Is there any way of splitting and moving?

[BitofSparklingPerry]

Basically, I want to move back to my home town. Dh doesn't.

Can I just split with him and move with the kids? I would like them to still have a strong relationship, but I am a sahm and very much main carer for the kids - he very very rarely has them by himself.

They are 5 and 3, but HE so school in't an issue.

The towns are about 250 miles apart, neither of us drive, but we could learn (I've had medical problems, but pretty sure I would get a doctors permission to drive now)

How do I do this?

Soila - does it even matter why the relationship is breaking up? It has been breaking up since it started, people on here advised me not to move in, not to have another baby (they were both unplanned results of one session of unprotected sex each) nit to move with him and notto marry him, but each time I felt I had little choice. Faukts and blames in the relationship are not relevant to the children though.

I definitely want them to have a strong relationship, and I don't think it is my right to take that away. I want to work at the relationship - there is still feeling there and I have spent bearly a third of my life with him. I just want to know if I have a choice about splitting up at all.

"We met in my town, lived together here for three years, then moved over to his town supposedly on a temporary basis three years ago when his brother was ill. "
So even if everything in your marriage was just peachy, it was never intended to be a permanent move. You both used to live in your home town, indeed since he lived there between the ages of 18 and 34 I'd be inclined to say it's more of a home to him than his home town - that's how I feel about where I live, over my town of birth. He "has been promising that we can move back for ages, putting me off, and it has gradually turned into shouting at me for not being happy there."

Having lived there aged 18-34, your husband has friends there and you are pretty certain that he "could find a houseshare with people he knows well within a couple of days". You even feel you could find a house there if you went as a couple. You are constantly worrying "that he will quit yet another job", so it's fair to presume he's not particularly attached to the job he has, and that it's a job not a career. And you posted "We know people with jobs going", which suggests he could move to your home town (and HIS town of choice too) and be just fine for housing and work, very quickly.

So, the only reasons that I can see for staying put is that he has found a pub where people allow him to drone on about how clever he is without laughing in his face too obviously. Or, as an alcoholic, he is comfortably accessing a supply and doesn't want to endanger it (pubs that will serve him, you to finance him). Or, as the controlling type, he just gets his kicks from making you miserable.

Staying in his home town is not good for your mental health; you are isolated from your support network of friends and family. He is no support. You NEED support; we all do.

Staying in his home town means you feel you have to home educate your children, but moving to your home town would mean that they could go to a school. You visit your hometown regularly enough that two of the children's closest friends live there - so the transition would be fairly easy for them. And frankly I do not hold with the 'any father is better than no father at all' school of thinking. Being a child's parent patently does not prevent an adult from being harmful to that child. Growing up in a household with a stropping, controlling father and a downtrodden, fearful mother hardly sets the template for a life of fulfilling relationships, does it?

The intention was to move to his home town temporarily. Well three years is plenty. You will not be separating the children from their father, he would be perfectly capable of relocating himself back to the town he chose to live in for SIXTEEN YEARS. The only thing that there would be to keep him in his home town is his alcoholism and his desire to punish you for wresting yourself from his control - in which case, sorry, but fuck him. His choice, not yours.

Please, I cans see from how you write that you have lost all your confidence, but the reasons to move home are so overwhelming and the reasons for staying so negligible - please, please move. It is the right thing to do for you, your children, their wider family. It could even be the right thing for him, to move back to his support network of friends.

Hi BitofSparklingPerry,

Well, unfortunately or fortunately it does matter why the relationship is breaking up for a few reasons.

It's not about fault and blame - It's about you taking responsibility for some of what has brought you both to where you are now.

Firstly you say you want to work on the relationship. If so, how can you realistically do this without knowing or accepting your contribution to where your marriage is? It's never just one person's fault, I'm afraid. What will you be fixing if you don't know what it is or are not looking to find out?

