Want to move back to UK

[TooMuchCaffeineNotEnoughSpice]

Nearly three years ago we moved abroad to a rural location having lived in London for 20 years. My two kids (9 and 12 now) have settled in really well and have friends, enjoy school, enjoy their hobbies and generally have an idyllic childhood out and about walking dogs and biking round the village. We are also only 20 mins from the beach. My husband likes it too. He says he has a good work-life balance and he enjoys the space (much bigger house here than in London). He works from home but travels abroad a lot for work - this week he’s away Friday to Thursday. I am the only one who really doesn’t like it here. I think it is boring, we have made no friends (we have one friend but don’t see him much and his wife has made it clear to me she doesn’t need a friend), I miss being able to walk to shops, go for a coffee with friends, go to the cinema and the theatre and restaurants without driving for half an hour. There are no facilities in our village. I miss friends and family back in the UK. Our work is flexible so it doesn’t matter where we are based. Am I being unreasonable/selfish to want to move everyone back to the UK when the rest of my family are happy here?

I think this depends a lot on the country.

There are places in Europe where you can ride a moped / scooter at 14 or 15 years old which means kids can be fairly independent.

I kind of knew that you were going to say France. I've lived very rurally in France too and there's nowhere quite like it.

It sounds like you at least live in your own quite independent house so you hopefully haven't made the same terrible mistakes that I did with doormats, shutters and flower pots that I did in the eyes of the neighbours in my flat.

Oh and the paperwork! The CPAM, Ameli, the CAF, les impots, the this, the that.

Like somebody else wrote, family and frienship networks seem to be established practically since childhood and not very open. Also, despite you being married, if your DH is away a lot and you are dealing with tradesmen etc by yourself, let's just say that rural France is very 'traditional.' I'm not saying that they're going to rip you off but I certainly don't enjoy dealing with them. Even professional men like doctors can be quite misogynistic.

Going off topic a tiny bit but apparently 'Les Viols de Mazan' was 'The crime that shocked the whole of France' but hey, I wasn't shocked. There's a darkness in some of these places.

Only you can decide, with your family, what to do but again, like others have said, your children are at ages where their interests are changing fast and the situation may develop as they get older sort of its own accord.

I haven't any real advice but you will be accepted eventually - actually I think you already have been accepted - but you will always be a bit apart. Everybody here calls me by my first name (pronounced a bit off but nevermind) l'anglaise. Always with the qualifying 'l'anglaise.'

Not as bad as a girl called Aoife. 'Whiff l'irlandaise.'

I don't know how to edit on this thing and reading back my post, it sounded quite negative so I'll just add this:

I've been here a long time now and there's been quite a few occasions when I've gone through tough patches and been surprised by how helpful people here have been and that I was actually very well liked. Eccentric, wears odd clothes but well liked. This is going to sound very trite and twee but one thing that got my foot in the door was having a dog.

The dog was even more eccentric than me and everybody liked 'le p'tit chien.' Poor thing's been dead for a decade but people still ask after her.

Oh, there is a 'Living Overseas' board here on Mumsnet but it is kind of hidden away on the Property/DIY section. You have to furtle around for it.

Thank you so much for your replies. You definitely ‘get it’! Sorry for my slow reply - solo parenting and working meant yesterday was very busy.
Are you still living in rural France? What keeps you here?
Yes people have been/are kind - we have a few people who help us out with childcare/lifts etc but they aren’t ‘friends’. And rural France just feels very behind - particularly the problem with my daughter not being allowed a veggie meal at school. This has been blocked by the mayor of the village. Now my eldest has started getting poor marks at college and I’m wondering if she is not understanding the French now that things are getting more complex.
Yes dogs are always an ‘in’ but I am a cat person!
I will look for the Living Overseas thread.
Thanks again for taking the time to reply.

In your shoes I would definitely move .
Once the kids get older they will feel the same as you ,not enough opportunities.
My friend moved rural with her young kids ,when the hit late teens ,she was nothing more than a taxi for them ,and they resented massively living in the back of beyond..which as children they had loved .

But now I’m worried if we stay they will get qualifications here and we will end up living in different countries in the future.

You say this like it is a bad thing to worry about. There is nothing wrong with adult children living in different countries. If you’re worried about qualifications limiting them, then enrol them in an international school.

Anyway, I think YABU. Your village must be a satellite of some large town, so your isolation could be solved by a local move rather than an international move.

Edited to add there is no assurance the children will feel just like you. Not all teenagers turn into city mad club hoppers especially in this day and age when anything you do stupid ends up going viral online to be mocked.

Obviously it's a bad thing if your kid s with your grandchildren live in ma different country from their parents..w ho would seriously wish for that ..unless you weren't close as a family of course..i want to be a hands on granny..not granny who sees grandkids a few times a year

This might depend on the college but sometimes it’s the sheer volume of work expected that can be a problem, even if the content itself isn’t always that difficult. The school days are long and then there’s tonnes of homework, it’s not very objective comparing 90s UK to 2020s France but my DC had to work far harder than I ever did.

I agree that rural France seems behind in some ways and it can be stifling. I’ve had more than a few « WTF am I even doing here? » moments over the years! Like @KnopkaPixie said, very traditional.

Well having kids is about giving them the best you can. However, this is about you; you don't want this long-term because you are worried that they may finish their education and get a job in this 'foreign' country. Why is this such an issue? You can move back to uk once they start work.
You speak the language, why not let them experienceca French way of life? It isn't as if you are on the other side of the world, or in a vastly culturally differentt country.
And france - it's a quick hop back to uk, so what's stopping you visiting regularly

I think rural France would be tough but presumably you considered all this when you went in the first place?

re running is there a group/club you can join? I don’t have many friends but the running group has been quite transformative (mostly ladies in their 40s as it turned out).

