Kent and it takes me a similar amount of time to get to work as friends who live in W. London.

Original poster
ocelot41 · 12/10/2014 22:04

Point taken MoreBeta. I do think mega commutes are no life either. It isn't easy is it?

OP posts:
whatsagoodusername · 12/10/2014 22:17

The worst feeling of homesickness I ever had was when I was about 18-20, sitting on my bed in my childhood home. It wasn't homesickness for a specific place, just that where I was was not where I was meant to be. It was a hideous feeling, because I didn't know where I was meant to be so there wasn't much I could do about it.

MrsMarcJacobs · 12/10/2014 22:21

OP, I moved from London to canada - my partner was more keen on it but I also was over London - now I'm glad to visit it as a tourist. Leaving the London bubble is a difficult decision to make but was surprisingly easy to do. Go for it!

Zucker · 12/10/2014 23:14

I hear ya OP. I've lived here since 2001 and it still feels temporary, I don't belong here. So much so I've not made one single friend here as I don't see the point.

HoVis2001 · 13/10/2014 00:23

Don't leave the South/South East.

Hmm

I'm sorry, I crafted many mildly ranty responses in my head and then realised this was mostly my sense of loyalty for my adopted home (some ways beyond the south/south east!) coming through. Wink

What I will say is that outside of the south of England, by and large, living costs are so, so much lower. Having spent the first years of our marriage on the south of England my DH and I are finally in an area where we can begin to see ourselves capable of a mortgage deposit in a few years, rather than a decade. If the housing market stays as it is any children we have will have a much better chance of being able to settle near us (if they so choose!) than in the gorgeous, heinously expensive towns we started out in.

StripyBanana · 13/10/2014 01:25

Ah we moved out of London to the county we like. We really needed to be out and quality of life has improved so much in that respect. We just don't like the street/collection of streets we are currently in and would like a different type of house!

I never settled where we lived in London.

FastWindow · 13/10/2014 01:34

I have lost count of how many times I have bent my DH ears to move... I gave somewhere in mind, but frankly is anywhere but here. It's great for a childless couple, so close to all links to London, but so fucking shit for kids to grow up in (think concrete jungle and a lot of roundabouts) and the schools are terrible.

The schools are probably not terrible, but I think they are. And all I want to do is move about a thousand miles south, where the views are sea, mountains, trees, fresh air, no concrete. (well not much)

So where do I find the balls the sell up and go?

wobblyweebles · 13/10/2014 01:38

I know exactly what you mean op. I adore where I live now and can't imagine going back to where we were before. Luckily dh was ready for a change so although scary to make such a big move it was better than the safe alternative.

Original poster
ocelot41 · 13/10/2014 06:56

Has anyone who felt like this managed to move within a short commute of London and really likes where they live?

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QuintessentiallyQS · 13/10/2014 07:16

So many kindred nature spirits stuck on cities or suburbia on this thread.

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