Secondly, if you, yourself, don't face up to your role in the possible break up of your marriage, you are very, very likely going to repeat exactly the same mistakes in any other relationship you get into in the future. Because wherever you go there you are. You say that you had been advised against moving on with this relationship from day one. Yet you did because you felt you had little choice. Why did you feel you had little choice in making such a huge and important decision?

Thirdly, there is not just you in the relationship. There are children involved who are most likely, as is children's nature, going to ask questions. Now this doesn't mean that you fault of blame your dh or anyone for that matter. It doesn't mean that you give them all the details or whatever but you need to know what you will tell them and in a way that will not damage them in the long run. So you need to get your story right for them.

Fourthly, again to do with your little ones, knowing what role you played or are playing in this creating the current state of the relationship will help you make a much clearer decision whether to stay or move with the children in mind. Your work in every way from now on needs to have a focus on giving your little ones a voice one way or other and it is very difficult to do this if you, yourself, don't know what role you played in the break-up of your marriage.

Honestly, accepting responsibility for our actions and understanding our role in creating the life that we have is such a powerful way for us to learn how to choose better so we can have better.

"It's never just one person's fault, I'm afraid."
I disagree with this statement SOOO much Soila. Unless you think that trusting the person you love, or indeed falling for them in the first place, makes you at fault. It's particularly easy for it to be just one person's fault when that person is an alcoholic.

And I'm really not sure what you're trying to say in the rest of the post, I found it all rather vague.

Soila, that may be the case, but isn't really the issue we are talking about here. The relationship is not doing well for various reasons. All of which are relatively minor - he speaks to me like shit and loses his temper too much, I don't do enough housework or have enough sex, he drinks too much, I don't talk to new people enough. All of these we can work through, and have done several times. The big thing that I can't back down on is moving. Rightly or wrongly, I desperatly want to move.

I honestly feel that both my mum and nana coukd have life threatening problems that can be at least reduced by me just being there more. My children have friends in my town. I have friends, even dh has more friends in my town than his. We mved when I was six months pregnant with the youngest and we have been back most months for at least a few days since. In his town, I don't know anyone that I coukd get drunk with, cry on, tease, tell a secret to, ask for advice about a dodgy rash, or anything. In my town, I know dozens. His family are very polite and nice, mine are rowdy and there are huge amounts of us, but nobody in my family or family friends (we have a lot of hangers on as people like the atmosphere around us or something) would ever look down on me for being daft.

Last year, a total of about ten people were in any house with us over the entire festive period. There have been three times that in my parents house over the last 48 hours alone.

Looking at it purely from the children's point of view, which would be better?

• Living a long way away from their father so having little contact.
• Living in the same house as an alcoholic with a filthy temper who verbally abuses their mother, and learning that it's OK to speak to someone like shit & they just have to shut up & put up with it.

I know that it's nearly always better for children to have regular contact with their father, but does that overcome the potential damage that will be done to them living with him?

BitofSparklingPerry, you were staying at your parents' when you posted on Sat 29th, are you still there? Why don't you extend your stay and just see how it goes? You don't have schools to consider so it is perfectly practical for you and the children to do so. You work from home, do you have what you need to do this work with you? Give yourself a review date, say a fortnight or a month from now; don't think about it until then, just be with your family and get on with normal life, HE'ing the children there etc. During that time he can't directly control you and you will have the support of your family. I just think this will make it easier for you to be more sure of whatever decision you came to, and to act on that decision.

On your review date, think about how it has gone and come to your decision. Discuss your decision with your husband. He'll have had time to think about it too (I presume he'll have to go back to keep his job); and maybe with a little distance (physical and emotional) between you for this short period of time, you'll be able to come to a mutual agreement. Or not.

I just think that the home environment you live in in his town of birth, living an isolated life with an abusive drunk, is likely to keep you on edge and indecisive (it would do so to me). It's perfect conditions for being gaslighted, which I think is what is making it so difficult for you to take action. Time spent out of that environment will help you enormously. Please take some time at your parents' to gather your strength.

