persuading DH to move to Australia

[ceedub]

I was born in the UK, but moved to Australia as a baby, and grew up there. I came over to the UK in 2005 for work, and met DH, who is British. I returned to Australia, and he and I had to choose who would make the longer-term move to make the relationship work. As I have dual nationality, it was easier for me to come over to the UK - and I was in my early 30s and up for the adventure and opportunities this presented. in doing this, i walked away from a high-flying career, but was a bit swept away by the romance of it.

After a couple of great years living in london, DH and I moved out of London. we had our two DCs and I gave up working in London, and eventually managed to find a job working from home.

DH continued to work in london, making the daily commute. His career has flourished and mine has pretty much gone down the toilet. I tried to kickstart it late last year by going 'in-house' with my current employer, and it hasn't been successful. My daily commute is at least 5 hours and I'm exhausted. There really isn't a local alternative so if I want a career (which I do), this is how it has to be. Moving back to london isn't an option.

I've made some good friends, and feel like I've spent the last 8 years trying to settle here.

then last year, my mum - who lives in melbourne - was diagnosed with cancer. she's in remission at the moment, but i was utterly devastated at not being able to be there with her. we don't know how much longer she has - if the cancer some back it's probably a year or two, otherwise she could expect to live a normal life.

I so want to move back home. DH has the opportunity to do a one-year secondment in melbourne next year - which I've jumped at - but i know that once i get there, i won't want to come home. I want my children to have the childhood i had and I want to be near family and friends who really 'get me'. I also want the chance to do all the things I haven't been able to do in the UK, and which I know I won't do if I stay here.

problem is, I know DH is deeply resistant to the idea of a permanent move. His parents are quite elderly here and would be very upset - but my poor mum has had to get by on seeing my children every other year, which as been so hard for her. he acts as though I'm unreasonable for asking it - but he always knew that one day I would want to go back. I feel like he's had the lifestyle and career he always hoped it would - but that it's come at the expense of what I've wanted.

I've been so homesick, and probably depressed for about 18 months - ever since the cancer diagnosis. i can't see this going away. How do I get DH to realise how important this is - that if we don't move, I know i will be deeply resentful and bitter towards him.

sorry for the long read. any advice very welcome.

What have you agreed will happen if after the year is up, he wants to return to the UK and you want to stay in Melbourne? Will you agree to return to the UK? Will you allow him to come back with the children? Or will you end your marriage and tell him your children are staying in Oz?
I think it's important that he gives you this year as you're so homesick and he can reasonable do it through secondment. But if I was your dh Id want assurances that you'd return after the year was up.
It's not that I don't sympathise. I've experienced terrible homesickness when we were out of the UK with dh's job even though I didn't have family left. Luckily, dh felt the same. So I know it can be all consuming but if he's going thinking its s year and you're going thinking he owes you 10yrs then that's a massive problem. If your idea is to go home and if you love it, never to return to the UK, then you must tell him this straight before he takes the secondment.

I agree with LondonZoo but I'm not hijacking the OP's thread. Also, I've read much worse things on MN, but still: back on topic.

I can understand the anger, resentment and frustration of the OP. Especially as Ceedub's husband did agree to go to Australia.

However, as it's a secondment from Ceedub's husband's company, I assume they've arranged the Australian visa ? Basically, what happens to his entitlement to live and work in Australia at the end of his seconded year ? Or is that an administrative exercise to be done is Australia so he can get Australian citizenship ? Whether or not he stays ? To be frank OP, are you more comfortable divorcing under Australian law ? Will you sell your house in Britain ?

I am married to a New Zealander who I met in London in 1992 and we married in my home county two years later. Months and months before we married, I told him that I didn't want children and I didn't want to move to New Zealand. Which he agreed to. I said to him if you marry me hoping I'll change my mind that way divorce lies. I also remarked that if he loves me but hates living in Britain he will be in hell.

I had visited to New Zealand to visit my prospective in-laws a few months before we got married but I had no intention of living there.

Fast forward to 2006, several months after my mum had died aged sixty two and I was still dealing with my grief. My husband was 'working the numbers' in his head whilst he was at home cutting the grass on the lawn. When he was finished he came to me and said we could sell our house, buy a property outright in NZ, both get jobs and live mortgage free therefore giving us more disposable income.

A mid life crisis had triggered this for him.

I mostly agreed with him to shut him up. I didn't want to be the bad guy for saying no. I didn't want to feel like I was his jailer whilst he sulked and sulked and finally after a couple of years of his sulking I ended up saying, 'just go, we'll get a divorce and you can do what you like'. I wasn't prepared to end my marriage on his pipedream. Basically, I agreed to sell the house and relocate to NZ to teach him a lesson about New Zealand in the here and now not some day dream version of NZ from around 1989 when he was a single man at university.

