I am in a total mess of a situation and I would so love to hear if anyone else has navigated anything similar and how they came out the other end. It's a long one so please bear with me...
I've been with my husband for 17 years. We have a 3.5 year old son who is the light of our lives and we adore. Until 6 months ago, we were living in a shabby little 2 bed ex council flat in a fairly grotty neighbourhood in East London that we bough in 2017, and that our child was born in. During the pandemic we had the classic conversation about moving from London and that idea kind of grew.
Last January we decided to put our flat on the market but to move within London. We were struggling with trying to navigate where in the city to move to within our budget. I had handed my notice in for my salaried job that I hated in order to go freelance but had negotiated a 6 month notice period in order to use it for a mortgage. Somewhere along the way I started looking at properties in Newcastle (where I'm from and my parents still are). I sent my mum to a viewing on a property and we rashly put an offer in on house we hadn't seen and got it. Then we made a trip to see it and hated it so pulled out but kept looking in earnest in the neighbourhood until we found somewhere we liked and got an offer accepted. This was May last year. In March last year, we were not having much interest on our flat so we offered it to the council who offered a good price and we agreed a sale - to complete in August. We decided to move into a rental in Newcastle while the sale on the house we'd been accepted on went through.
The big thing is that as soon as this all got real last May I had majorly cold feet about leaving London and started trying to talk to my husband about pulling out. This is where it got bad. He couldn't handle the idea and we were having CRAZY rows. I felt like I couldn't get him to talk seriously about it and I was getting majorly confused and increasingly anxious. I kept trying to bring it up and he wouldn't allow it, said I was just scared/overreacting/hormonal and we needed to go ahead. I felt bamboozled and my gut feeling was bad but I kept talking myself back round and we did it. The week before we moved I both left my job and discovered I was pregnant. The rows has been getting so bad that the week before that, that I'd been thinking about leaving my husband and trying to buy a flat on my own with our son. But he talked me round and we moved. It was HORRENDOUS. The night we arrived here I was up all night, felt like my stomach was tearing in two with grief and full on wrenching sobs. This feeling didn't stop/hasn't stopped and my husband's reaction was to fight with me about it. Apparently I was overreacting. I tried to talk to him about stopping the sale of the flat but he talked me round and that went through.
I didn't feel better and decided to abort the baby - with his blessing. That was awful. It happened at 9 weeks, 6 days. Terrible. Then the house we were buying here fell through (I was relieved). Then in October last year I saw a house on the market here that seemed nice and we went for that one. I was still in a state really and definitely not thinking straight but was desperately seeking some kind of stability. Half our stuff is in storage and we don't like the flat we're in. This whole time though, I've been vocal that I don't want to be here, I can't get over the circumstances of the move, I feel like my life got ruptured against my will and I just want to go home and back to what we had. For a while I was so upset that I blamed my husband for the abortion because I felt like if he had let us pause the move as I'd wanted then I would have been in a place to have the baby.
Anyway, fast forward to now - I still desperately want to go back to my old life and bitterly regret selling our flat. I've been unable to talk sensibly to my husband about it as he flips out every time and won't allow a calm discussion of options. I've decided now that I want to pull out of the house purchase here and I've been trying to talk to him about that for the last month and haven't been able to without massive rows again - he thinks I'm crazy, 'wrong', 'would definitely be making a terrible mistake'. It feels like a repeat of the rows last summer in the lead up to the move, and they were deeply traumatic. So we're here again. And it's made me really question our marriage as I'm starting to feel emotionally manipulated. I now think that we should trial separate. But I'm appalled at the idea that I might get marooned up in Newcastle - our child starts school in September, I am reliant on my husband now for a mortgage as I only went self employed in august, we sold out London flat so nowhere to go back to and will get priced out as sale proceeds are just sitting in the bank, he doesn't want to go back to London, and I don't think anyway that we could afford two London properties. Rent would be at least double what our mortgage was on the flat we sold.
I'm wondering if anyone has ever had a situation where a relocation has caused the breakdown of their marriage and how they a) got back to where thy were living before with child and co-parent in tow or b) made it work dealing with the breakdown of a marriage somewhere new with no friends? I would honestly give anything to wind the clock back and refuse to sell our flat. I could've afforded to buy him out. But obviously that isn't possible now. I feel so miserable and desperate and angry at myself for allowing this to happen.
And to add before it's suggested: we've been in couple's therapy since last July and I have 1:1 therapy too.