Yep, I'm still at my parents. The plan anyway is to stay till the 8th, go back over there until I have a shift at the bar where I do odd bits of work on the 25th, then back over here because my parnts are going away so I need to nana sit.

What I'm thinking of doing is to say that I need to be here with my family. I think the lease on our house is finishing about April ish, so I want to move back over here then, and that leaves time for job and house hunting. I think I want to stay with DH (I've mellowed a bit by being in a place here I'm not so reliant on him) but I need to be here so if he can move, great. If not, then we will have to split or somehow live apart whilst still married.

If we move over in April, that also leaves six months till the start of the next school year - if it turns out that school is the best option over here (there aren't as many HE groups etc here) that allows us to look and find a good school - they are nowhere near as oversubscribed here. Dd1 woukd be starting year 2 and dd2 would be in the nursery year.

This year I will have been mentally stable long enough to drive, so I can restart lessons too. Driving would be very useful here, as there isn't so good public transport and HE stuff would be harder to get to. I wokd also need to either live in my parents area and so be further from anything more exciting than a corner shop (but better schools, houses with gardens, lower crime), or live in the studenty area where most of my friends still live (and where there are plentiful cheap rental houses, city in walking distance, big parks) but need to get to my nana if I am going to be useful. Either way, a car is needed really.

Yesterday nana met a couple of new people, and it was really clear that she is getting more confused. She is also brewing a few conspiricy theories that could erupt at any time. :-(

Dd1 today said that she will be sad when our holiday ends and we have to go home. I said me too :-(

This sounds like a good plan to me.

However, if you are taking on a longterm caring role, be aware that it can be very stressful, in an insidious way, and make sure you look after yourself as well :)

Hi BitofSparklingPerry,

Apologies, I seem to be a bit confused. You want to move 250 miles and your DH doesn't. You want him and your little ones to still have a very relationship and you want to work on your marriage.

From reading your posts, seems like the move is the one you are focusing most on which, if your dh doesn't move with you, would very likely preclude the other two (see niceguy2 post).

You seem determined to move.

I went on a night out the other night witout him (still at my parents) and the difference - I was just so relaxed, not having to be constantly on alert for him offending people or getting irate. I didn't have to keep an eye on how much he drank or persuade him to leave before I really wanted to as he was too drunk. In my hometown, too, so bumped into old friends a couple of times, found out abut a new art project, visited a pop up bar and heard about some houses and jobs. This in the town that is a 'dead shithole' according to dh...

I really don't get why some posters are bleating about the H's 'rights'. He's an abusive prick and the sooner the OP dumps him the better. It's no good pandering to an abusive alcoholic - just get rid. WRT his contact with the children, you can refuse and restrict it if he turns up drunk and aggressive - it's his responsibility to sort himself out.

I should add, the kids haven't asked for dh ONCE. He hasn't asked to talk to them on the phone either, he went home on the 2nd...

To reiterate the points made by WhereYouLeftIt:

. He's cheated on you

. He is very controlling

. He strops about the house

. He drinks far too much - indeed, he's an alcoholic (so he'll prioritise drink over you, the children, eating, rent etc.)

. You constantly worry that he will quit yet another job (implication - he's done it several times before), and he earns very little in his job

. He is happy to just go to the pub and make a song and dance about how he is really clever without using it (i.e. he's a complete arse with delusions of grandeur)

. He ridicules you and your family for being able to play instruments (most people would envy you that ability - I rather expect he does too)

. He speaks to you like shit

. You have a history of mental health problems, which are under control with medication, but you need your family and close friends around you, presumably because he does not support you and indeed is the source of some of your mental health problems.

. He eats fancier and more meaty food (than, presumably you and the children) which I take it you are paying for as he earns so little. What the actual fuck?? How does that one come about?

. You've been unhappy for a long time (now there's a surprise)

The only surprise is that you didn't leave him years ago and IMO it would be in your best interests, and those of your dc, to leave him now.

I sincerely hope you'll come back with an update after you've moved.

Update, of sorts