Hi everyone. Apologies if this is long-winded. I don't really know what I'm looking for from this thread, but it's helpful just to have somewhere to talk about it.
8 months ago DP and I moved abroad. After several long discussions and arguments we settled on the country and city I preferred, for a couple of main reasons. 1. I studied and can speak the language (and where he wanted to go neither of us can speak the native language, but they are a bit more english-friendly I guess) 2. We could both transfer internally with the companies we currently work for (and if we'd gone where he wanted to I'd have had to find a new job because we don't have offices there). Both those factors combined meant it would definitely be an advantageous move for me, and although probably not as advantageous for DP, it certainly wasn't supposed to be detrimental.
So 8 months in, the team DP works in is being dissolved and he's having to move to a new team, covering a new industry, with poor (in his opinion) management. His current team is being dissolved because they've performed poorly over the last year and the company doesn't think it's worth keeping them in that sector. He's now devastated & livid that we ended up here because it isn't where he wanted us to be anyway, and it's ended up costing him a lot in terms of career development. He was expecting to be made a manager within a year, now he's been moved to the bottom of the pile in another team he has no experience in, so he's not in line for any kind of promotion anytime soon.
To rub salt in the wound, I've just had an appraisal and been told that they will be looking to promote me in the not too distant future.
I feel horribly guilty like I have wrecked his career. When DP is venting about how pissed off he is with the situation, even though he has said it is not directed at me, I cannot help but feel like it is. I'm also the kind of person that deals with problems by actively thinking of how to fix it, whereas he is a bit more 'shoulda, woulda, coulda', and just keeps talking about how if we had stayed in London he'd have been a manager by now, or if we'd gone where he had wanted to then he'd have been more likely thriving (his industry is a bit stonger there). When I ask him what he wants to do, he can't answer me - perhaps fair enough given this has all happened in the last couple of weeks. But I've laid out what I think are our best options, and he just won't consider them.
I'm now at a point where I don't want to ask him how his day has gone, because I know where the conversation will go. I don't feel like we can make any kinds of plans for the future, because we don't know if we'll be sticking around here long enough or moving home, or moving somewhere else. I'm also gutted because I've wanted to live and work here since long before DP was in my life, and i know he's made sacrifices to make this happen, but it's just sad that it hasn't worked out and now this experience that I've wanted to have for over 6 years is most likely going to be cut short.
It's taking a toll on everything. All the little things that niggle when you live abroad are suddenly becoming more reasons as to why it's shit here and we should never have come. Talking about a holiday to relax and get away from it all is not on because he feels like he can't take leave when he's performing so badly. I don't know what advice to offer, I can't fix it for him, and it doesn't look like it's magically going to fix itself overnight and he's going to be the superstar of this new team and fast-tracked for promotion.
So anyway, I don't really know what the solution is, but the current situation is crap. Thanks if you've bothered to read all of this.