Also, fair play, his sister is married with children and he wanted to see more of his nephew who is a teenager and his twin nieces are 9. His eighty year old mother isn't getting any younger either. She had a one inch, shallow, cancerous growth excised from her skin earlier this year. She recovered and you would never know anything was wrong with her. She's returned to her hobbies and her social life as if nothing had happened. They all live in Auckland where my husband comes from but does not want to live there, neither do I.

My Dad is 74. I haven't seen him for four and a half years as we relocated to NZ in 2011. Sometimes I get scared that I might not see him again. There's nothing wrong with him but you never know. I gambled on my Dad's life expectancy over my MIL's. Let's hope I'm right ?

My niece and nephew are adults and will follow their own path.

I have a family category visa which gives me Permanent Residency. I seem to only be able to get temporary jobs here in small town NZ. Even then, I end up driving to the nearest large town which is 50 miles away, i.e. a one hundred mile round trip. I walked to work when we lived in Britain. We ended up here due to my husband's job offer after a rather higgledy piggeldy start to our emigration, despite five years of planning.

I've made acquaintances but no friends. New Zealanders are reserved, this can come across as cold.

My husband knows I'm not happy here. We are at least at the talking stages about returning to Britain.

I didn't say it was "unforgivably selfish" to want to live in your home country. People want what they want. What is selfish is to make an empty promise to move to another country, expect your partner to live in your country indefinitely despite being unhappy and struggling in their career, and not even consider making a compromise/sacrifice in return and moving to their country. As it is, the OP's husband has finally agreed to move for his secondment so he is now making an effort, but the OP said that his previous refusal to consider moving has damaged the relationship. I can understand why she may feel resentful and find it difficult to forgive him. That's all!

My DH is from a different country (although luckily nowhere near as far away as Australia). I think if you commit to a relationship with someone from another country, you have to be willing to consider living there. As it is we are both happy in the UK for now but if he wanted to move I would certainly consider it and would probably agree. Equal, healthy relationships have to go two ways!

Also, have you noticed that in a large majority of cases, it's the WOMAN making a sacrifice, while the man gets to live in the country he wants (his country of origin and/or the place that most benefits his career)? It really annoys me that in many cases there is still an expectation that men get what they want and women have to sacrifice their own wants and needs for the good of the men. How could we possibly expect the poor men to compromise for the sake of their partners?! Gah. Luckily not all men are like that. But women aren't doing each other any favours when they tell each other to just suck it up.

I disagree that you have to consider living there, and also that the dh owes the years to the op. Because the op moved here initially and it should be a fresh decision by both without obligation.

Marsha, that might be true if the OP had never stated any desire to return to Oz but that simply isn't the case. I think the OP has not been explicit enough and the DH is turning a blind eye to previous discussions but she says When I came over, DH and I had long conversations about who should move and I made it clear that I always expected we would live in Australia at some point. After I had DD, I really struggled and we talked again about moving back. This was about 6 years ago. DH agreed that we would move back before I turned 40 (which I did last year). So it's not as though it's not been on the cards. We never discussed how long - i.e. whether it would be permanent, but I made it clear I wanted the children to have an Australian childhood - so it was always clear that it would be for more than a year.

The decision to locate in the UK was made ostensibly purely for visa reasons - the OP could be here far more easily than the DH could be in Oz. There was no agreement to live here in permanent preference to Oz.

And I agree with AnotherEmma, the OP has made some major sacrifices to enable her DH's career to flourish. Now it's her turn.

For the record, my husband was born in Britain and emigrated to NZ with his parents in the sixties when he was a little boy.

When we met, I naively thought he had come home. Looking back now it makes me facepalm.

I should not have tried to make a marriage out of some one else's holiday romance.

I cringe over my lack of judgement.

I've told my husband to his face, 'I had no intention of moving to NZ with you, you're just not worth it'.

Even though we agreed not to have children, he once remarked if we did have children, he would want them to go to school in New Zealand.

I was flabbergasted. WTAF did that come from ?

So, these children we've already agreed we are not having, they would be going to school in NZ ?

I asked him about having a vasectomy. He didn't want to discuss it before his 40th birthday. Ok, fair enough. That milestone came and went. Finally, he had his, 'Vas' as he referred to it a 2 months before we came to NZ age 49. Even then because he could get it for free on the NHS and it would cost to have it done in NZ as there is no NHS here.

I wish I'd done things differently, although if I had I quite possibly wouldn't have my two lovely sons, so maybe not - but I wish I had moved to Australia first and given it a shot with DH here before having children. I think it would have given me more of a "let out" clause that I didn't have at all once Ds1 was in the picture.

