DH won’t move house

[sellupandgo]

I’m not sure what I’m looking for here other than some empathy if anyone is in the same position?

It’s a simple enough story - DH and I have lived in our current house for over 10 years. We are both 40 and have young children. I’ve been wanting to move for a while now - don’t like the area and house not fit for purpose. DH always brushes me off when I suggest it. We’ve got really awful neighbours and I had it out with DH recently saying we absolutely had to get away. He could see I was really upset so he finally agreed! But since then he’s been dragging his heels - won’t put the house on the market, dismissing every house I’m interested in. I’ve come to the realisation that he’s just gaslighted me and has no intention of moving. What can I do? I feel so trapped and powerless. I can’t very well force a move without his consent seeing as he owns half of the house.

It depends how unhappy you are and how determined you are to move.

My ex promised me we would sell his house and buy together, then he reneged on that and refused to move. I'd sold mine to be with him. I hated his house, it was dark and depressing, in a horrible place and he wouldn't let me redecorate either.

In the end I found a job & bought a house in my home town by myself, took ds2 there, and told ex he could catch us up when he sold his, as he had agreed.

He never did sell. Or redecorate.

That's the nuclear option, but both parties need to be happy, need to work together to find a shared happy home, or a relationship doesn't work.

It's really tricky. I am the sort of person that has itchy feet quite a lot and I like the 'project' of moving house. It can be helpful to have my DH as a dragging anchor sometimes, because the lure of the new can push you into doing something that isn't sensible.

Having said that, I do not subscribe to the idea that because a place is 'ok' and you won't make a profit on selling, that means you should stay forever. Particularly because your kids' childhood is a relatively short window. If you want them to have a childhood with a garden to kick a ball, the time to move is right now. I think it's terrible to live in the countryside and not have peace and quiet and open space. You might as well have the convenience of a town. The place you live has an enormous impact on your quality of life, but your DH will be less exposed to that if he is out of the house 5 days a week.

I would say that since he has agreed, you should start the ball rolling and expect to have to do all of the work. Don't be in too much of a hurry and you might find that a lovely house pops up and he becomes all keen. You could also consider something like a couple of weeks in an Air BnB, in a house similar to what you'd be aiming to buy, so that he can really live the difference.

I’ve viewed properties recently without my house being on the market, I don’t “need” to move so I certainly would not put my house on the market before I found a house I wanted to buy. I have a very narrow criteria on my next house so when I find it I will put my house on the market with the same agent, a house could easily sell straight away so for an agent refuse a viewing unless your own house is under offer is very shortsighted and seems to be a new phenomenon since covid, I’ve worked for several estate agents pre covid and not once have we refused a viewing on that basis, we enquired about their position and let the vendors know before hand, a prospective buyers ability to proceed can change very quickly.

Yeah that's not how it works. You sell before you even start looking. It adds to the stress of it all.

In all honesty I'm a bit team husband. I hate moving house, and I like my house. I don't like that it's on a main road, but I have a very long drive - whatever. The garden is big enough but not quite configured as I'd like because of the location of the garage, and I can hear the road noise which does annoy me. However I have awesome neighbours and live on the very very edge of a small town in the Peak District and can be in the countryside with my dogs in less than a minute's walk. Not quite as frustrating as your situation - but I would put up with a LOT rather than go through the hell of moving and renovating a new house.

Your requirements have changed. He obviously doesn't share that opinion.

I think your best course of action is to sit down and have an actual conversation with each other about what you want. You need to stop declaring your perspective to be the objective truth and accept his perspective is also valid. He needs to stop fobbing you off and saying what he thinks you want to hear if he doesn't really want it. You both need to be honest about how you perceive each other's "inertia" and "itchy feet" because those incompatibilities are going to rear their heads in many other ways if you don't at least acknowledge them in each other (and find some sort of way of navigating them).

