Said no to moving to wife's hometown - wife not happy

278 replies

20thCenturyBoy · 22/04/2025 03:43

I live in a northern city with my wife, our 2 kids, and my older 3 kids 50% of the time. I was born & raised here. Family live here. My wife moved up from London to be with me 9 years ago. Her family live in the west country.

I like living in my home city but accept that my wife made the move up north because I couldn't make the move to London. The youngest of my elder kids is 14 so technically he might be away to Uni in 4 years time.

We've spoken about moving away for a bit to places like Australia or America as her profession would enable this. More recently she has raised the potential of moving back to her hometown in the west country to be closer to her family. Whilst it's a lovely west country market town I absolutely do not want to live in a rural market town. In any country. I like living in cities. Not interested in living in the countryside at all. I have always been open about this.

My clear stance on this has really upset my wife. She has said since she moved to my hometown I should do the same for her. I did point out that it was her choice to move north. But this obviously didn't help. Another minor factor is that my MIL is not someone I want in my life on a weekly basis.

My honesty about not wanting to move to her hometown has created an undercurrent of resentment from her. I can sense it almost every day. She seems to be positioning this as a deal breaker and now she questioning whether we have a future together in the LT!

Am I being completely unreasonable? Any advice appreciated.

OP posts:

Arran2024 · 23/04/2025 19:30

I'm from Scotland but moved down south and met my husband and we have a family here. No way would I uproot them to go back. It is totally unreasonable.

My grandparents moved to Canad in the 20s, had a family, then my grandfather got homesick and brought them back, just before WW2. My gran never settled and even he knew it was a disastrous decision. Three of the four children eventually went back to Canada and when he retired, my grandparents visited every year. But my grandfather was never happy - if he was in Scotland he wanted Canada and vice versa.

Imo you make your choice and live with it and you don't impose distress on the rest of the family to satisfy your own wishes.

CodandChipz · 23/04/2025 20:17

She sounds isolated. She has a 1 year old and is wfh and I assume doesn’t have much of a life outside the home.
Moving might make that worse, especially to somewhere rural. She thinks her sister will be around but I assume she has a life of her own too. She might move and really find it hard to find friends, or if she stays things may improve with time.
Maybe she needs encouragement and support to do something social outside the home?

schtompy · 25/04/2025 08:43

20thCenturyBoy · 23/04/2025 05:53

I'll try to answer all the questions as succinctly as possible.

In 4 years time my 2 eldest children should be finished uni. My now 14 year old will hopefully have just finished A Levels (18 yrs old). Who knows where they will be but I don't really want to leave just as my middle child had finished A Levels.

It's highly unlikely they would visit us in my wife's hometown much at all so I would see them much less. Although you could argue they may be away in another place and may happen in n any case.

I did not get my wife to move up north to care for my elder kids. She is a great stepmother but I was doing fine as a single parent before she moved in. I have my kids 50/50 because they're my kids! Not to avoid paying support to my ex wife.

My wife has not lived in her hometown for 20 years. She was at uni at another northern city then in London for a decade. All her uni city friends (& sister) moved to London at the same time and she did and she made many more. She loved / loves London. I could not move there as I had three small children. I did not trick / ask her to move up north. It was purely her own decision. Which I am very happy about and grateful for.

She does miss her London life and hasn't made the same sort of friends she made at uni and in London. She has WFH since moving to my hometown. She has made some friends through our kids but it's not the same.

She has a job which she can do from anywhere in the world. I can't do that. And realistically I would have to commute to a city if I were to work in the same profession.

A city like Bristol seems like an option but is 2/3 hours away from her family in Devon so not really worthwhile. We have discussed moving to cities in Oz / USA as this would be (a) great for her career (b) they are cities (!) and (c) my elder kids would be more likely to visit / even live with us in Sydney or NYC than a Devon market town. That last one may seem crazy but it's true.

Ironically most of the friends my wife made at uni, who moved to London, have now moved out of London as they start having kids. But back to the northern uni city where they came from. I did suggest that city as a potential location but it has not seriously been considered. I have also suggested London as my wife still has a property there. Again not seriously considered.

Since we've got together we generally spend a week down in Devon with my MIL three times a year. Sometimes more. MIL comes up to visit us also. MIL does not have a partner and has, we all reckon, primarily untreated mental health issues. Probably depression, ADHD and more. She is also emotionally manipulative. She likes to provide unwanted advice on how to bring up her grandchildren. For example she has threatened to call the 'social services' on both my wife and her sister as she didn't think her grandchildren were being raised in the right way!

Our lives would not be better with my MIL in them more regularly. My wife knows this to be true as she has admitted this. It was particularly bad over Xmas when my MIL stayed with us. She accused my wife (her daughter) of being an alcoholic on Xmas Day. After this I said that i wanted to see my MIL less this year and that I wouldn't be visiting her in Devon with our kids like we have in previous years. My wife is really pissed off at me for saying this. She finds her mother as annoying as I do, and can say this, but she loves her as she is her mother. Whereas I don't love her at all and just find her annoying.

I think this what is really driving this. She does want to be nearer to her sister, and perhaps mother, rather than move back to her hometown. She has 1 close friend still living near ish to her hometown but that's it. Moving there would mean uprooting our kids from their lives here. Education options would be more limited. Activities more limited. And as much as I appreciate 2 (award winning) market days a week that's not enough to keep me stimulated.

It feels like my wife is testing me, and our relationship, because I said I need a break from my MIL. Moving to her hometown has only been seriously suggested since I said this.

For context we both work full time. Have a 6 yr old and a 1 year. Our 1 year old doesn't sleep much so life is hard work right now. It feels like we're both at full tilt from the minute we wake up until we go to (broken) sleep. I am sure this stress is playing into the discussions we have about moving in the future.

We are aiming to start couples counselling soon to address these issues. I do not want to separate / divorce my wife over this so perhaps ultimately may move to her hometown under duress. And, you know, really appreciate those 2 market days a week. Although if I didn't move, and she wanted to split up over this, I would obviously not accept her moving to the other end of the country with our children so we're kind of stuck with each other for the next 17 years anyway.

BTW - I did not just walk into a room one day and state ' I shall never move to your hometown'. It was part of an ongoing conversation about what might happen in the future. I am not a twat.

Well I’m glad to hear you’re having counselling soon about this. As it’s almost a mirror life of my own experience. I followed my stbxh to the other end of the country (Scotland) and lived next to his parents and both Bil/Sil for 10 years, moved further down south for new job whilst I brought up the children and then worked. Come retirement, I wanted to move south west to help my own mother out and be near my father (divorced) as my dear sister had died, who was doing that already. He wouldn’t due to the part time job he had, which he gave up 3 years later. I resented this, but sucked it up as you do, but had to watch my mother suffer trying to get to hospital appointments on her own, and generally dealing with life on her own as she became more ill and frailer. We annoyed the crap out for each other, but I loved her to pieces same as the rest of my family. So when she died, it was incredibly hard, stbxh was seriously lacking in empathy, and help, and then decided it was ok to move to the south west. Amongst other problems, this is why he is my stbxh. My sister and I were incredibly close too, so I understand your wife’s desire to be near. We spend a lot of time following our husbands around for their jobs, amazing as they provide for the family and financially ( usually) but with little thought to the wife’s life. Think long and hard.

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