Hi guys. I’ve been with my partner for coming up to 12 years – we met in France where I was working at the time, and started a relationship. He is European and I am English, we now have two kids aged 8 and 6. We have undergone our fair share of struggles – he lost his dad and shortly after cheated on me when our first child was 3 months old, a premature 2nd baby, health issuesand major operations for me. Then covid, then financial struggles. The financial struggles are continuing, with him working seasonally and taking 4 months off a year not helping. Meanwhile I am pretty much full time working from a desk in our apartment. It’s hard, I rarely see people and I’m not learning the language as I simply don’t have the capacity and my brain is not picking it up easily.
Last year he was drinking a lot and (and drink driving) and I broke up with him. I greatly miss my family – and have a close family in the UK – so I made plans to move back. I found a good school and applied. But I hit hurdles. Resistance with my father, negativity about the UK – kids are better off in France etc. I couldn’t find accommodation - hardly anything available and all too expensive (South of England). My mum has offered for us to move in with her. she is not in great health and has two lodgers who she gets on well with, she’d have to ask them to move out. Also I love my mum deeply but she has big hang ups from her divorce with my father and can be a tricky character, I’m not sure living together full time would be great for us both and my kids.PLus she's already brought up 2 kids and should be enjoying retirement.
So I went back to France, broke down and discussed getting back together with my partner. I told him what I needed from him. He agreed to make it work.
8 months later the financial situation is much worse. He took long gaps without working. He keeps stringing me along – oh I might do this or that – but managed to have 3 months off while I took on extra hours to pay for bills.
To be fair the drinking he has stopped. And I should add he is a very good dad. Doing homework with the kids (he’s fluent in French), playing games – fun dad all round. And we all have a lovely time together when we get family days out or camping.But him and I are not connecting well, I'm struggling to be physically intiimate, he's also lazy a bout personal hygiene which doesn't help.
I am suffering mentally. I feel alone. I am resentful that he is not prioritising our future – he won’t make plans with me or give me any reassurance apart from simply ‘I love you’ or ‘it will be ok’. Meanwhile I am loosing sleep over how we will fix our broken car, pay for the kids education and and get out of this situation.
He has said if I move to the UK he will come for summer only, because he hates the UK and has never wanted to live there. I so miss it – my family, talking with strangers, working in am office. I don’t know what to do. I can see me kids are doing well in there french school, have friends and a wonderful outdoorsy life. It feels like I am the problem.