DH says he hates our new house and wants to move

[TimeRoStop]

About six months ago DH and I left central london with our DC and moved to the Home Counties. The reasons for the move were that I don't want to raise DC in central london (crime, too busy, quality of the housing we could afford) and to buy a house.

We now live near Beaconsfield, it takes us about 40 mins from leaving our house to central london. We aren't in the centre of the town but have a beautiful, decent sized house in a semi rural area. The community is lovely, DC are happy and both of us work in london (me part time, him full time.)

DH hates the commute. He was born and raised in central london. He misses so much about our old life - his community, the tube, being in the thick of it all, walking to everything. Now we are reliant on a car but the trade off is a beautiful home, garden, safe area, good schools, amazing countryside. I fundamentally believe it's a better upbringing for DC (not hating london just my opinion) and we are in london very frequently anyway, a few times a week!

He has said he can't ever settle here and wants to move back to london but we could only afford a flat. I don't want to move and uproot the family. I hate his negativity and to be honest he is like that horrible stereotype of a Londoner who thinks everything outside of london has no value at all.

AIBU to say no to moving back? I'm worried this will divide us.

I moved out of London to near Beaconsfield back in 2004 and I still hate it. Sorry OP that’s probably not what you want to hear. But I would move back in a heartbeat if we could afford it. They’re not remotely comparable in terms of culture, excitement, things to do, places to go, and all the hustle & bustle & diversity of city life. Like someone said upthread, the most diverse thing you get in Beaconsfield is the sushi counter in Waitrose. It’s a homogeneous, wealthy, white middle class characterless town, even if it is pretty. Going from London to there is TOUGH.
sorry, none of this is helping you but just to defend your husband slightly… I’d give it another year and then think about it again. I think a Wandsworth/Putney/Barnes/Wimbledon village compromise (similar ‘posh’ vibe to Beaconsfield but still close enough to town) would be good.

Also (and I’ve no idea why it’s typing everything in italics MN!) … he doesn’t get the shitty aspect of the deal. As if commuting is the worst thing in the world. He gets a shitty aspect of it. In return for going into London everyday which he apparently loves, to do a job which he apparently wants to do. There are plenty of other shitty aspects depending on all the other sorts of dynamics they have going on in their relationship. There are days when things have been so crazy for me at home working PT and doing everything else that the idea of sitting quietly (even standing) on a train doom scrolling through Instagram with my AirPods in would have seemed like bliss. And don’t pretend it’s not like that … I commute too!

Perhaps the reason OP likes Beaconsfield over London is precisely because it’s a “homogeneous, wealthy, white middle class” town 🤷‍♀️ Maybe, in fact, this is why she finds London “not very safe”. Too much diversity there. Because it’s absolutely possible to have a detached house with a garage and a massive garden somewhere like Pinner or Rayners Lane or Amersham or Chesham (all on the tube) for less than the price of the same in Beaconsfield….but there be brown people there!

Maybe, in fact, this is why she finds London “not very safe”. Too much diversity there.

You may have a point. Usually when people say they "don't feel safe" in a particular neighbourhood they can't (or don't want to) articulate what particular "spidey senses" are at work. But it generally seems to be closely correlated with the number of non-whites climbing above a token.

Or, they have dingy deserted shop fronts lining the narrow path to the tube (looking at you tuffnell park when we were looking at a house there) or abandoned wastelands strewn with debris and barbed wire and the newspaper reports stabbings on doorsteps (looking at you Bethnall green when we first moved to london) or even in what you know is a nice area and you do LOVE living there and still miss it but the local Fb reports teens being held up for their phone after school and mums with prams being robbed at knife point in Alexandra palace grounds, and it is totally absolutely irrelevant what colour skin anyone involved has but you think we should move the dc out of london to give them a lovely childhood.

And where in Amersham is affordable? We might have stayed in london if we could buy somewhere like amersham, but not a chance.

This has turned into a London v elsewhere argument, which is really beside the point. Op and her dh need to work out what is best for them as a family for the long term and, having recently made a big change, the need to live with it for longer to see how it feels in time.

