Living the dream... and not liking it :(

[hardtoplease]

We made the jump from city to countryside last year. I’ve got everything we talked about, big house, real fires, stand-alone bath, wet room, huge garden, country lanes, nature... and I don’t like it one bit.

The bath. How I longed for a bathroom like in the magazines. It’s crap. Water splashes everywhere including underneath and it starts to small damp if not wiped up. So you just finish a nice relaxing soak and then you’re on your hands and knees in a towel trying to wipe it all up. It’s a big house, it’s hard and expensive to heat. The underfloor heating is cracking the tiles so it looks awful and feels nasty. The place is so big the water pressure is shite and it takes ages for the hot water to come through the tap.

Something died in our roof space, the smell lasted 6 weeks. We couldn’t find it. Experts couldn’t find it. We run out of stuff constantly and the nearest shop is a small garage a few miles away. We have to drive to get anywhere. So much for all those country walks. We did more when we drove in from the city at weekends. The weather has been shit so we haven’t used the garden much. Trees came down. We were snowed in. The cars were iced up in the mornings. When the electricity went we were grateful for the real fires but the mess, the mess. And there’s mud tramped in everyday.

It’s a huge house. I have to walk up two flights of stairs if I’ve left something in the bedroom. Everything you want upstairs is downstairs and vice versa.

The saving grace... we rented! We can move back (not for six months:( ) to our city place and live the real dream with 24 hour shops within walking distance and restaurants and coffee shops and low bills and no stairs and I can have a bath without it being a major expedition. We can drive to the countryside when we want and then leave the dead animals and mud there when we leave.

But DH thinks we should stick with the decision now we have made it! He has a huge commute instead of a short walk, but he says it’s “running away”. He hates the commute! He’s a wackaloon!

Who is being unreasonable?! We’ve tried it for six months. We tried it. It’s shit.

I'm sorry it's been rubbish. I have to say I've never seen the appeal of living in the country as opposed to visiting. I think you need to be clear with DH you are unhappy and cannot take this in the long term, so you need to start making plans to move back when you can. You've tried the experiment, it didn't work.

Maybe there is a compromise to be made somewhere a bit more bucolic than you were previously, but with more shops and services? Or just a greener part of city suburbs with easy access to countryside?

Hoping you find a solution - you've done a lot more than a lot of people in terms of at least trying 'the dream' but if it's not for you, you've at least learned it isn't!

Cut your losses, life's far too short.

Well, most of that sounds like heaven to me (perhaps not the dead smelly animal!) so maybe I need to move.

But in answer to your husband say yes, I'm giving up and running away, so what? Why doesn't he like admitting defeat?

Can you not rent for another 6 months to give you more chance to keep trying, after having one of the worst winters and weather still not being great I can't imagine that helping. If it was your dream don't give up on it to easily because you could end up regretting it

Summer is wonderful but as a person who grew up in a big town in walking distance I honestly really miss that.

Summer is glorious. Apart from the insects .

Go back to the city. We moved back to civilisation after realising the country life really wasn't our bag like we thought it would be. Dh was less up for moving but I wore him down. Far, far happier now civilisation is on our doorstep

Sounds like heaven to me too.

I really don't understand your bath problem though - I've had standalone baths for the last 25 years and have no problems with splashes!

You can have open fires in the city too you know!
I am planning a freestanding Bath in our new bathroom - hope this won’t be a mistake? We will have a walk in shower too so hopefully the bath won’t cause too much mess...

Why not use a mop for the water in the bathroom? I don't see the need to be on your hands and knees.
I wonder it if will all seem better in the summer.

Bloody hell are you living in my house!

Feel your pain with it being too big and as for the cracked tiles and the hot water taking ages to flow through the tap quite frankly it’s a pain in the arse and don’t even get me started on the tree’s my living nightmare every time it’s windy the amount of debris I have to pick up and that’s if I can pick it up.

Oh the constant cleaning of the floors because of the muddy lane to get to our property when it’s raining, plus because it’s so big it takes ages to heat up, have tried to sell but to be honest who wants a huge garden these days as well as a big property to maintain.

Home is where the heart is HardToPlease.

I’d say give it a full year before you quit, but you are not painting a pretty picture of country living, so maybe 6 months is enough time for you to know you are a city girl.

I live in the city now, I moved to a village with my first husband where we raised our family. I loved it, but it take a lot of getting used to.

I had a large freezer in the garage that I kept essentials in. That includes freezing bread, milk, butter, onions (chopped, in a bag from supermarket).

Agreeing with pp, try going for a walk and lunch at your local country pub tomorrow, now the weather is cheering up you might enjoy yourself. Oh, and put down a large towel besides/under the bath, so when you step out it soaks up all your splashes and drips.

I did the same, but stayed. It was hard. In your position I would go back after six months, any longer and you will begin to detach from your old life before engaging with your new one. Don’t underestimate the commute for your DH though, it was the main reason for our move and looking back it was expecting a lot for my DH to travel home from central London every day.

