To insist on moving DH and the DC to New York?

[TheCoralBear]

Me, DH and our DC (11 year old DS and 14 year old DD) were all born in the UK and live in London. I’ve performed in musical theatre (and I work as an usher in a theatre when I’m not performing) my whole life and it’s all I’ve ever known. Usually I perform in west end musicals here in the UK however I’ve now been offered a role on Broadway which would obviously involve moving to New York. I want to accept the role and move us all to New York but DH and the DC are dead set against it and won’t even consider it. I really don’t want to turn down the Broadway role as it’s an excellent opportunity for my career. DH are the DC are refusing to even consider moving though. DH has even suggested I go to New York alone and he stays here with the children but I’m not going to just abandon my children like that so that’s why I’ve suggested we all move to New York but DH and DC keep insisting that they don’t want to go. Would I be unreasonable to insist that we are all going to New York and that’s the end of it? DH says he doesn’t care if it’s an excellent opportunity for my career but he is not considering moving to New York, he is dead set against it.

My understanding is that I couldn’t apply for my visa if I did move, my employer/the production would have to do it.

It was just a general suggestion, not a fully researched plan. I’m not the one in this situation, so I didn’t look into costs. No critique required thanks.

Are you aware of how it is across the pond at the moment?
I don't think it's wise, especially with how things are been managed in that country, is all I'm going to say
You obviously want to so you just might but i think you should leave your family here in the UK
I'm thinking that'd be for their best

Yes, an O1 - or a P2 if it’s an exchange between British Equity and American Actors Equity. A show that wants to bring an Equity member to Broadway has to petition Actors Equity and vice versa. Each union has a vested interest in protecting its own members’ opportunities and petitions are usually only granted due to international fame or unique skill.

My husband has an o1 visa and it takes a long while to get all the required evidence together for approval. You will have to show that no american could possibly do the role. Then you have to go to interviews etc at the embassy. You won't be able to move there until it is approved. I have an o3 and can't work, but could apply for a work permit if I wanted.

This may be totally irrelevant so feel free to ignore but something to consider is that if your 14 year old DD moved to New York they may not be able to get student finance for university if they wish to return to the UK to attend.

• The requirements say - UK/Irish Nationals: Must be a UK national or Irish citizen with settled status and have lived in the UK/islands for 3 years before the course starts.

I'm only mentioning as this happened to a friends DC.

I lived in nyc for 10 years (recently), love the US and still live there. Things I would add are:

• public schools are pretty often crappy here, private schools aren’t always easily accessible, and definitely don’t have openings unless it’s the enrollment period. Usually October-Feb for the following August. They also cost about $50k per year.
• healthcare is expensive. Ask how much your family plan payment would be per pay check, not the individual plan, they usually pay every 2 weeks here.
• accommodation in nyc is truly extortionate, even in the suburb, when I was there a 1 bed apt was $3k or more. I add this as someone who moved there, then looked at the cost of living and had a very very tough first year.
• teenage years are not easy years to uproot children in my opinion. Would any of this impact exam taking years and cause issues if they moved back during that?
• this could be a once in a life/life changing experience for you. That’s great, but your children are old enough to have thoughts on it and those thoughts matter.
• I usually flatly tell people nyc is the best place in the world and to go immediately, but I’d caution this choice here.

Putting aside the state of the States for a moment, yanbu to feel this way. Did your husband think you wouldn't get the role?

Has he given reasons for his sudden change of heart?
What is his behaviour usually if he doesn't get his way?

Teach the kids to sing "The sun'll come out tomorrow... bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow... come what may... tomorrow, tomorrow etc" - they might land a Broadway role too 😀🎶

My mum moved for university when I was 10.
It wasn’t across the Atlantic Ocean but that’s just water. Dad and I did fine for 2 years.
There was a mum on here just a day or two ago who had a two-year-old and two jobs and was attending university and was being trolled/shamed by her toddler’s daycare.
That’s brave.

I think you should go. It’s an amazing experience in an amazing place and maybe you could visit home and your family could visit you.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way out.

I was so proud of my mum!! I encouraged her to go and do well for herself!!
Dad and I were fine alone and between phone calls and visits we did beautifully.

