DH wants to move abroad and I really, really don't want to.

[BayLeaves]

I don't know what to do.

DH wants to move abroad, ideally to his home country in Europe.

I don't want to move. We live in the town I grew up in, I lived elsewhere for 12 years and we moved back here 4 years ago. I don't find it that easy to make new friendships but recently I've finally made some good mum friends and I'm also near my parents, I have two separate grandparents living nearby from different sides, as well as various aunts, uncles, etc. I feel so happy and settled here, I love our house and I love all the things to do locally with our 2 kids, I just really enjoy it. We have a 3 year old and a 2 month old and I feel like I really really need that social/support network.

We've got a new baby and even a week or so after he was born DH kept talking about wanting to move away. It made me feel so sad because I feel like even the birth of a new baby was not special enough to keep him away from this obsession with moving away.

DH has a long commute and until recently I did the same commmute. Now I've been made redundant and so I'm on indefinite "maternity leave". He's fed up with the commute and wants to advance his career elsewhere, he's even been headhunted by other companies in various locations. There aren't any other good jobs in our field locally. I think moving far away is DH's solution to that problem.

As I'm not actually working or contributing income, am entitled to less of a say? Do I need to just move wherever DH goes now that he's the only breadwinner? I sometimes wonder if I'd rather be a single mum living in a council flat but still live here with my friends and family, rather than have a big house with DH somewhere else so that he can advance his career.

I don't know what to do but DH seems miserable about being here. I just wish I'd know his intentions before we settled down in my home town, bought a house and had two kids here

Hello OP,

I'm a British citizen living in Switzerland with my French husband. I've been here since 2011. We have a 19 month old and I'm currently 21 weeks pregnant with second DS.

We live in the French-speaking part (Vaud) and love it here. It helps speaking the language obviously (I am fluent C1 level and obviously DH is a native speaker), but there are loads of English speaking people and in fact loads of languages are spoken, it is very international with lots of support networks and clubs.

It is an expensive country, but salaries are very high, which more than makes up for it. It is spotlessly clean and beautiful. Crime is virtually non-existant and the Swiss are very friendly if you make an effort with them. It is true that most people live in apartments (mainly due to space restrictions), but we find that no problem; we can sit on our balcony and enjoy the view of lake Geneva and Mont Blanc!

20 mins from Jura ski resorts and ± 50 mins from the Alps resorts and easy to start learning if you've never tried. Also easy to fly back to the UK to see friends and family as it's not too far.

Hope this helps you somewhat, good luck!

You do not want to go.

You absolutely should not go.

Yes it is tough on him, very tough. But HE chose to come here and make his life here, presumably because he wanted to. He is here and not at home because HE moved. He can't ask someone who has never wanted to relocate to do so now so that he can go back.

Moving countries is hard. It's hard even if you are totally up for it and can't wait. If reluctant - it's a recipe for disaster. Your situation sounds like the perfect storm waiting to happen. You don't want to go. You won't have a job to go to, as you have tiny children - just when you want to be close to your family and have support and close contact for the children's sake, all that support is gone and you have to start over but be 'at home' in a new country. You're at the time in life when you perhaps most need practical support. Most of all - you are happy where you are and you don't want to spend your children's early years away from their grandparents and your home where you are currently settled.

The most worrying part about all this is your husband's attitude. Ok, he really wants the move. But - common sense if nothing else says that if your partner doesn't want a life change on this scale, pushing for it is just a fucking bad idea, as well as totally unfair. You don't bully someone into moving countries and changing their whole life in ways you KNOW they don't want and expect your marriage to stay a-ok. It won't. It sounds like he doesn't care about what you want, where you would like your lives to go as long as he gets his way. So my question would be - if you go, and you are unhappy and change your mind, do you think he'll be there for you? Do you think he'll agree to come back? I think you know it's a no, effectively. He's not listening to you or respecting your wishes now - he's not going to when he's got what he wants. And the fact that all this harrying and pushing and applying for jobs is happening when you've just had a baby is awful... and, not entirely a coincidence I think. Does he feel he has you where he wants you now, especially post-redundancy?? - you're wifey at home, why shouldn't his life plan come first? You can always tag along...