Everyone's experience is so different and so it doesn't mean your children will feel that way- they probably will look at it completely differently from each other even. It definitely had some positives, it is fun and a new adventure and new experience, new people to meet and being adaptable and all that. I just remember how disappointed I felt when I was 9 years old and my parents said we were moving and I really didn't want to leave where we were, and because I was shy it took some time building friendships each time as well. I don't think I actually thought about it a whole lot as a child to be honest, it's just that looking at it in hindsight as a parent, and seeing my children who have had the same friends from before they started school and known each other for years, it feels like they belong - and I think the that's what I missed because I always felt like I was new or "not from here" if that makes sense. So from my perspective, I'd really want to know that things would be much better for my children by moving, but I'm also not in your shoes and adding that your husband is working away a lot makes it a lot more challenging for you as well. I wonder if you ask them, how they feel about it and what they would think about moving. It's good that you are considering everyone - and if you are feeling miserable that's not good for your children either. I hope that you can find a solution that works for you and keeps your family happy as well.

Your husband is happy because he gets to travel and experience all the things you're missing! Presumably he has work colleagues and gets to socialise as well. Personally, I would move back. Two moves for most children wouldn't be horrendous. In a couple of years, your kids may well resent you for moving somewhere with no amenities and will spend all their time trekking to the nearest town for fun.

Definitely sounds like your husband is having his cake and eating it.

What about you, and the kids… - not just this year and next year, but in 5 and 10 years? Do you see this as the place you’ll retire? Will you have enough of a community, friends and regular visitors, as well as occupation, to be happy and fulfilled there?

Yes I want to stay close to my children and help out if they ever have children themselves! Although it's a long way off. I don't want to live in a different country to them. Also I am an only child and I want to move back to be nearer my Mum who is approaching 80.

Then you must put yourself and your children first and move home x

@TooMuchCaffeineNotEnoughSpice I would hate that too and be bored rigid- we had almost 2 years in Copenhagen just as a couple and I enjoyed that - but it's not the same at all as small village in France.

So your husband is abroad a lot and you are left to essentially be a single parent a lot of the time? You sound isolated and unhappy. You want to be nearer to your elderly Mum. I would start the ball rolling on moving back home. Probably not London but somewhere more rural.

France? OMG stay. Your kids will be eligible for French passports soon enough (if born there, they are eligible at 13 and it is SO easy) and that will open so many doors for them. French qualifications will also be accepted throughout the EU, whereas British qualifications won’t be (thanks Brexit). For their sake, stay, at least until they have finished their education. Then you can always move back to Britain if you like but don’t flush their futures down the toilet.

Can you move to a nearby town?

Your kids may have an idyllic life now but what to the teenagers in your village do?

Have you asked your 12 yo how confident they feel with French at their current educational stage?

I honestly don’t think I could live anywhere where the mayor interfered with whether my veggie child could take a veggie packed lunch. How preposterous.

I’d move back then your DC will be settled in time for spending their teenage years in the UK. At that age they want to hang out with their friends and have stuff going on. If you wait much longer you’ll probably have to hang on until they finish school.

I've caught up with the thread now and have had time to think. Are your DH's family nearby? Was that a factor in deciding where you are living?

I ask because when I lived really out in the sticks with my ex - not for long - it turned out that the grand plan was that potential MIL, FIL, his sister, the sister's partner and God only knows who else would be staying for huge chunks of the year at our place. The best parts. Like July, August and Christmas. The sister and boyfriend were students with long holidays and the parents were retired.

My parents. Non.

I remember sitting on a wobbly hardback chair in a freezing room at Christmas playing Trivial Pursuit from an ancient set that they'd had in a cupboard for thirty years and must have known all the flipping answers to but just sat around with for some kind of ritual practice.

There was a long and complicated joke about The Gobi Desert that I wasn't a part of and was at my expense, then I was told to get up and do some washing up or somesuch cleaning or bring them drinks or whatever and I thought, 'I've got to get out of here.'

I did worry that if we had children that my culture would fall by the wayside, perhaps unreasonably because my ex spoke good English and we varied the two languages when we were on our own and watched English language films etc but it felt like we were never on our own. His family had too much influence on our lives.

I didn't want to be the odd one out and constantly undermined.

It was sort of the same in the village. I was the new addition to be, 'Trained up in the correct way to do things.' I was losing my identity and didn't recognise myself. Vegetarian Lunchgate makes me this of this.

One thing eventually led to another and I called a taxi (Had no car) back to my own flat on the coast - which thankfully, I owned and didn't have tenants in.

Then I went back to my scandalous ways in a tourist beachy town and had to go grovelling back to my old boss at the bus company for my job back. Which, bless him, he did. I went walking out of his office through the garage and the mechanics said things, like, 'I thought I'd see that you'd been murdered on the news.'

I went out drinking with my friend, a flamboyant gay municipal policeman (Sort of glorified traffic warden) and freedom was complete.

I've gone completely off topic, haven't I? But I couldn't hack village life at all. I would have done a Madame Bovary.

Oh, where I live on the coast would still be called a village by most people but it isn't at the complete extreme of isolation of where my ex lived.

From what you have described I would move back to UK. You deserve happiness too! Your children will be sad but will adapt quickly. Just do your homework as to where is going to suit you best as a whole family. Honestly, the UK is not that bad.

I expect that you are living the ideal life of some peoples dreams in rural France.

However, I can feel your unhappiness.

Are there any ex pat groups within an hours drive ?
Or volunteering ?
Or another PT job ?

Do you have a spare room that you can rent out as Airb&b & meet more people that way ?

Your DH will not be feeling the same, because he is busy working.

Look on rightmove.co.uk for property prices in UK near your DM

Good luck with what happens next