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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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Original poster

DH is trying to make me move abroad...

123 replies

Flisser · 30/09/2010 22:17

I'll try to keep it short but I desperately need advice. DH and I ave 2 DC's aged 6 and 2.6

DH is Australian and when we first met I made a point of telling him that I would never be happy living abroad as I hate the heat and love my large extended family...as well as my country.

He accepted this and said he lived the UK and wanted to persue his career here. Fast forward and we get married and have DC 1....he loses his job and when DC is 2 months old DH persuedes me to "Give Oz a try"....so I do...we take DC 1 to Oz...I ma in a bad way with depression and the after effects of an emergency c section. I spend 1 year of hell in Oz while DH goes out with his mates and generally regresses...he hardly worked and we had hardly any cash.

We return to the UK and he gets a crappy job and makes no effort to try for a better one...meanwhile I work on my own career and now am self employed and earning a respectable (not massive) amount of cash by working in the evenings at home.

I get pregnant with DC 2 and DH gets addicted to online gambling...we row terribly, he loses his job as he is up all night gambling and borrows masses of cash from his family in Oz....then last year he wins a few grand and uses it to visit Oz alone...for 2 months....he returns and informs me he has a good job offer from a family friend and wants to go back there and work. I say I am not happy about it and he tries to persuede me to go to..I am reluctant and DC 1 is now happy in her school and I have trouble trusting my DH due to the awful rows we had... He goes anyway.

Its 7 months before we see him again...he calls and skypes every day whilst he is away and puts lots of cash in my account...covers rent and bills etc.

He is now trying to make me pack up my life here and join him...he says it would be for 18 months whilst he saves and works....and then he will buy a house in UK and come back here to live...even though he doesn't want to.

I dont want to go. I have tried and tried to see it positively but I can't. I can only see the disruption to DCs education...the mess of packing out rental house up...the heat..the missing my family and I have the fear he wont want to return after all that.

Tonight I told him I had changed my mind and didn't want to go and he swore at me and told me to tell the kids he's dead...as he is so devestated I won't go. He said if I dont go then it is over anyway and he'll kill himself.

We have had this a lot of times since he went the first time..I should add he came back for 6 weeks in summer and all was rosy between us....had a great time...the kids miss him and I am angry he went in the first place when I was against it...I feel he is blackmailing me...and he also throws the money thing in my face...about how he has given me loads of money. I am so upset right now

Other than missing having a Dad about our kids are happy, well adjusted and DC 1 is doing very well at school...I feel sad...not sure where to go from here.

OP posts:

expatinscotland · 01/10/2010 01:59

You say no. There's no such thing as forcing here. You say no. You keep saying no.

ChippingIn · 01/10/2010 02:28

It has all been said already - so really just repeating stuff - :(

Stick to your decision - do not move there. You rist losing your children.

I would get 'residency' ASAP.

He is behaving like a completely immature idiot - and I wouldn't trust him. I wouldn't go for Christmas, I would tell him that he knows where his family is if he wants to see you all.

He's a controlling bully - no matter what other 'good points' you may think he has, that's what it boils down to.

ProperNoun · 01/10/2010 03:00

As Savoy said, they almost certainly aren't Australian citizens unless you have applied for an Australian report of birth abroad at the embassy in the UK, or done similar while living in Oz. Were both DC born in the UK?

I would speak to a lawyer before I took the DC to Australia for Christmas, as s/he will give you the worst case scenario as only paranoid lawyers can . (Could he register them as Aussie citizens without your consent if he has the birth certificates? Could he then apply to an Australian court to keep them there?)

And obviously, don't move there. Tell him you'll just have to be apart for the next 18 months, and that you hope he will then move back to the UK and it will all work out.

To be honest, if it weren't for the shedloads of twuntish behaviour, I'd have sympathy for him. He wants to build a life in his own country now, which might not be what you signed up for, but it's not unreasonable that he's changed his mind.

However, what with the gambling, the suicide threat, the obsessive phoning and shouting... I reckon you can find yourself a nice local boy!

nooka · 01/10/2010 03:33

My BIL is Australian, they met in Australia, and my sister lived out there for a year, and didn't much like it for fairly similar reasons. He came over here, and they got married. Ten years later he persuaded her to go back to Australia, and they've been there for a year. She hates it, but with two now settled children and a very happy husband it is very very difficult to make a change. And if there was a custody issue (I can't imagine there would be because he's always been a bit ambivalent about the children, but it's one thing not pulling your weight, and another not seeing your children again) then the status who does seem to have a tendency to win the day in court.

Given your history I really think you are right to say put. Emigrating (even temporarily) is hugely stressful, and if the trust isn't there between you I think it woudl be a recipe for trouble.

ninedragons · 01/10/2010 04:28

I am married to a foreign man and made it crystal clear that I saw my long-term future in my home country (Australia, as it happens), and that was not and would never be negotiable. Fortunately he has no particular attachment to the UK (his country) so this issue wasn't contentious. We've been together for 10 years now, and if he suddenly decided he did want to live in Britain after all, I'd take him to the airport and wave him off in tears, but I wouldn't go with him.

I don't see a way you can make it work. Both of you will only be truly happy in your respective home countries.

I agree with the chorus that you would be insane to consider taking the DCs to Australia. I infer from your description that it's a rural area he's from - these can be lonely, insular places, ESPECIALLY if you're foreign. And problem gambling is, as pointed out earlier, absolutely rampant. Seriously, we have a federal MP elected on a single-issue platform to stop problem gambling - it's that much of a social blight.

savoycabbage · 01/10/2010 04:37

My dh and I just go round and round in circles on this. Sometimes I just don't know how I can love my dh or how he can love me as he KNOWS I don't want to be here at all. He is not a bastard or anything. He is quite lovely. He really does think that we have a 'better' life here.