You should probably ask him outright whether what he really wants is for your current place to be a forever home. It's still unclear whether he explicitly agreed to your plan of moving on after a few years or if you just assumed he did (because you do seem to assume that what you want has to be correct). If he did agree, and hasn't changed his mind, then what you want to agree on is a timeframe for moving out of your horrible village. A year, two years, whatever.

I’ve lived this dilemma and we tried to move and didn’t in the end. I’m pretty happy now weirdly. Five years later my partner is now the one who wants to move and I’m the one who is saying it makes more sense to stay put 🤣

Things that changed were;

1. the kids got to an age where I wasn’t in the house so much and I got a job locally which I enjoy.
2. I still don’t love the village or my neighbours but the village is safe and we co-exist with the neighbours. My eldest also now has a best friend less than a minute away and I like that for him
3. we can easily afford the mortgage and bills. We got the house for a great price and it’s now worth double what we paid for it, so whilst it’s not ideal we can live with it. 4) great transport links. Half an hour from three big towns/cities and the children are heavily involved in local sports teams and the schools they are in are excellent.

You are coming at this from a highly emotional place that your partner doesn’t share. He is feeling more pragmatic about it all and that’s where the apathy is showing. I was also highly emotional at the time i wanted to move but I don’t feel emotional at all now. This shall pass.

I’d be worried about pissing any potential buyers around though because it will take many months or more for us to find the right house, our criteria is so narrow. The houses I am looking at seem to be sitting on the market for a loong time so I’d be surprised if an agent refused us a viewing. There’s one down the road that I like that’s been on since summer 2024.

Another option would be to sell and find a rental to tide us over, but obviously I’d much rather avoid that if possible.

I know your situation isn’t as extreme but im
going to act like it’s comparable and that being assaulted by a home invader is the same as someone complaining about dandelions, so your husband is the same cruel fuck as the other husband if he doesn’t do what you want.

Okay…

I do understand that, its a catch 22. How sure are you that yours will sell quickly though, we did just what you propose and ended up missing out on our dream house by 3 days as we viewed it, put ours on the market and it took 4 months to get an offer. We didn’t panic the house we had seen had been on for a year and EA said it hadn’t had much interest. We said we are interested will put ours on the market and make an offer as soon as we can, kept in touch regularly to update them of our progress then got a phone call one day saying they’ve had an offer, can you offer and we couldn’t. 3 days later had an offer on ours but the seller wouldn’t accept a new offer so that was that. In my head i had moved in, i was devastated. I Never made that mistake again, i won’t view unless i can proceed.

You are right though, buyers are likely to only give you 6-8 weeks to get your side moving as it impacts everyone, ours got pushy after 4 weeks, we secured something around 7 weeks but the whole chain took about 9 months to complete. So you may have to consider renting to bridge the gap if your certain you want to move.

I suppose it seems unfair because he’s the one who has apparently changed his mind, not me. If at the time I’d thought we were buying the house where we would have to raise our children, I would never have bought this place. DH admits that we agreed we would just be here for a few years. He won’t even say that he has changed his mind, he says he would like to move but then finds fault with every single house that becomes available in our price bracket.

But why are you hung up on this ‘he changed his mind’ angle when it’s a weak case anyway (no one can predict the future, he wasn’t lying to you, by your own admission the house plan turned out different due to naivety and costs) and it doesn’t achieve anything. It’s like you’re trying to point score and gain some righteous high ground that doesn’t exist. There is no unfair in this. Listen to what that poster said - the advice about no objective right position was very wise and while you cling to ‘but I’m right and he’s wrong/gaslighting/moving goalposts’ you’ll get precisely nowhere. People are allowed to change their mind anyway, it’s not nefarious! Strive to find common ground if you want to move forward.

I’m not at all sure it will sell quickly, it’s a very unique house so there’s nothing I can compare it to. The flip side is that we accept an offer on our house and then feel rushed into buying another house that isn’t quite right again. That would be awful! I guess a good starting point would be to get some EAs over and ask their opinion.

