Hi, I've reached a point where I don't know what to do with my marriage and need advice.
My husband and I have been together for 8 years now. We butt heads a lot throughout the years but always seemed to come out of our problems stronger. I'm from a city in the states. My husband is from a rural town in the uk. We met, married and live in the states. In the beginning he hated the city life. I had reached a point in my life where I was fed up and agreed I wanted a change. We both decided to move to a rural town we both fell in love with.
We lived in our new town for a few years. During those years, I was extremely depressed and anxious. He was obviously far from family and I was far from mine. I despised my job and it took a huge toll on me. The area we lived in was gorgeous and at first we appreciated being in nature and starting a life together somewhere new. We had our first child the last couple of years we were there. I'm grateful I got to experience my first pregnancy and birth somewhere more relaxing. But my whole life I dreamed of raising my children near my mother. This is my parents' first grandchild and it was taking a toll on me driving hours to visit them with an infant once a month for a weekend and seeing my mother near tears whenever I'd leave knowing it would be another month until she saw us.
Long story short, we decided to move back to the city. I missed the country but after one month I noticed a significant improvement in my mental health and well-being. I'm only 1 hour from my parents now which I love and can see them every weekend if I wanted to. Unfortunately, I noticed my husband was still unhappy (he also grew unhappy in the country and was the first to suggest moving back to the city) and getting increasingly depressed.
Our communication skills with each other has never been the best. We're complete opposites. I love to talk things out and work through problems together. He shuts down if things get too emotional or difficult and just walks away from the conversation leaving me feeling more anxious and upset without closure. Since we've been back to the city he's turned into an extremely negative and toxic person. He's a wonderful father but loses patience easily with our child and a lot of times I wind up feeling like I'm listening to two siblings arguing rather than a father disciplining a child. He gets irrationally offended by the dog whenever she misbehaves as if she was being spiteful and purposeful. I rarely see any loving interactions between him and the dog anymore.
A couple months after COVID started he demanded that we move to his town in the UK. His rationale is that it would be a better quality of life for our child and they would be "happier", we would have a lot of help with child care (he comes from a large family and our child would be around lots of cousins), and that he does not picture himself settling in the states. When he realized I did not agree, we began to argue, lost any chance of communicating properly, and ended on the note that I would be unhappy moving and he would be unhappy staying so the only answer would be to separate.
When things cooled down, we had a proper talk. I e