I may still have chosen to stay, I don't know. I do know that I sometimes resent DH for making me be so far away from my family and friends; but not that often because he is good about us going back every year.

Toasted - would you go back to the UK now?

thanks again everyone. especially for those who referenced my earlier posts about the promises DH made about giving me some time in Australia. I'm not planning to split up with him - but I do get very angry at the extent of sacrifice and compromise on my part. We have had three big discussions about where we would live - when I first came over, after I had DD and when my mum became ill. On each occasion he agreed to spend an indefinite time in Australia - not forever, but more than a year. It's only been since I really, really forced the issue and insisted on taking him at his word that he tried to back down - clearly in breach of his previous promises - that I've been angry with him. not unreasonably!

I guess my plan at this stage is to enjoy the first 6 months of our time there and see how it goes - no pressure (as far as I can manage!). On the basis of that, I'd then have a conversation with him about the possibility of extending the stay - allowing 6 months for him to apply for a spouse visa to stay beyond the year, which I'm told is enough time, especially for an in-country application.

If he really, really hates it and doesn't want to stay, I guess it then becomes a negotiation about under what conditions I would return to the UK. I don't know what those would be. Interestingly, when the subject of the secondment has come up with other people, he's insisted it will only be a year, but then said 'though we could always go back later'. I have no idea what he means by this - it could either be that he wants another 5 years in his UK career or it could just be an attempt to placate me.

I completely accept I was naïve - I trusted him when he said that if I really wanted to move he would support that - not permanently - but that it would be possible.

for all those critical of my position, remember he said on three separate occasions that he was willing to make the move - albeit not permanently. I had children in the UK on the basis of those promises. more fool me, I guess.

As long as there genuinely are conditions in which you will return to the UK if heroes hate it then fine, I think that's reasonable. But if you love being home so much and he hates it are you willing to allow him to return to the UK either with you and the children or just the children? If there is any possibility that you will feel so desperate to stay that you tell him he must stay or return without his children then you must must must make that clear now. I'm not saying I blame you for feeling that way but you cannot go knowing you won't let him return with his children if he hates it. That's very cruel IMO. I hated our time in Australia and luckily dh felt ready to come home too. However, I inly agreed to go because the 457 temp visa made it clear that I could bring my children home again if I wished. Dh is Scottish but I still wouldn't have chanced him loving it so much that I was stuck. We have travelled lots esp with his job so I'm by no means a homebird. It was the fear of having the choice taken away from me.

NoMoreRenting it seems to me there are double standards in terms of what you think is fair for the OP and for her DH. You say it would be cruel of her to insist on staying in Austalia if he hates it. But that's exactly what he's done to her by insisting they stay in the UK when she hates it. I'm not saying she'd be right to do the same (I think he's wrong to sit in the first place) but you're saying they shouldn't even go to Australia unless she promises this won't happen. Massively unfair since this has already happened to her. Secondly you say that you were (understandably) afraid of having the choice to move taken away from you. So the DH shouldn't risk it either. What about the OP's choice? He's taken it away from her for the last several years.

OP I'm glad to hear you are going. Even if it ends up being the year, you and your Dc will cherish that time spent with family always.

My DC last saw their NZ family 4yrs ago and DS1 who was 3, still talks about his grandpa and cousins with fondness not so much his aunt who smacked his bum

I wish you much luck and joy!

Thumbwitchesabroad - we are in the early discussion stages regarding returning to the UK. My husband looks on UK based jobs websites everyday. He's also got those websites to e-mail jobs to him.

Thumbwitchesabroad - so to answer your question, yes, I would go back to the UK now.

No, I'm saying she should be completely open and honest before they go. It's wrong to go with her dh believing it's for a year and her knowing that if she loves it, there's no way she'll return to the UK. It's not wrong for her to feel that way but they both need to know where they stand before they leave.
And yes, I would not have wanted that choice taking away from me so I wouldn't have had children in another country knowing there may be a chance that doing that means I could be stuck there.
It's not a tit for tat situation where he now owes her 10yrs in Oz. She came to the UK, married and had her British children here. I know they had vague discussions and he made promises and that's s big issue for the op's relationship but the answer isn't to deceiving into thinking he is giving her a year at home when ultimately I may mean he goes home without his children.

Is his secondment flexible, or is it fixed that he has to return to his job in a year? I'd make sure you check that before considering if it's possible to stay on.

NoMoreRenting - yup, I agree. That sums it up succinctly.

I get the impression that even if the OP is explicit with her DH, he will not really hear her/choose to hear what he wants, and expect her to fall in line with his plans at the end of the year as she always has done before.

I agree she should try, but it may not make any difference. Personally I would put it in terms of 'if my career is booming I will be very reluctant to give that up again'.