How rural are you? Sounds v rural. We did very similar - but tiny village, no shop, just a pub, a church and a teeny village school. Hated it. The car driving to get anything. No public transport. Saw our neighbours having to taxi their children EVERYWHERE as the roads were too dangerous to cycle on (twisty 60mph hedge-bound with no visibility).

We have now moved to a market town. A high street. Coffee shops. Station within walking distances. Buses every half hour. Cinema and a major shopping are within 15 minute drive and/or 5 minute train journey. Choice of supermarkets.

Love, love, love, love it.

Maybe consider in-between if you do not want to go back to the city. But don't stay where you are. It will only get worse as your DC get older.

I echo others who advise experiencing the Summer and then making up your mind.

I too hate rural living in the Winter (mud, mud and more f**king mud) and this Winter seems to have been interminable. But I love it in the Spring / Summer - it comes into its own. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.

nohuns that’s it. DH goes in and STAYS in the city at least once a week so he doesn’t have the long trek back! He is playing at it!

He moans about the commute, how little sleep he gets, but his reason for saying we have to stay is that we have made the decision “so now we have to live with it”.

No we don’t!

@Flutterbyeee that's a tad harsh no?
living in her new home hasn't been the experience she thought it would be - same has happened to a very good friend of mine who moved and is now desperate to go back to the familiarity of her previous home but sold so can't.
I guess life isn't always greener - but perhaps the location is just all wrong - I live in London and know I couldn't live in the rural country but I could in a small town

^^nice

Life in the country during the winter is not life at its best. It’s cold and muddy and crap

Summer brings its best. Doors and windows open to beautiful fresh air and the smells and sounds of the country side.
9 months old is also a very limiting age, life revolves around naps and feeding time. In the city everything is close for short excursions, but as your ds gets older you can get out and about more.

Mine is 3 and in playschool. He has made great friends and we do lots together. Horse riding on his friends pony, walks in the woods, adventures (crawling through hedges making dens and running away from monsters) as the mums sit on the grass and chat, lots of picnics and paddling in streams.

I do miss every shop imaginable near by and endless food choices, but thee is so so much I don’t miss

I’ve lived in the country for 6 years
Hate it
Hope to get the place on the market soon , and will move to the edge of a town

This is exactly why suburbs were invented

Sounds like my idea of hell! Thank god you rented.

I find it hilarious that people are saying you’ll enjoy it once the weather changes? Really?!

Go back to the city

If you are determined to live in the country at least move somewhere that has a bit of a heartbeat to it!

mogleflop i don’t know. Perhaps he sees it as failing, but if isn’t, it’s just trying something g thst didn’t work out. At least we know and the city life will seem so much sweeter after we’ve found out the grass isn’t greener.

Give him another 6 months of the long commute and he might change his mind, although you may find the summer delightful, if it ever arrives, he may not have time to enjoy the garden, light nights, etc. It sounds as though you started in the worst 6 months of the year weather wise, this winter has been harsher than the last few.

I live semi rural and its enough for me. Still need a car, still get snowed in, public transport not great, but we have paths not lanes, a small village 10 minutes walk away with local shops and pubs. Half an hour drive one way to town, an hour to the wilderness, similar drive the other way into nearest City and an hour from the Coast.

I think I would prefer City living to rural and travel out on the weekends etc.

Oh what a shame! It does sound like a lot of the problems are with the house though, would a more modern house suit you better?

I live in the countryside too so recognize a lot of your problems, particularly the lack of public transport. Where we live we both have to have a car otherwise we would be stuck.

However, we live in a village close to a city (10 minutes drive) so we can still enjoy all the city things such as nice restaurants, cinema, art gallery, live music, etc. Would a move closer to a city make life easier for you?

I grew up in the countryside and then spend my 20s and 30s living in various cities both in the UK and overseas. I now love rural living and can't imagine living in a town or city again.

We grow lots of our own fruit and veg, keep chickens (hence the username!) and I just love the peace and quiet, the country views, the green-ness of it all.

However, if it isn't for you then you can't help that, and at least you have tried!

I hope that you manage to sort everything out and find and place where you are happy.

When we moved from the outskirts of London to the very rural North we also thought it would be bliss. It is a bit of a shock to have a round trip of 60 miles to get to a decent diy store and also the same distance to do a big food shop. You have to be prepared to do plenty of travelling. We rented initially and then took many months of looking a property to buy. We firstly looked in small villages but the reality of no shops , no doctors, 60 miles from a hospital, no buses et c does not bode well for a forever home. Also the place we thought we wanted to call home was in a tourist hotspot, bang in the middle of a national park. Whilst it is lovely to be a tourist in the area, being a local is a totally different matter. We live on the edge of a village, with a bus route, a small town a couple of miles away. 10/12 miles out of the national park but still a mega long round trip for diy, large food shops.