To find DH's constant desire for a more exciting life tiring?

[thisgirlrides]

Let me start by saying DH & I are happy as a couple, have 2 great kids & very lucky to have good health, friends, family, home, no major debt etc and both self employed in our chosen careers that aren't brilliantly paid but allow us the odd holiday - I'd say we lead a pretty charmed life compared to many.

However, DH seems to be always on the look out for some sort of life-changing adventure or major upheaval for the sake of doing something different & exciting. We've had moving to Australia then Canada, buying a small holding in rural Wales, buying a plot of land and building a new house, a castle in Scotland, taking the kids out of school to travel the world for a year - amongst many other ideas over the years!

Clearly he's yearning for adventure and a bit more excitement than our current safe & admittedly sometimes mundane life but I see this as realities of life now and these are things we either should have done before kids or wait until retirement. I feel a right party pooper every time he comes up with something new and I know he gets irritated by my lack of adventure. Anyone else have to deal with this? I do sometimes wonder whether I should take on board some of his suggestions and 'live a little' but feel we have so much to lose that I can't bring myself to make such major changes at this stage in our lives (kids at primary school, mortgage to pay off, minimal savings etc)I

Suggest to him that every year, the family have a week long holiday in a different country that he'd be interested in moving to upon retirement. Keep it cheap by using AirBnB and avoiding tourist traps - experience the actual culture! Make a map and pin everywhere he wants to travel and then change the colour pin when you've been there. Have a third colour pin that can be put on a place you've visited that is a top contender for being an expat. That way he is experiencing these cultures with the prospect of going back to live, without impacting kids' schooling, and you can be excited about mini adventures in the meantime.

Grass is greener syndrome. Tell him you can do all those things, just not yet. There's a time for everything, God willing. And the reality might not live up to the dream anyway.

They reckon now that there is a gene for 'wanderlust'. I have it, don't know if DH does, but DD certainly does.

I can see the point of it. You need some Australopithecus to stay and tend the fire, know where the water is and raise the children. Then you need some to find the new food source, see what's over the hill and branch out.

I satisfy mine with planning many and going on some adventures. I sometimes go alone and sometimes with the fam.

Can you remind him that in many ways, with small children, it's same shit, different location? We've moved all over and now live in the US. 2 kids in school. Yes, we can travel but we're still restricted by school holidays and so on. It's just life but somewhere else! What did he expect with children?

He could join meetup.com.

You don't have to up sticks to have adventures!
Learn a new hobby / sport, buy a caravan and go camping.

I found constant moving meant we never settled, so were keen / happy to move again. (3-6 months chunks..) Now we have been here for quite some time I can't think if anything worse than to move house!

I do think it's good to have stability as children.

We thought ours "loved it" until they got older and told us just what they thought of it!

Oh my ex was like this. Was exhausting! I suppose if they accept you gently taking the wind out of their sails with good grace then it's not too hard to deal with. It's when they start moaning about what a miserable bore you are and whine on about how you've ruined their lives and you're holding them back, that it can get really miserable.

Is your DH more of a dreamer than a doer? I think my dad is very much like this and when he met my stepmum, she's much more of a doer, and they did indeed have some adventures and even the smallholding in Wales thing too. But now they have unfortunately split up (ironically, or not, because he felt "trapped" in the marriage and like life wasn't exciting enough for him) and although he's still going on about all these things he's going to do I don't see him actually doing them.

I have a bit of it. We live in Germany (DH is a doer, see) and I teach English so I had this crazy idea that we could all go and live in Korea or China for a year or two, I'd teach and we'd save up money (cost of living is allegedly cheap there) and then come back to Europe. But DH brought me down to Earth a bit when he said this isn't a plan, this is a dream or an idea, and that he'd definitely consider it if I could come up with a viable financial plan, how much I was going to make, whether he'd be able to work and how much he could make, what the cost of living would be, whether there would be schools for DS, basically looking at all the practical stuff. And when I looked at it, I found that it wasn't really worth it in terms of saving. We'd probably be able to live but we certainly wouldn't have any better quality of life than we do here, it would be even further from family and friends etc and the idea of saving just isn't financially viable, so it's not really a very good plan anyway.

I think you should call his bluff. Instead of just saying no, it's too difficult, put that onto him, tell him to work out the practicalities, the finances, schooling, childcare, work visas, flights, fees, medical insurance, and once he has an actual PLAN, as in "This is what I want to do and this is how we would do it", not just a dream or idea, then you'll sit down with him and seriously consider it.

(It's good for us "dreamers" to get practice with the actual boring planning part in the middle, anyway!)

Hmm, why am I not surprised that this started after parenthood His vision of himself (which is probably not realistic and I think that's true of all of us tbh!) does not quite match up with the day to day reality!

OP, obviously I don't know what you both do for a living (nor do I expect you to tell me on t'internet) but is there any chance of a job with travel* for your DH? Or as PP have suggested, a longer holiday to counteract the wanderlust?

We have moved our DD once and she hated it. She loves holidays and that kind of travel but disrupting her life is a no-no. I do feel sorry for children who are constantly uprooted.

*travel disclaimer - DH has travelled for work but rarely had any exploring time tbh, he mostly sees airports/car hire/hotels and wherever he is actually visiting. But it often sounds more glamorous than the reality.

I'm like your dh and so is my dh.
It can cause problems but your dh has You to keep his feet firmly on the ground.
Me and dh just drift from one situation to another, it seems to work out eventually, but both being the same drives our kids mad.
The amount of time our ideas have come to nothing, but I'd rather be like this than have no dreams like some people,

"I think that would be the answer but unfortunately we don't earn that much - A couple of camping weekends and week abroad is about the most we can manage!"

You don't need money for adventure. In fact, money can interfere with adventures because when you have money, you can easily bail out of difficult situations. In "The Idle Traveller", Dan Kieran describes pushing himself out of his comfort zone, sometimes in small ways. He does this by NOT planning too carefully and not always having a backup plan. Unusual things happen. What about going wild camping in Scotland?

When I was quite little, sometimes my mum let my sister or me navigate on a long drive. She'd hand the map over to us and turn when we told her to, without second-guessing us. This level of responsibility was exhilarating for us. I imagine that trusting us to the extent that she had no idea where we were (having relinquished the map hours before we ended up in the back of beyond) was a novel experience for her too.

There are many ways you could introduce a bit more excitement.

Maybe try and think of something interesting and exciting you could do as a family? A life that consists of nothing but chores, bill paying, routine and watching the telly is pretty much a life wasted. But you don't have to be a high earner to live your life rather than vegetating your way through it. You could get involved in a good cause or a creative pursuit, or take up a sport of some kind... Most people are fairly inert and experience their lives pretty much as spectators: the most uninteresting ones are actually proud of how dull they are and consider it 'maturity'.

When I was quite little, sometimes my mum let my sister or me navigate on a long drive.

@Saracen I navigated from Italy to the UK at 12! It was awesome.

His ideas seem a bit random, its not like all his ideas are based around say a small holding. They all seem different. I do like some of his ideas but i think you need to talk to him and find out is he just thinking out loud or does he actually have a plan of what he wants to do. If you did for example go travelling could you rent your house out on short term let? Could you look into getting a campervan then you could travel lots in this country, france ect and just nip away for camping weekends? If he wants to do more travel ect and you cant afford it could he increase his buisness ? Yes he probably wouldnt be as flexible if did this so would that work for your family ? What about aiming to do a big of back packing next year you could stay in youth hostels / air b and b ect