Hi
I'm having a dilemma. My husband and I separated about 6 weeks ago. I have two children, a daughter who is 9 and son who is 13. My husband and I hadn't got on for many years but we lived together for the sake of the kids. However, last summer he started to treat my son quite badly - ignoring him for long periods, and being verbally abusive and eventually it escalated to my son and husband hitting each other. My husband was asked to move out by social services and, after some digging in of his heels, finally left our home. My husband has always got on with my daughter though.
Now I am by myself I want to sell our home (owned on a joint mortgage) and move back to my home town. I would be able to get some support from my family there. Also, as I currently live in London, I could get quite a small mortgage in my home town. This would be fantastic as I am a teacher and currently work 60 hours a week (that's for 5 days at school). In my home town I could do four days at school and drop to a more reasonable number of hours per week. Since my husband started to mistreat my son, my son's behaviour has deteriorated (he is almost expelled and not attending school) so I think it's important to work less hours to support my son and keep a better eye on him. He is mixing with a rough crowd here in London, who we could get away from. (Although it is possible, of course, that he could find himself some rough mates in my home town too).
My dilemma is my husband has said he will not follow us to my home town and my daughter wants to see my husband for half the week not just at weekends. My son has now reconciled with my husband but the damage has been done to their relationship and he only sees his dad once a week at the weekends so I think he could live with the move. (Although he has said he doesn't want to leave his friends and would 'like the option' of seeing his dad during the week)
What should I do? Teachers have to start looking for new jobs at Easter so I have to decide fairly quickly. Am I taking too much responsibility for my husband's choice? I have said to him that if he moved to my home town then he could carry on seeing my daughter for half the week. I do not want to move to stop him seeing them; I just want a life where I have time to support my kids and have some sort of social life.