What do you think of this ultimatum from Fiance?

[Pladi]

Fiancé and I met in our mid 20s in London. He is Norwegian. I have always been completely upfront that I would never even contemplate living in Norway. Not even Oslo. I must have made this clear from around the 2nd month of dating. Fiancé accepted that as he hated growing up in a fairly small town anyway.

Since becoming engaged fiancé has requested that we live in Oslo for a year after we marry. Just as an experience. I have said absolutely bloody not. There’s a long list of reasons why I wouldn’t consider this. Fiancé is “confused” as I did spend 18 months in Seattle for work. But Seattle (where I speak the language and am somewhat familiar with the culture) is a very different proposition to Oslo.

Im not happy that he’s changing the goal posts despite the fact I have never been anything but brutally transparent.

Ideally we would live in London for a couple more years then make the move to the burbs.

I’m not being unreasonable, am I?

You've mapped out what you want from life, but forgotten to include the thoughts and opinions of your partner. Your partner obviously wants you to actually learn Norwegian and get to know his family and culture; that's a normal thing to want and is not changing any goal-posts. DH and I are extraordinarily similar in most things that we want to do or achieve, but there are still some differences and compromises need to be worked out. Life is long and can get tricky, you need to figure out how to work with someone before you consider getting married or the relationship will fail at the first real hurdles. If living abroad is your only red line, then you need someone else who has the same red line. I would lay bets this isn't your only red line though, and at some point you'll need to try to address this rigidity if you are to have any successful relationship with someone else.

Friends of mine met and married in England. He’s Irish and always wanted to try living back in Ireland so they did this for a year before the kids started school, and moved back to the UK after one year because wife didn’t like it and husband had worked out it was actually very handy to live in the UK near hands-on grandparents.

If you’re not willing to compromise at all, it suggests you may be mismatched in your values/wishes.

I don’t understand giving up a relationship that was supposed to be your life partner over something like this.

if you find you true partner, you want to live life together, and have adventures together. Norway would be a adventure.

How can you have a life partner but put them and the relationship in a box?

The conclusion for me is simply he is not the right man for you.

I read somewhere that different people have different relationships to place - for some it is everything, for others it is a minor detail.

I can see that in my family. Some of us are much more attached to where we come from than others - I would say it's a 50/50 split.

You can't just expect people who are attached to a place to give it up, like it's a minor detail.

The OP moved to London so he's clearly not that attached.

I moved from Scotland to London - I'm not that attached either. My brother on the other hand would never leave. It would be unfair for him to meet someone foreign who arrived in his town only for that person to expect him to up sticks and move. No matter how much he liked her he just wouldn't do it.

It is like the 5 languages of love theory. People are different. Some will not move.

Of course he’s compromising. Marrying her on her current terms means giving up the prospect of ever living in his own country ever again.

Living in England through choice now is different from living there forever, without the ability to return home even for a year or two.

I’m not sure why this is so hard to understand? 🤷🏻‍♀️

He’s not unreasonable to be having second thoughts about spending time in Norway. She’s not unreasonable to say I always said I would never leave the UK and I really can’t change my mind on this, I think we’ve underestimated what this might mean for us so we need to talk very seriously about whether our relationship has a future.

There aren’t any victims here (no one said there was so not sure where you’re getting that from?) just the complicated reality of choosing to be with someone from another country, and some people are sharing their personal perspective on why it’s nuanced/difficult and not black and white.

By that logic, OP is “compromising” just as much by “giving up” her option to live in Norway or Sweden or Seattle or Rome…

Yet again, your argument is “if they both want something, he’s sacrificing and she isn’t so if he later wants something different, he gets his way” 🙄🙄

Nope that’s not remotely my argument! But I suggest we leave it at that as either I’m not being very clear, or you are having problems understanding what I (and others) are saying. Either way it’s become unproductive.

I do and don’t think you are unreasonable.

You were very honest from day one that you never wanted to live in Norway and he was aware of that. So it is unfair of him to almost change the goal posts in a way.

However what I think is unreasonable is never expecting any evolution or change in the way people feel about things and also being utterly inflexible about how a relationship evolves over the years. he probably never imagined he would have any desire to live in Norway so he was happy to agree to what you had said at the start but life changes. Our feelings change and I don’t think it’s unreasonable for him to want to try and live in Norway for one year and to have you experience that.
Good luck, whatever you decide to do.

Even Saudi Arabia or Texas I would not see the reluctance to go for a year.

Exactly. You can’t actually justify why he’s compromising by doing exactly, to the letter, what he wants. It’s not what “compromise” means.