I want to move away

[Leumurshavethumbs]

I need to vent...but also looking for actual solutions I might not have considered.

I want to move away. About 2 hours away. I want to move to finally pursue my dream career. Also moving from a rural location to near a city, with (in my opinion) better opportunities for both of us.

I share custody of DD12, currently 50/50 with her Dad.

DD's Dad doesn't want me to move. He knows he can't stop me, but I feel he is exerting control by manipulating DD. He's convinced her it's a negative, after her originally being positive and optimistic about the possibility of moving.

I feel so frustrated, and so trapped. He's still controlling me long after our relationship ended.

He can't stop YOU moving, but he can stop you taking your daughter. Especially if she's 12, and doesn't want to go.

Could you not take her to the city you want to move too and show her all the positives?

I don’t know your back story, but I wouldn’t want my kids dad to move far away either.

Either you are leaving her behind and enforcing him to take full responsibility or you are taking her and his time with her will be heavily reduced.

if my ex said ‘I have decided I am starting a new life. All responsibility for our child is now on you’ I wouldn’t be happy, though I would accept it. If he said ‘I am going away to start a new life and taking our child’, I would fight him tooth and nail.

I think he could stop you taking dd, especially, if she doesn’t want to be that far from her father.

Is he manipulating her? Or being honest about the situation and what it means for her seeing both her parents as she does now?

You’re probably going to have to wait a few years until she’s older to do the move. It’s shit but sadly you are trapped until she doesn’t need either of you so much. Could you move to a week on, week off custody arrangement? Then on your week off you can do what you want in your destination city? Get a cheap houseshare there and keep a cheap as possible 2 bed house/apartment where your daughter is/goes to school. Run two cheap as poss properties and over the next few years build the build in blocks of your new life in the new city.

He’s isn’t controlling you, he wants to be in his daughters life in a meaningful way.

Why would you want to remove their father from their lives?

I'm also moving about 2 hours away bececause thats the only place I can afford to live! I think 12 is a difficult age as she has just started secondary school, she is probably scared of the upheaval. My dd is 13, I'm waiting until she has done her gcse's and then we will move

You need to put your dd first. It'll be terribly disruptive to her if you move at this stage.

We don't know the back story but personally, I don't think it's fair to move kids away from one of their parents at such a foundational part of their lives. Of course, if he's abusive then it's a different story. But if he's just a regular dad and it didn't work out between you, then I can understand his desire to stay close by to his daughter.

If he is manipulative because he's telling your daughter about the negatives of moving, are you not equally manipulative for telling her about the positives?