Hello wise people. I've NCed for this, as the details are very outing to anyone who knows me.
Earlier this year, we (me, DH and two small, barely school-aged children) moved to a European country for a great job opportunity for him. He speaks the language, I don't, and I gave up my job to come. (It's relevant that wild horses couldn't force me back into that job. I'm in the process of retraining, but my current earning potential is pretty much zero, regardless of which country we're in.)
8 months in, he was fired (a whole other thread in itself! He isn't totally blameless, but certainly no gross misconduct or anything like that - a combination of naivete on his part, toxic corporate politics, and an utter disregard for the disruption caused to us.) Financially, we are ok (no thanks to them!) but professionally and geographically, we are up shit creek.
Initially, we made the decision that he would search for another job here. The reasons for this are many, but here are some:
- our home is London, and Brexit is looming. It seems to me that the worst case scenario is that he is unemployed in London at Brexit. Theoretically, there are more opportunities here, although it's obviously a terrible time of year for job seeking.
- I actually quite like it here, although I didn't want to come, and so does DH.
- The children are at local schools, and picking up another language. This would disappear pretty much the moment we went home.
- We could get our house in London back from our tenants, but getting the children back into their old school would probably be difficult. This would be very disruptive for them, just 8 months after we made the first disruptive move.
- The children have found settling in quite hard, but they are just starting to make friends and feel more at home.
The thing is, we had always planned to go home eventually, and in 18 months or so, I will need to continue my retraining with hands-on experience, which would probably need to be in the UK. So now I am questioning our decision to stay - part of me thinks, why compound our error by staying here, when the original reason for coming (the job) has now disappeared? But the other part of me thinks, if we hold our nerve, this is a way better place to be than London at the moment.
I know you are not me, and I think I feel very differently in this situation to how many would feel, but I want to canvass some opinions. What do you think you'd do? We certainly did not think this move would be a mistake, but it has turned out to be, and my main fear is making another one. So I want to make sure I've considered all the angles and thought properly about what the best thing for everyone would be.
Thank you for reading, and sorry it's so long! I could talk about this shitty situation all day, as my poor friends know only too well!