To upend my settled family because I’m unhappy in the middle of rural nowhere?

[OpheliaPlum]

We live in a rural area. Lovely house, space, big garden. No public transport, no shops, no amenities basically, and fast country roads with no pavements so we have to drive to get anywhere. We moved here 8 years ago because of DH’s then job and a lovely primary in the next village. I work in a creative industry and there is a shared workspace I drive to. I used to WFH but became so isolated in lockdowns after lockdowns I found a place to work alongside others, but it’s not an office, but shared space for freelance artists etc.

My eldest DC has just transferred to secondary school in September. We all wake at 6am every day and I drive DH to the station and the DC to their schools. Since the secondary transfer, I spend 16 hours every week on school runs. There is a Bus eldest DC could get but it is a 10 min drive from home (impossible to walk, country lanes, 70mph speed limits, no pavements) and in the opposite direction to the station and primary school. From the primary school there’s a backroad to the secondary so it makes sense for me to drive. At weekends my DC have different activities in different places and understandably want to see friends. My DH and I spend a lot of the weekend driving and hanging about in locations far from home. We do this separately so the other can get on with the endless laundry, maintaining the garden, all very practical, but increasingly we have very limited family time.

This June my DH got a new job so we don’t need to be in this area for his work any more. During covid I started doing some online uni teaching of my work. I visited the place I was teaching at in the summer for the first time in person and taught a special summer school. I felt so alive and connected to like minded people and it made me realise how isolated I am in the countryside.

There is a fixed term 3 year contract coming up at the uni. There is a possibility of a permanent job after that but the HE sector seems to be imploding and I am not sure how realistic the permanent contact would be. It would be 2 days teaching and studio space for my own creative practice. It is 3 hours from where we live.

My DH commutes to an office but has said he could transfer to work close to that town or change to a role with more WFH. He has very specialised skills and works in an industry that exists everywhere (like for an energy company, but not quite that).

I’d really like to apply for this job and if I get it, move the family. My children are adamant they do not want to leave. My eldest says he has just done secondary transfer, loves his new school, tells me I can move when the DC are all grown up. My younger DC love the countryside. We have a big garden, a dog, ducks, rabbits, and they love that life. I feel very selfish but also can’t get the fantasy of living in a buzzing town, being able to share my passion with the next generation, even walk to a cafe out of my head. I feel very tied to driving children everywhere and am under so much time pressure since the secondary transfer that it’s brought me to tears. It feels very melodramatic but I feel as if my needs have become crushed living here.

The deadline to apply is very soon. It isn’t a common opportunity at all, but I’m really not sure what to do as it is potentially just a three year role. I can imagine living in the town when the role comes to an end and my DH and I could both work from there. Also we don’t have any family close to where we live now but can visit family either side within a couple of hours. If we move it would be a half day journey to visit family.

Please help me think this through.

😆good luck with your military operational planning and fending off the hordes of machete-wielding druggies. I'll be praying for you.

There is a lot of flagrant dishonesty on this thread.

London has always had weirdos, sexual predators etc on the tubes and buses, it is NOT a good place for women sadly and hasn't been safe for decades. You can dress it up and pretend that it is, but I found it to be an appalling place to be a young person.
My experience and millions like me are valid and truthful. You live there, and you are protective, I understand that you wish to defend your choices, but please don't minimise the sexual assault and harassment that happens on a daily basis sometimes as nothing. Much more should be done to make women safer, and it is mainly your 'head in the sand everything is perfect here' routine that prevents honest and constructive conversations to increase safety and awareness.

Shame on you if you are actually female.
You can not have failed to miss what has been going on for the last four decades or so.

But if you live in a town you don’t ferry your children around they get public transport.

I actually refused to have children until we had moved back to London.

My children have grown up going into central London daily, Dd got the tube to school on her own at 10years old.

We lived on the very outskirts of London and we had fields and greenery around us. We lived down a single track road with horses being ridden up and down the road.

Are you sure your children actually love the countryside or do they just say they do because they don’t know anything else and you have put the fear into them that if they go to London bad things will happen.

You sound like my family who thought me moving to London was a bad idea as I would be raped every time I went out if the door. I would end up with a bad drugs habit because of all the drugs pushed on me and I would end up lay face down in a gutter having been stabbed to death.

I faced worse in my home town so London was a breeze.
I feel safe in London