Another DP wants to move but I don't one

[Starupinthelightningsky]

Longish story
We bought our dream house three years ago. It's got everything we wanted a more plus the area has gone from 'up and coming' to fully 'here' meaning the valuation will likely go up, unless there's a recession.
Without sounding harsh, it is my house. I put in 200K, he put in nothing. He has paid 100% of the mortgage since. We are in a very lucky position of our mortgage being a huge chunk of his wage but manageable as we are low earners. We live relatively frugally.
We have ongoing disputes with the neighbours, who have been here 30 years. My attitude is that they dislike us for reasons that are nothing to do with our behaviour but more our lifestyle. I like having people over, I love children so we have children playing in the garden after school (everyone in by 7pm) and no parties as such. TBH it has taken the enjoyment out of using our garden and now I often try to go to others houses rather than have people to ours. We had a low key afternoon thing with five kids for my dd's birthday a few weeks ago and they lectured us for twenty minutes about noise and a ball going over the fence. They also made comments about 'my attitude' which I think was mostly because I wasn't deeply apologetic about some kids being on a trampoline on a sunny Saturday.
DP says it's only going to get worse (as they get older) and we should move whilst the house prices are still high. I think 'why should we?' It's only due to the neighbours. Everything else is perfect. He has very bad anxiety and says that he can't feel relaxed at all in the house as he thinks we're making too much noise. My feeling is that his anxiety will transfer to something else. He's like this on holiday, he wasn't like this in the old house but we had such terrible neighbours that nothing could phase them!
I'm looking on selling sites but everything is smaller, in a worse location, a do-er upper or is too far from work and school. His life won't change if we move, whilst I walk to work and school from where we are and I love it. I chose my job and school due to this.
However I'm very aware of how resentment builds when one person veto's another persons decision. Should I just leave all the planning of this down to him? Last time I arranged everything. If I leave it all to him, I can guarantee that nothing will get done. He has mentioned it consistently for around a month now.
Please help!

They'll be dead soon. Pay them no heed.

Yep. Enjoy your house.

my almost 17 year old had another sleepover here last night. My 15 year old is currently in the kitchen making biscuits for a friend. I love having the house where everyone is welcome. It won’t last much longer. Enjoy it while it lasts.

That could be jumping the gun a bit. OP says We have ongoing disputes with the neighbours, who have been here 30 years.
Could have moved there in their twenties meaning they are only in their fifties now.

OP you don't sound like you are a bad neighbour. It does sound like they are being somewhat intolerant of normal neighbourhood noise and behaviour. It 's not like you are throwing wild parties with bouncy castles, hot tubs, loud car revving or booming music. I'd suggest you ignore the petty complaints and encourage your husband to do likewise. If you don't respond they may get bored with complaining to you.

Why did you listen to a lecture for 20 mins? Just say “this is normal family life, stop being so weird” , then walk away

They're not old! Ones maybe late forties. They're really scary though, have a reputation locally for being hard. One neighbour told me not to get on their bad side (and this is the neighbour that threatened to stab someone's dog)

I'm guessing you now know why the house was fairly reasonable for what you have! The previous owners needed to move for their sanity. You have two choices, move or keep scrupulous notes of any times you do have out of the norm noise so you have proof if they make a formal complaint then just ignore their petty remarks. It does depend a little bit on just how often there's noisy children in the garden, friends over every day acting how children do could be a little unreasonable, think about it - they can never enjoy a quiet drink in their garden after work? Whereas once or twice a week and other nights even you aren't there so there's peace and quiet ... you may find they can then put up with the extra noise less frequently. They are still moany minnies though!!! We have kids next door but one both sides and the parents limit noisy play to 30 mins then tell them to play quietly for the neighbours sake, screeching is immediately dealt with ... I like my neighbours!

Dear OP - I'm like your DH in that I have anxiety. We moved to a house which ticked all the boxes for our then current situation but our intention was always to stay 5-6 years before moving on. We had annoying neighbours (among many other things they were noisy, paid no regard for lockdown rules and smoked drugs all the time which would stop us going in our garden - luckily they were renting and left after 10 months), parking issues and even though it wasn't relevant to the house, some over-involved parents. Whilst things got significantly better very quickly, I still made the firm decision for us to sell after 2 years because it was right for us (sold for a lot more than we bought, house and garden much bigger, new area is a lot nicer and more rural which is what we were looking for in the long term).

I've always been overly polite and gone out of my way to not offend people and perhaps that is linked to the anxiety so I understand why your DH worried about being too loud etc. However it doesn't sound like you are being unreasonable at all and so you should never be made to change/question the way you choose to live your own life in your own home.

The reason I've brought all the above up is that during the time I lived in the original house, I was, to my eternal shame, an absolute nightmare and my DW had to put up with so much. I was a completely different person to before. I never felt at ease in my own home and that manifested itself in the worse ways. I never wanted to go anywhere, was argumentative, snappy and just a completely miserable person to be around despite having two amazing young kids. In spite of things being perfectly fine for well over a year, it was only when we put the house of the market that I really felt happy. My DW always said she would happily have stayed in the old house but does accept that the move was definitely in the best interests of the whole family - however that was just fortunate coincidence. In some ways, the damage had been done at the start and tied with the anxiety, I guess I always thought something would happen again to frustrate me.

I know you say his life won't change if you move but it most probably would because some of those key triggers for his anxiety might be removed. I'm not for a second suggesting you must sell but perhaps DH could do with therapy or additional help for his anxiety?

Sorry for the way his post is written. I've had to type it out about ten times because Chrome kept refreshing the page but I was keen to get my view across just because I've sort of gone through what DH is going through. Thanks