Finally, as so many others have said, it ISN'T a case of suck it and see. It ISN'T a case of ' a two-year adventure'. Once you move and become resident, you will not be able to move home with your children unless he agrees. And see above for my thoughts on that. He won't let you come back - that much is bloody obvious. The worst case scenario here is if your marriage does fail under the strain this will inevitably put it under - you'll still be stuck, as you can damn well bet that in that eventuality there is no way he will let you take the children back to the UK.

My suggestion is that you lay it on the line. You do not want to move, especially with a new baby. You also do not want to change countries on his apron strings in the position you are now. If you move, it will be to jobs for BOTH of you, and in a year or two's time, when your baby is bigger and you have worked out where you want to go with your career. Tell him to stop looking at jobs and concentrate on your new baby and all the massive new upheaval that is happening now, at home, under his nose, instead.

Thank you splendidisolation and DeltaG for the positive slant on it, these are the things I keep remembering and wondering if it would really be such a bad decision. I always go by that saying about how it's the things you didn't try in life that you regret, rather than things you did do.

However @FizzyGreenWater you are also right and I appreciate the advice. We wouldn't sell our house here but still it seems unlikely he'd agree to come back if I decided I hated it. I feel like the whole situation is really shit now that I know how unhappy he is about the idea of staying here, I feel like by digging my heels in and refusing to move I am effectively making him miserable. But on the other hand all I want to do is maintain the status quo, it's not me that wants to drastically change things. I really wish he could have been more sensitive with his timing rather than doing this right when we've just had a new baby.

I do feel like I don't have much of a choice right now, we are at an impasse. It seems my choice is shut up and go along with it, or outright refuse and have a miserable husband.

The thing is, does it have to go off the table forever?

He's put you in this position of having to choose, at a very difficult time in your marriage anyway, two months after a second baby.

I'd say within a year of any birth isn't a good time for major life decisions unless absolutely everyone is on board already, because the stress/potential for PND is pretty high and you need to just keep the ship afloat til you get to calmer waters and then make them really.

I would say to defer this decision a year or two down the line. Switzerland does indeed sound like a great place, but with very little ones, I think family help and support is invaluable both practically and for your own mental health and that can't be under-estimated.

Perhaps then go and visit for a while and see what life might realistically be like there to live as a family on the wage he would bring in- he's remembering being there as a teen, not as an adult, and you need mature and sensible decision-making here, not a rush job as the birth of a second child in your home town has made him panic his heritage is going to be forgotten/career is going down the pan/some combination of the two. I would be open to visiting more- even a month or more in the summer perhaps, though, with a view to discussing again moving there as a family.

I would also try to get to the bottom of why he feels the need to push for this now, having made a life in the UK as a teen- is it Brexit, is it career opportunities? Is it four years living near to his MIL (only partly joking?) If he's been here longer than he's lived in Switzerland, why the need to return- and is it about the 'better life' or getting away from something- I think an open conversation needs to be had, which is difficult when you are two months post-partum and sound anxious and overwhelmed by his actions of applying for jobs (unilaterally), about which I'm not surprised.

The timing is pretty unacceptable. You should have veto on these rules while you have a newborn!!! Otherwise the discussion is fair but you need to have it completely. You seem confident he will never move back to where you are . If this is a deal breaker for you then there is no point agreeing to go thinking it's a few years.

When the baby arrives you are reminded of your own childhood - how you celebrated Christmas, the nursery rhymes you sang, the clothes you wore, the places you played, and you naturally want to show your new child all those things. It's not something you see coming; it was a rude awakening to me, certainly.

I tried to get my husband to agree that we would one day move over to the UK, my native country, at least for a while when the kids were older. But it never happened. In twenty years my children have never celebrated Christmas in the UK, never been there for more than a couple of weeks at a time. I went along with this as it was the right thing to do, to ensure that they had a stable upbringing and kept their friends, and because their dad, as the main earner, had first choice in what job he did.

What I did lack was any form of support or understanding from my husband that any of this might be hard work for me. When I mentioned that I regretted not having a closer relationship with my family back home, he saw this as me complaining and attacking him. Actually, all I wanted was a little support - maybe a comforting cuddle - and a tiny bit of appreciation for my decision to live where he preferred.

