New partner, moving and DD13

[starryeyed19]

My partner and I have been together long distance for about five years and we got engaged last year. We have planned our wedding for April 2021.

My partner lives in a city about 100 miles away - it's always got lots of things going on and I'm a big fan.

My DD13 has never seemed particularly for or against my partner but has tolerated his visits and us going to him although she has lately been saying she doesn't want to go.

I've applied for a job down there and got it. She is absolutely refusing to move and has said that she didn't want to move and I was ruining her life. That she didn't like going there, she didn't really like him coming here and that she didn't really want us to get married.

I don't know what to do. I don't want to force her to go. I don't think I can. But am I supposed to give everything up because of her refusal to go?

There's a lot of backstory so I am trying to cover the essentials here. I was married to her father for 16 years but it was an arranged marriage that I didn't really want to take part in and it was not a good time. Her younger brother also has quite severe autism and has moved to residential school about two years ago after a lot of heartache and trouble.

What do I do? I don't want to give up my relationship. I don't know how my fiancé will feel about postponing us living together until my daughter is OK with it or leaves home. What can I do to try and improve their relationship?

The amount of people saying "why can't the partner just move into his own place in your area" as though he is being ridiculously selfish for not wanting to do so are really not showing much nuance of thought. You would expect him to be fine with moving to a less good area, in order to be closer to but not live with OP, in a situation where he is apparently going to be ostracized by the local community/kept secret from her family? That is an absolutely awful proposal.

I get why people are saying not to move straight in with the partner. Absolutely, if you can afford to live separately, this would smooth the transition. But ultimately, people are saying here that OP must stay in a place with less good prospects and where she has already been forced to waste a good portion of her life, so that her daughter doesn't have to move away from some primary school friends she probably won't stay in touch with during her adult life, and a toxic extended family that forced their own daughter into an unhappy arranged marriage and would disown her for being in a relationship with someone outside of their culture. A dad that, by the sounds of things, imposes misogynistic standards onto her. What impact are they going to have on her DD as she grows older, and perhaps brings home a white boy or starts experimenting with fashion? I would consider putting distance between DD and these people more of a priority than her never moving away from a very early friendship group.

It reads to me like moving IS in the best interests of her DD. Perhaps not straight in with her DP, but the move itself to a vibrant city with distance from OPs family sounds like a very good idea.

@Goosefoot well going by the hundreds of threads on this very site that say how a partner was fine before they moved into together I would disagree an actual study is required!