Your kids - and that big baby in the big-boy trousers - will take care of each other and be fine. You and I both know this - and shame on every one of them for not being encouraging!

*Do this for yourself. Don’t be a martyr. Okay?
Oh - and break a leg. Sending love ❤️

I hate it when there is a plot point that is hard to explain. Really disrupts the narrative flow.

They do not grant O1 for random theatre usher and sometime performers. For a Broadway run it would be granted, for example, to the original cast of a hit west end show, like Mischief Theatre or Operarion Mincemeat. Broadway is also heavily unionised - someone from outside the sphere of Broadway wouldn’t even get an audition the way OP describes.

Err, what about your dd's education? Her gcses? What about their friendship groups? Your families?

You can't force them to go, and they shouldn't if they don't want to. You dh has made a sensible offer..You can go on your own.

I don’t think you need to worry about @TheCoralBear getting into any trouble or arguments with ICE.

She’ll be at the theatre or she’ll be at her rented accommodation. Or she’ll be eating out someplace safe with her acting friends.

And if she DOES come into contact with those murderous ICE hordes, she’ll cooperate completely and always have her passport, etc., and all her other relevant documents on her. She’ll show them when asked and be non-confrontational at all times - even when the ICE agent is being an arsehole.

The point is for her to keep herself safe at all times.

But honestly, I’ve yet to hear of any ICE agents or ICE movement on The Great White Way. ❤️

Generous of you to rate it a 1/10.

An 18-mont Broadway contract? Sure, Jan.

That’s not even remotely how Broadway shows work. It’s not how Equity works. It’s not how visas work. Broadway doesn’t even guarantee Americans 18 months, let alone someone allegedly plucked from London. Contracts are short, renewable, conditional, and full of outs. Shows close etc

Unless you’re Jack Wolfe–level, with a press release, a Wikipedia page, and an O-1 visa already in motion, no one is handing you a neat, upfront 18-month deal. And if you were that person, you wouldn’t be writing this like a vague internal transfer memo.

The lack of specifics says it all. No show. No role. No start date. No union. No visa. Just “offered a role on Broadway.”

Honestly, the more details added, the less believable it becomes. Broadway called London and said, “Send whoever’s free between usher shifts”? Right.

Your children are old enough to have a choice and they don't want to go. However they are also old enough for you to leave them for periods of time and they and your husband could come out to you during school holidays. You could come home to them sometimes too. Think about that.

On a practical note, New York is incredibly expensive. Does this opportunity pay really really well? Because we just left NYC, and granted our apartment was in mid-town Manhattan, but it was $12k a month for a 3 bed. There's a British school, but it's about $55k pa per child. Public school is patchy and although you'll get a place for your kids somewhere, you can't apply until you're physically living there, so it could take a while, and the commute could be very very long. I was spending $300 per week on food for 4 people, without dinners out. My weekly takeaway oat latte had hit $8.50 on average by the time we left. You need to be earning so much to live there. Apologies if I'm telling things you already know but just wanted to flag that moving to NY is actually really complex and costly. (Have read all OP's posts but not other posters)

You keep saying this to keep the thread going, but you haven’t answered any of the questions about you absolutely fucking up your DD’s education and life.

It wasn’t nice of your DH to initially be open to it and then change his mind. But equally, i’m afraid you need to suck up that you can’t go if you’re not willing to go alone. At 14, you should not be even moving in the UK let alone moving that child to a completely different education system. My friends at 14 i’d had for 10yrs and they are still my best friends at 49. If my parents had taken me out of school to move overseas to follow their own dream then i’d have been resentful for life.

I do get it though in some ways. I’ve been desperate to re-locate back to near my family for years since I split with my ex. I’m in an expensive area so can only rent whereas when I move I can finally be a home owner now. But i’ve had to put the needs of my DC first and complete their education. DD sits her A levels in May and then we are moving. I feel very strongly that when your kids get to secondary age you need to keep them in the same place.

Ultimately you would he very selfish to demand your kids go, and it would spell the end of your marriage. It is horrible your DH wasn’t honest in the first place instead of probably hoping you wouldn’t get it. But you are going to have to either decide to go it alone (my ex did exactly that and works overseas and the DC do still have a good relationship with him) or you let go of the dream. I wouldn’t go without my DC though, not a chance.