I prefer to be in the country, but it's nothing to do with not enjoying diversity or culture (which contrary to popular belief there is plenty of!), I just prefer the quiet, the forests and fewer people etc. We don't need to prove one or the other is somehow better, it's just preference.

Why near Beaconsfield? Why did you choose that place in particular? The move was prompted more by you than by him. And now he doesn't like it. Hardly surprising is it? I would consider moving back in, to the places that BigHairy suggests : Wandsworth/Putney/Barnes/Wimbledon village, asap.

Stay. He needs to give it time. I grew up not far from there and it's a wonderful place to raise kids.

I'm a bit further out now in Thame. I could not be dragged back to London for anything.

My DD13 and I have been here since she was 2, it's been an amazing place for her to grow up.

As suspected you've received lots of replies from the die hard Londoners who think you should move back immediately because it's the best place ever and they'd never leave. Well the fact is, he did leave. He agreed to the move and you went as far as buying the house and moving the children. He must give it more time for their sakes, he had a choice in this, they don't. He chose to move and now he needs to lie in his bed for a while and give it a chance. It's not fair to uproot everyone again because he's changed his mind. Maybe in the future you can discuss it but right now he should stay put, he should never have agreed if he didn't want to. He's a grown man.

I also think a lot of people feel like this when moving anyway regardless. I hated my house when we first bought it. Because it didn't feel like home yet, my old house still felt like that. In time home became this house and I'm sure I'll feel the same way about here for a while if we ever move again!

I prefer to be in the country, but it's nothing to do with not enjoying diversity or culture (which contrary to popular belief there is plenty of!), I just prefer the quiet, the forests and fewer people etc. We don't need to prove one or the other is somehow better, it's just preference

Some posters seem to take it personally when a random person they don't know says they don't want to live in London. People get very protective of it 🤣

Whether London is good or not is irrelevant. The reality is he was an idiot to buy a house somewhere that obviously wasn’t to his taste.

I didn’t mean it to come across like that - of course he needs to take responsibility for settling in in his new location (in fact most of the options I listed would be his responsibility).

All I was trying to convey is that commuting FT and commuting PT are not the same. And in my experience it’s much harder for the person who commutes full time to settle in a new place than for the person who commutes part time. In my case I was the full time commuter and my husband was the part time commuter. He settled almost immediately. I hated it for months. When you commute full time it’s easy to feel like you just come home to sleep and for weekends (which are often full of chores).

So one option could potentially be for the OP to commute more so that her DH could commute less. She hasn’t given any details but if she currently works three days for example then maybe she could go up to four days and he could drop to four days. The kids would get the same amount of time with a parent at home and OP’s DH would get more time at home. That’s what I meant by seeing if she could lessen the burden of the commute on him.

How about a compromise? You go back to work FT and commute every day and he goes down to 3 days so only commutes 3 days.

The other option is he stays in London overnight 3 days in the week, at a BnB. Costly but most compromises are.

I'd have thought he wants to spend less time in Beaconsfield not more so these WFH more suggestions aren't the solution. It's really not about the commute. He wants to live in London.

(No idea why these posts are all itals - MNet update fun continues!)

This thread has got a kind of it's own - some of the assumptions and projections are wild!

I had lived in london for 15 years. The reason I don't find it safe is my car was broken into not that long ago outside our home, two mothers from our nursery were mugged walking home, we were chased by someone on drugs twice in the local park and my youngest cried whenever we went back there and my bike was stolen. This was in a "naice" neighbourhood. Not everything is about skin colour it's about people's lived experiences. I'm a not a london hater, far from it, I just don't want to raise DC there for so many reasons.

When we were talking about moving originally I really wanted us to move to Richmond to tick all of our boxes but DH wouldn't countenance it and said he would rather be where we are in a bigger house than in a part of london he doesn't know.

"When we were talking about moving originally I really wanted us to move to Richmond to tick all of our boxes but DH wouldn't countenance it and said he would rather be where we are in a bigger house than in a part of london he doesn't know."