Okay, I am going against the grain here. I don't think you should go. Obviously, it's good to try new things and you need to support DH, but you are HAPPY. And once you go, you have to accept that you will not be able to come back unless he agrees and can find work. Once you get there, you have no choices and will be completely reliant on him agreeing to move back if you are unhappy.

To be honest, I don't really understand why this wasn't decided before. When DH and I decided to get married, we discussed where we'd live. He made it clear that he had no intention of moving back to our home country. I wanted to. The only compromise we came to was that he agreed to consider it in a few years time, but with no promise. I was very unhappy with this at the time but appreciated his honesty. He didn't pretend he would be happy to move and then dig his heels in.

So from that perspective, I feel for your DH. You discussed possibly moving one day and now he wants to but he can't. But I think moving somewhere else when you're very happy where you are means you will struggle even more because you won't be trying as hard as you should . You won't see the benefits because you'll be focused on the negatives.

None of this is fair on either of you. But it is what it is.

I do think you need to consider moving to make his work life balance better. Can you move closer to London so he doesn't have such a terrible commute?

But it doesn't have to be off the table forever at all.

This is honestly the worst possible time FOR YOU to do a move like this.

• Your job has gone pop. You're going to need to rethink what you do post-maternity OR retrain, OR make a new set of decisions regarding post-kids career. If you go now, those decisions will be severely curtailed by also being in a new country. By pushing this now, at least partly for the sake of his career, he's making it 100 times harder for you to progress happily with yours. Not fair.

• You've just had a baby. YOU'VE JUST HAD A BABY!!! This year and probably next couldn't be a worse time for you to choose to do this in terms of your happiness and, it (worryingly) sounds, your mental health. You are by definition going to be more vulnerable, more in need of emotional support, more curtailed in what you can do, for this period. I'm actually more worried than anything else that he has CHOSEN this time to put the pressure on - when you can least cope with it. You know him, but from this angle he's looking extremely manipulative and not with a lot of care for your wellbeing at all. :(

In, say, two years - this could be a very very different situation. Your children will be bigger. You could have scoped out a new career move, or moves, which take into account the possibility that you might want to work abroad. You'll have had the baby time close to your family and you won't be in that post-partum time which just is a totally bad time to make decisions.

All of the above is probably a huge part of the reason why you do not want to go - because you really are in no place to even consider it properly. You are likely to at least be able to sum it up and assess the situation more fairly in, say, 18 months.

I would say your choices are closer to refuse nad have a miserable husband, or go and still have a miserable husband as he's going to have a very miserable wife. However, from what you say of his engineering this, it sounds like he'd be quite fine with that. If so, it's even more important that you don't go.

• to sum up, I think you should summarise the above very solid reasons why it would be a very bad decision for you as a family to get into this right now, and make an agreement that the subject is off limits for another 18 months minimum.

You dont HAVE to either go with him or get divorced - would he consider moving back on a temporary basis maybe for a year? He could rent somewhere, you could go over for long visiting "holidays" and see how you feel about it - it may be that once youre there for 2 or 3 weeks, you could fall in love with it.

I hear what youre saying about only one UK employer, but people do manage to change careers when necessary, I'm not totally convinced by his chain of reasoning "one uk employer, I dont want to commute to them any more, therefore I MUST go back to Switzerland and you MUST come with me, theres literally no other possibilities to consider."

No way would I ever go to live anywhere I didn't want to live where, in the event of a breakup, I couldn't bring the DC back without my ex's permission. He wouldn't give you that permission. Not worth the risk.

I do, however think you'd be U to refuse to move closer to a larger city in the UK for better employment opportunities, for both of you. A long commute is draining IME.

OP, This sounds a little like my OH, although he has not taken any steps to make the move happen as it does not make financial sense as things stand. Has he mentioned that he wanted the children to have the kind of perfect outdoorsy childhood he had? My OH often talks about this aspect and reminisces about leaving home on his bike after breakfast and being out all day playing with friends until dinner time. But that was in the early 80's! His (much) younger siblings did not do anything like that when they were primary school aged (video games and cultural shift in parenting norms changed this in my opinion). It's looking back at his own past through rose tinted glass.

Maybe I'm completely off in my speculation and am somewhat projecting.