Whether or not anyone here thinks it's reasonable or unreasonable to move to New York under these circumstances, I'd expect my husband to provide a more complete and coherent explanation for why he has apparently completely changed his mind. I'd also expect him to be a little bit more supportive than to say he doesn't care about your career. I think you need to discuss this throughly with him as it's pretty likely (and reasonable) that resentment will fester if you don't.

I see that there's some shady back story about your husband but if I understand correctly he IS the children's father. If he's competent, I would not view it as "abandoning" your children if you were to go for 18 months and you gave them the choice and they chose to stay in the UK with their dad but I would try to arrange for them to spend the summer(s) with you.

The ages of your children can make an international move really difficult but from an educational perspective one single school year out might not make a huge difference and might have its own benefits, especially for the younger one. If it's longer, you'd probably need to get them into an IB feeder program (not that difficult in NYC if you can afford it) and also be very careful you're not consigning them to foreign student rates if they want to attend uni in the UK as they'll lose local status if they're not resident in the UK for the three years immediately before enrolling.

But they’ve all said the don’t want to go. You’re understandably upset and your husband may have initially said he wanted to go but now reality has set in and he’s changed his mind. Which is fair enough given the pace things are moving at in the world right now.
Even if he agreed, your kids don’t want to go and they are old enough to have valid opinions. Even if they all wanted to go, disrupting your kids’ education right now is mind blowing. You say you don’t want to abandon your kids - but you would take them out of their education settings at such an important stage when they don’t want to go…? I’ve friends with kids pretty much the same age and they’ve moved to a European country where they have no connections pretty much on the whim of one of the parents. One of the children really didn’t want to go and it’s been very difficult since they arrived. the child who didn’t want to go is school refusing and that’s before we start on visas and the right for everyone to work and remain. Hard enough when everyone is on board: in their case only one was really really not and I’m staggered theyve gone ahead at such an important educational stage. The reality of uprooting like this is not pretty. In your case all 3 are not. You will be killing yourself on stage and so (with love) you won’t be around for the mess of all the emotions of displaced kids, will you? My friend is in the position your DH would be, trying to deal with the debris of facilitating her partner’s mid life crisis whilst he is busy being very important as the only one currently with paid employment and not getting his hands dirty with kids in crisis having been pulled out of their lives, schools and friendships.
I feel for you being given this huge opportunity but stability for your kids has to be non negotiable. I don’t see how you realistically think you can force three autonomous individuals to come with you against their will - are you going to carry two young people onto an aeroplane against their will?
if they don’t want to go, they don’t want to go - take the job and conduct your relationships long distance or don’t take the job. But as your husband doesn’t have PR I can see how this is a significant stumbling block and why you are talking about this in terms of parental abandonment if you were to leave your kids here. Because of that PR complexity, their ages and their unwillingness, aside from the absolute carnage in the Us, I don’t see how this is viable. Really sorry.

Step one, a serious conversation with DH, without the kids around. It was wrong of him to encourage you with no intention to follow through.

If you can't get on the same page and have the whole family treat it as a big adventure, then go alone. You will always regret it if you don't. If you were a young doctor, needing to travel to do your residency, nobody would bat an eyelid. Go, if it's not what you expect, you can always come home. If it's great, the family can come over for their summer vacation. Who knows, maybe they will change their minds. But, if they don't, you regroup after your first six months and decide then what's the most important to you, but by then, you'll always have it on your resume.

On the off chance DH comes around after a good chat, you can easily get an 11 year old onboard, a 14 year old will be much, much more difficult, especially as they will be closer to doing GCSEs too.

You haven't said what visa he'd be on??

My partner had a good job offer in San Diego .. The reason we didn't go is the visa, I'd be unable to work for the time we were there (pré Trump...)

Since first discussing with your DH, things have undoubtedly changed. I'm in the US. It gets worse here every day, worse than I could ever have imagined. Why would you take the chance? I'm sorry that you might miss this opportunity, but nothing is more important than your family.