I have made such a massive mess of things - really need some advice

[seebothsides]

I will try and keep this brief, although there´s a lot to it

Over 2 years ago I moved abroad with DH, I was pregnant at the time. I came willingly but absolutely hated it from day one. I just knew it wasn´t going to work. I still hate living here now, nothing has become any easier and don´t feel I can carry on much longer.

The feeling of isolation and loneliness amongst many other things is all-consuming. I actually feel like I am dying here. It is having a very negative effect on our relationship and I know I am not being as good a mother as I should be to my DS. I am so very unhappy to the point where I find myself breaking down in public, to the point where I cannot sleep, to the point where I spend all my days full of regret, wanting to turn the clock back. I could go on....

I have made the decision that I am going to go back to the UK. Believe me when I say I have considered every aspect of my decision to the point where it keeps me awake at night. DH is unable to come and would have to carry on working here for the foreseeable future. We don´t know when/if he will be able to get a job back in the UK, especially in the current climate. The plan is he will come to visit at the weekends. I know this is far from ideal and I´m not sure how it will work in reality. I am already feeling the guilt of willingly taking DS away from his father but I know I cannot go on like this for much longer.

I feel so responsible, so selfish, so guilty for being unable to make things work, for breaking up our family. Things are such a mess

I've known the isolation of being in a foreign country with small children with dh (working all hours).

I have come back (for various reasons) and 8 years later, dh still abroad and home every 6 weeks (I also spend most hols. with him).Not everyone's ideal set-up but it works for us.

Do you work? That helps massively.

Weekends only can work for some

DH and I have made it work for 5 years or so at a time, we always joked that it would take us 21 years to get to the 7 year itch

I am giving it up now though.

It sounds like you need it for your health

can you break down just what you hate about living abroad? It is isolating.

two things
1 sounds like pnd
2 also sounds very very common sort of thing for trailing spouse. either make a life for yourself, that doesnt revolve around your dh, or move back to where you do have such a life. i know of people who have maintained thirty year marriages with one visit once a year, for one month.

I think if you know you've given it your best shot (speaking the language etc) then better a mother that can breathe and an infrequently present father, than a dissolving mother..

HOpe you sort this out, you sound v miserable.

You have given it ago for 2 years

You gave it a go don`t blame yourself for not liking it

Your not being selfish your being honest to your DH Ds and yourself

To live abroad or anywhere really you all have to be happy with the set-up

We live abroad and to me its all of us that have to be happy.Not just DH in his job

It affects all the family

If I did`nt like it then I to would move back with Dc.

I don't have anny experience that I can share but it is obvious that you have really tried your hardest. The fact that you feel so low and alone means that you cannot carry on the way your are. You are doing the best thing by changing the situation and it could work out really well. It has to be better than it is now? Loads of people make these kinds of scenarios work. Really wish you the best, definitely think you're doing the right thing.

Oh seebothsides, poor you. What a horrible situation to be in: your own unhapiness versus terrible guilt. I really feel for you.

My dear sister would be the one to talk to you about this, but I don't think she's a MNer. She moved to Australia several years ago and could have written this thread herself a few years ago. She loved her husband dearly, but was so, so miserable and felt so lonely. At one point I almost felt like ordering her back to the UK for the sake of her mental health. A few years later she is still in Australia and still happily married. Oz is never going to be home to her in the same way as the UK, but she is a lot happier. The biggest thing to change things for her was a concerted effort to widen her social network and make good friends. It started out with other mums of friends of her DC, some of which she had little in common with. But eventually that broadened into meeting friends of friends and finding people she really clicked with. Now she has her own life she finds things a lot easier. This despite having one child with special needs and a 1 year old. She doesn't work, so hasn't been able to widen her social horizons through work, which as moondog says can help enormously.

If you are positive that you have tried everything and that you are not depressed (in which case moving back to the UK could actually make things worse) then I for one wouldn't judge you for giving up on life in a foreign country. It's not for everyone and it sounds like you've given it your best shot. At the end of the day, if you've reached the end of your resources and this is the only option available to you, then that's what you have to do. Hopefully your DH will be able to join you sooner rather than later.

If this is really the only option available to you, please don't beat yourself up about taking DS away from his dad. Yes, it's not idea, but if you are the primary caregiver it is by far in your DS's interests for him to have a happy mum and a dad he sees on weekends than to have a desperately unhappy mum and a dad together.

Hope you find a solution that works for you. Good luck.

I'd say that the happier you are, the happier your children will be (isn't that what Health Visitors always look for and say is most important - a happy mum?). And it sounds like coming back to the UK will make you feel happier. Have you got support over here (UK)?

moondog - no I don´t work and there´s not much opportunity for that at the moment. I realise that would help

oranges - its the isolation and sheer loneliness, and its so difficult to break into the local "scene" and I feel such an outsider despite speaking the local language well. I really don´t like that feeling of being foreign. It´s the missing everything that´s familiar to me, something I have craved since having DS, obviously I miss family and friends terribly. My mother´s health isn´t good either and that is causing me extra worry. I am at odds with a lot of the systems/procedures here health and even education to start with...oh I could go on....

stich - I wondered about PND (something that goes unrecognised here btw) but the clouds lift when I go back home

onebat - tht is exactly how I feel "dissolving" and I do know I have given it my best shot

I did make a big effort to get out there and meet people a while back but I found the "friendships" so transient and superficial and I´ve got to the point where if I´m honest I just cannot be bothered any more, I´ve lost a lot of confidence since being here

Thnak you all

See, how about volunteering or taking language classes or going to the gym? Anything that doesn't involve staying home and being miserable.