[not sure why it won't let me not write in italics]

Richmond is one of the most expensive areas in London - was that really a choice in the first place? How much money did you have?

Also, when you moved was he just obvlivious to what the new area would be like, or was he always against moving and eventuall gave in?

We had a budget of £950k for 3 bedrooms and a garden, wanted a house ideally. I wanted Richmond and he said no and chose our area which I was also happy with. For that in Richmond it would be a tiny 3 bed terrace.

Well he was very silly not to move to Richmond.

There is more crime in central London generally, most people would just move farther out instead of jumping to the country. I think you were also rather unlucky, I've lived years in very much not nice areas of London and not had any issues.

I still think you should compromise by telling him he has to give it a full year but then maybe you will consider moving back. I think he'll be more likely to give it a real try if he doesn't feel trapped with no end in sight.

Can I be trite and comment that Richmond isn't really London. The commute is terrible and having lived in London for years I really wouldn't count it as central London. It's like a commuter town that is now sort of in London. But there are other places - nice but actually in London - Dulwich, Southfields, Wimbledon etc. Crouch End etc etc I think the point is he loves London and you dont ( the fact that you suggested Richmond shows that you dont want the hussle and bussle of a big city). Thats fine but you might need to find a compromise that doesnt involve either of you being miserable. Or you break up. I ended to long term relationships with my partners because essentially they wanted to live in the countryside - but I dont. However, you have kids etc so wouldnt be possible to move somewhere like SW London (that is safe) but also still feels like London?

@8957bhjbnm

i agree actually about Richmond - it’s very nice but the train service is a total pain.

When I was working in the North West I used to allow 40 minutes for a 15 mile drive along very busy roads!

"Can I be trite and comment that Richmond isn't really London. The commute is terrible and having lived in London for years I really wouldn't count it as central London. It's like a commuter town that is now sort of in London"

It's not central but it is London, no less than Wimbeldon is. The district line is a slog but you can get a train to waterloo in less than 25 mins.

(Not that it matters - it's bloody expensive and you won't get much for your money which is why they didn't move there. Either way, the DH shouldn't have bought if he didn't know he already liked their new area.)

I grew up in Wimbledon and Richmond felt a lot further out. Wimbledon has a lot more of London feel than Kingston and Richmond - which are both nice places but feel a lot further out. But it's not always actual distances though - it really is psychological. I know that St Albans for is really quick to get to work but I would still rather live in another parts of London and travel in than move there and probably have a quicker commute.

it sounds like you have had especially bad luck, crime-wise, in London OP. I don’t even live in the U.K. anymore (so no horse in the London vs country debate!), but in the 30+ years I did, I was very fortunate to experience no crime at all.

And you’re right, not everything is about skin colour. Enough is, these days, for it to be a possibility, but clearly not relevant to your choices.

It sounds like you’ve moved from somewhere like Chelsea or Battersea. There’s a certain type of “if not here then nowhere” mentality that comes from lifelong residence in neighborhoods like that. As though Sloane Square/the King’s Rd is the centre of the universe, and anything south of the river or north of the park just isn’t London. Perhaps that’s why Richmond was rejected (plus property prices and a brutal district line commute that would have gone right past your DH’s stomping ground, if that’s what it was). Hands up, fair bit of projection here!

Ultimately, imo what your DH is at fault for is going along with committing to a path for the family and not giving it a proper shot. 6 months isn’t long enough. It’s also deeply irritating to listen to endless moaning about the same thing.

You shouldn’t minimise his concerns and problems, and he should quit moaning and see it through for at least a full year. He made this choice, he has to see it through. But, commuting is absolutely a waste of life when you’re used to living by the tube. That’s undeniable. You need to get creative. Neither of you are right or wrong, it’s just what suits. Is it worth breaking the family up over?

(Also, for the type of house and land you’re looking for and have in Beaconsfield, under £1m in SW London is nowhere near enough. Sounds like more than a location problem, possibly: the lives you envisage may be the same but you don’t have the budget for it, or he prioritises lifestyle over house and home, and you prioritise the opposite?)