I don't want to be all doom and gloom but please take notice of what PPs said about not being able to return with your DC. This happened to my mum and many others in the expat circle. My mum is fine now but suffered terribly for the first decade after her marriage failed.

On balance OP I would go but on the understanding that you restart your own career when you choose.

Your current location sounds lovely except for career options for both of you.

Switzerland is a great country, you and your children could have an amazing life there.

I would let him go . And you stay here .

Go visit if you miss him .
Switzerland is very expensive and from I heard very hard to buy in . . Most expat buy in their home country for their retried ment . If you do go in would not sell up but rent out your house .
But look into how to you stay in Switzerland if You spilt up .

Living in different cultures is a fantastic experience. You say you have never lived far from where you grew up so this would be as much for you as the kids. You could go for 2-3 years and see how it goes. My sister took her 3 young kids to a country where they had no friends or support networks but they quickly made great friends (adults and children) & were very sad to leave.

Do NOT do it. Fizzygreenwater is spot on. I wish I had waited until my Dd was a bit older, she is 18months, pretty sure I have depression and stuck in a country where I don't have the language, support network and DH works 12 hr days 6 days a week - the 7th say he is a zombie and I'm bringing up my Dd on my own. The timing is horrendous. The cynic in me says he is trying to find some kind of fresh start / relive his youth - when he should be appreciating his family - putting their needs first and for now, start making plans for a potential trial - but you need to WANT to. I did want to ( or so I thought) and it's been horrendous. I've literally had the worst day too and spent most of it crying, alone apart from my daughter here as husband is working. No one pops by for a cuppa or is there to give you just a quick break for an uninterrupted shower/ cup of tea - this could be you.

OP can't go and "see how it goes": if she goes she can only return with the DC if her H gives his permission.

Fuzztgreenwater is spot on. The posters saying it's 'not irreversible' or she can 'see how it goes' are not properly informed. It IS irreversible if her OH won't give his consent for the children to be relocated back to the U.K. And bear in mind that consent given now can always be retracted if it is still before the relocation back.

He's been offered an interview already. I've said so many times I don't want to go but he doesn't seem to think staying is an option. We've had so many conversations about it but he seems to just be powering ahead with it.

He's been suffering from anxiety and other issues and he blames his job situation here. I just think starting a new life abroad isn't going to be a magic bullet that miraculously makes him happy. He seems to think that I'm some kind of selfish bitch by wanting to keep him in this situation. Not his words but not far off!

My older boy has just started pre school and we know two other families who have children at the same pre school, it's nice bumping into them at pickup and drop off, it's little things like that I'll miss if we move. Also my 3 month old has started being a bit unsettled in the evenings recently, lots of noisy crying, don't think that would be ideal if we lived in an apartment with potentially uptight neighbors in Switzerland. I can't stop thinking about all these little worries

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. My bestfriend relocated to Switzerland with her husband about 15 years ago and although she has now got used to it it's been an absolute struggle for her and she has really missed her family while she's been there. Both her mum and then her dad got very ill and passed away and she spent a lot of time flying back and forth. To be honest your husband does not sound particularly supportive and I would dig my heels in if I was you and stay where you feel happy.

Just don't go. It's hard enough moving countries and cultures even if you are both looking forward to it and enthusiastic. With your thoughts on it, it will be disastrous. If your husband has been here since secondary I really don't think he'll be any happier in Switzerland, he just has it in his sights as his way out of unhappiness.

I wouldn't go either. He's not listening to you. I agree that moving is a distraction but won't fix his underlying issues. Meanwhile your life is getting thrown under the bus.
I think the time has come to say an outright no to moving abroad.

I wouldn't go.

Any way he can work there in the week and commute back at weekends? Equally, you and the kids could go over for the weekend/holidays.

I think he's really changed the goalposts here, having seemed totally settled in this country, and is expecting you to just fall in line.
I fear you wouldn't enjoy it if he coerces you to go.

The thing with not being able to bring your children back unless he agrees would be the cap for me.

This might be a bit off the point, but I lived in Switzerland in a flat for nearly two years, and you could not hear any noise from the other flats, only a small amount from the street. So I really dont think you need to stress about that, as long as the flat is purpose built (ie not an older house that was then converted into flats) it will be fine.