If one of my friends was in my situation, I would be yelling at her to not go but I did come! Ninedragons is right when she says that you will only be happy in your own countries I think. But in my case it just wasn't as easy as just ending my marriage.

ninedragons · 01/10/2010 07:05

I meet up (not often enough) with a truly lovely MNer

AttilaTheMeerkat · 01/10/2010 07:41

flisser,

Do not take yourselves to Australia. You are extremely vulnerable and I think he will use every resource in his powers to keep the children there.

His emotional blackmail to date is also very disturbing. His family have previously bailed him out and are likely continuing to do so.

You write you love him - what is there exactly to love about this man now?. He loves himself far more than you and the children.

(I have previously visited Aus and there's no way on Gods earth I'd ever live there let alone revisit and I don't mind spiders!).

mamatomany · 01/10/2010 07:49

The Australian court system is as if not more so biased to the mother than the UK is.
My daughters father is Australian and the CSA kicked his arse into paying, the UK were dreadful in comparrision I am actually thinking of flying out there to sort out our situation in their system rather than ours so don't let that put you off.

Could you move to Melbourne where the weather is more like ours ie pisses down a lot.

Bucharest · 01/10/2010 08:00

Don't even think of going. If he loves you, respects you and wants to be with the children as much as he maintains he does, then he will try to make a go of it in the UK.

And I speak as someone who has hated every second of the past 16 yrs that I've been here in Italy. I can put up with it because I have a good (if slightly neanderthal-mammas-boy) man by my side.

I don't think you do.

Original poster

Flisser · 01/10/2010 08:01

My eldest DC has an Australian passport which we got when she was 2 months old and moved out there for a year. Younger has not.

Savoycabbage I understnad how you feel...I think if my DH had stayed here and put the pressure on I may have caved...but he went...and so I felt angry with him and less inclined to do as he says. ALso I have seen that even without him, we are happy and I can cope well.

Last night ater reading all the support on here, I felt so much better going to bed. I can't talk to family as they would be insensced on my behalf....I can only make vague allusions to the situation.

I actually felt at peace last night!

OP posts:

Bucharest · 01/10/2010 08:05

I imagine it doesn't matter if they have Australian passports of not, by virtue of having an Australian father, they are Australian (and British too) In your situation, I'd also be looking very very carefully into the immigration and residency rules regarding minors.

Katisha · 01/10/2010 08:12

That's good to hear Flisser. Now turn your skype off for the day, seriously. And your phone. You are not required to take umpteen phone harrassing/wheedling phone calls per day.

Ineedmorechocolatenow · 01/10/2010 08:26

Flisser - Can't add anything that others haven't said already, but he sounds like a bit of a shit. Please don't uproot your kids to follow his lazy arse to Oz. Listen to your gut instincts....

warthog · 01/10/2010 08:26

i def think he is not going to come back to uk after you moving out there. it's not going to happen - he has no intention.

because when you suggest he stays out there on his own and saves up, then comes here, he flips out.

he aint never coming back.

and take care when you go over for a holiday, that you can leave again with the kids.

OrmRenewed · 01/10/2010 08:27

He's made his decision. He's trying to make it yours too.

Original poster

Flisser · 01/10/2010 08:59

Warthog....I know....I keep asking him why he is not happy to be without us for another 7 months...he's done it already! He says "its'only a working holiday! Just come!"

And his fixation with us going is the very thing that is making me suspicious.

OP posts:

AttilaTheMeerkat · 01/10/2010 09:09

Warthog....I know....I keep asking him why he is not happy to be without us for another 7 months...he's done it already! He says "its'only a working holiday! Just come!"

What does he mean exactly by working holiday?!. You work and he holidays!.

I would be even more determined not to travel to Australia now but make this separation legally permanent.

diddl · 01/10/2010 09:21

I wouldn´t go there & I certainly wouldn´t visit at Christmas tbh.

Much easier for just him to travel to visit.

TheBossofMe · 01/10/2010 09:27

flisser - don't even go at Christmas without getting legal advice first. What happens if he decides the kids are staying with him?

fizzledrizzle · 01/10/2010 09:50

And sorry it sounds as if your family will support you so you might want to chat to to them.

BrightLightBrightLight · 01/10/2010 10:02

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

domeafavour · 01/10/2010 10:03

I would second the advice to get a lawyer before you go anywhere. I would be very nervous in this situation taking my children to visit without knowing the facts.
Children with Aussie parents will get an Aussie passport but it has to be applied for, and they don't automatically get residency just cos they are living with Aussie parent. Presumably they would be in Oz on a UK passport?
What I am unsure of is if that Aussie parent could apply for the passport with just his signature, or if both parents signatures are needed. Anyone know?

Katisha · 01/10/2010 10:11

I second the advice to include your family in this - after all they are a large part of the reason you want to stay here so it could be useful if they are aware of the situation.

Also I imagine people at his end will have made him aware of the fact that he could probably keep the kids there, and therefore you as well, once you up sticks again, even if he is not plotting it in a malicious way.

I too am very suspicious of the "working holiday" line - does he think you are simple?

cestlavielife · 01/10/2010 10:27

"...I cant imagine hem not having a Dad."

theya hve a dad.
they managing jsut fine now arent they?

if dad kills himself because you adn dc wont go to australia that will be his choice .

there are no guarantees with this at all - you cant trust him. so his "jsut for 18 months" line is rubbish.

dont do it.

they willhave a dad who seomtimes visits - and youand dc sometimes visit him. that's fine. when they older eg 16. 18 they might decide to spend time over there etc. that;s fine too.

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