I’m being a bit defensive towards some posters on this thread but I’m not talking like that to DH, we’re not arguing about it and I accept I can’t hold him to something we only vaguely agreed on 11 years ago.

My parents lived in my father's dream home for 44 years. It was a lovely thatched cottage, well it had 4 bedrooms so more of a house, with a few acres, huge beautiful garden. However it was 1.5 miles from the nearest village, shop, bus stop etc. My DF developed Parkinsons & then dementia so had to stop driving. My mother had a stroke that robbed her of the use of her left hand (she was left handed), she had to drive him everywhere, care for him & do everything she just couldn't cope. So they HAD to move into the city. My father resisted this at every point. He refused to look at houses, was rude to estate agents who came to value the property. But mum was firm - she even said that she would leave him, rent a flat in the city & divorce him forcing the sale in order to get her half of it all & he would have to go into a home. She was serious & even went to see a solicitor making sure that he knew about it - well she had to explain why I was taking the afternoon off work to take care of him. 😉

So, they sold, bought an equally large house with a small easy to care for garden in the city. My father was a nightmare. We'd pack a few boxes & he would unpack them as he suddenly decided that he had an urgent need for something that was at the bottom of one of them, he absolutely refused to allow my mother to get rid of any of his clothes, papers, books etc so they all had to go with them.

But they moved & daddy was happy living in the city where they could walk to the shops, go out to dinner or lunch, the cinema, theatre etc all within easy walking or bus distance.

YADNBU

I think you’ve got very valid reasons for wanting to move.

Why waste years of your life in a house or area that you hate. Life is far too short, and luckily for you and your family, you’ve got the means to do it.

He’s agreed (even if it was just lip service), so be brave and get that ball rolling as soon as possible.

It’s the perfect time of year, with spring just round the corner.

Good luck 🏡

I think your reasons to move are perfectly valid. It would be very nice to have more outdoor space, and it's unpleasant to use a garden when you're overlooked at all sides in a village you don't like. Indoor space is so valuable too, given the type of weather we have in the U.K, so mind you don't sacrifice too much.

I assume you've researched where you're moving to? So many rural locations have ageing populations.

I feel sorry for you OP. It's unpleasant when people get stuck in their ways and don't want any change, even if it's good change! So frustrating because this is the sort of change that he needs to be on board with.

but then finds fault with every single house that becomes available in our price bracket

There's a lot of shit, overpriced houses out there. Lots of estate agents automatically adding 20% to the price or more, just to get their seller's custom instead of them going to a rival agency.

Did you find your at a very reasonable price or something?

So true. We did get ours at a bit of a bargain, but the proceeded to throw a huge amount of money at it to get it just how we wanted it. There’s no denying the house itself is very nice now, we’ll be hard pressed to find something equally as nice that also has the garden etc

Thanks everyone for your advice. DH and I have had a good chat and I think we’ve made some progress. He’s even said that he’s actually feeling quite excited at the prospect of starting again and putting our stamp on a new place. I’ve booked some estate agents in for valuations. The question still remains whether any house we find will come up to DH’s exacting requirements but we’ll see!

So maybe I did just need to take the bull by the horns after all!

If my partner was deeply unhappy in the house we lived in then I would definitely look for another house because I want us both to be happy, I wouldn’t want them to feel constantly miserable, depressed and unsettled for years on end, who wants their partner to feel like that?

Absolutely, I think DH has been dragging his heels on this because he didn’t realise how upset I was but now he does I’m hoping he’ll jump into action.

Great update op 👍

OP, are you totally confident that you and DH are on the same page, and completely transparent with each other about finances? i ask because I know couples where a DH has been very reluctant to do something involving money, specifically loans and finance like mortgages etc. And it has turned out, in the end, after a lot of bending over backwards to make things work from their DP, that they have way more debt than their DP realised. Debt they have concealed. You will need to have your financial ducks in a row to move house anyway. So do that now - full transparency, bank statements, HMRC statements to check tax and earnings are as stated - just to be on the safe side.