Believe me,I know how it feels. I discovered MN in 2004 when living in very remote Eastern Turkey (by Syrian border) over a winter so severe that i couldn't get the pushchair out.I was at home with new baby and 3 year old while dh worked 12 hour days. At one stage,I didn't leave the flat for three days.

Very hard but what kept me going was daily Turkish lessons (at home)walks and trips to the gym and quilting and patchworking.
Oh and MN.

I felt much the same a few years ago when I moved to London with DH cos he got a promotion. We didnt' have any kids at that point, and I felt bad enough - I can just imagine how much worse it must feel when kids enter the equation.

My heart goes out to you, it really does. I decided to ride it out in London even though we had no idea when/if we'd ever be able to move back up north to our families. TBH, the only thing that helped keep me rational for those next 3 years (and stopped me packing my bags to come up north on my own) was going to my lovely GP, who prescribed antidepressants, which I was on for 6 months, and which helped clear the murky, pessimistic fog which was slowly killing me. After that I was able to stand it, but I was always aware that our flat never felt like "home", and I always felt I was just waiting to go back, esp when I started feeling broody. And DH was working away all the time so I still felt bloody isolated but the ADs stopped me from breaking down on the tube at least! (very embarrassing!)

We finally DID get the call that DH could transfer his job back up north and it was the best news I'd ever had.

I would say that it depends how much you and your DS see of your DH anyway during the week. If he's always working late, or away (as my DH was), and you tend to see him most at the weekends anyway, then maybe it's possible that you can work it out doing just the weekend visits.

You have totally given it your best shot, and it's now up to him to do his utmost to try and relocate back to the UK with you, even if that takes a couple of years and a lot of to'ing and fro'ing.

do you have a system where you come back hme regularly, for a summer holiday, christmas or birthday? So people in the UK know when you are due back home and it feels like it is still part of your daily life.
It is tough with a small cild, partly I wonder if your mental image of what it would have been like to have a baby is based on having a baby in the UK, and does not tally with how things are abroad.

Thank you all again. Your comments are a big, big help

Ifyoudidntlaugh - that´s exactly what I have said to myself "it has be better than it is now" I know deep down that nothing could be worse than these past 2 or more years

OptimistS - your comments have really helped and thank you for sharing about your sister and I´m glad things have improved for her. I really feel now that nothing is going to change the way I feel unless I go back.

critterjitter - (great name) Yes I do need to be a happy Mum for my DS and that´s mpossible at the moment. Yes I would have support back home and that´s something I really need. DH works such long hours here and there´s nobody else.

There´s nothing I would have liked more than for this to have been the best thing we ever did but sadly it isn´t and I really have to accept that

You're doing what is right. Your life and happiness is so important to your family and if you're miserable and tired and really fed up what good are you to anyone? I think look at the move as a few months home and see how you feel in a month or so. You might just need some time in familar surroundings. Why don't you reassess how you feel in a few months and then make the decision when you've had some time with your family?

Seebothsides: no, it might not have been the best thing you ever did, but I bet you will look at this point in your life in a totally different light in a few years, when you are all of you settled back in the UK.

I look back on my unwanted stint in London now, and am at least grateful that the way the property market went meant that we now have a mucch smaller mortgage up north than most of our friends and family do here. And it really gave me an insight into my own personality i.e. what I could and couldn't cope with, and how having family around me is actually VERY important to my own happiness and wellbeing.

As long as your DH realises that it's not HIM you're leaving, but the SITUATION, then I think you'll be fine.

oranges - you make a good point about having a baby in the UK not tallying with how things are abroad. I feel very naive and stupid for not considering this before coming. I have been back to the UK as often as has been possible but I find it causes me a lot of distress when I have to come back here. It doesn´t feel like home to me at all.

Curly - yes DH is working very long hours and DS is usually in bed when he gets home so in that way there wouldn´t be such a major change I suppose. I really know what you meaning when you say your flat didn´t feel like "home", its such a horrible, empty feeling

Seebothsides, sounds to me like you have given this a great deal of thought and are resolved to come back. I wish you well and hope that you can engineer a situation where your DH comes back soon and that the period up to that is workable for you all. It has taken courage to make this decision and I wish you the very best of luck.

but I should remind you it's very crap here

Awww....seebothsides....."I have been back to the UK as often as has been possible but I find it causes me a lot of distress when I have to come back here. It doesn´t feel like home to me at all"

Sooooooo rings a bell with me.........I used to sob all the way down the motorway whenever I'd visited my family back up north and had to go back down to "that London"!!! Can't have been very nice for poor old DH who was driving either, who must have felt it was all his fault.

Really, really feel for you. Do whatever it takes to keep you sane, m'dear!

I have to say, though, we have been back up north now for over 5 years, we have our kids here, we are in a house and area that just feels totally like home and it is a lovely feeling. I think you will get to that point - it will just take a bit of patience and time. Best of luck!

Zebraa - you might be right about needing time in familiar surroundings longer than the 10 day trips back I usually do

Curly - I really hope so! I tell you that this experience has definitely taught me about my own personality and what my priorites are, being close to my family and friends being the main one and if I can take something positive from this nightmare then that´s it. It´s taken this to make me realise

onebat - thanks for making me laugh. See, British sense of humour best in the world!!!! One of the many things I miss

I live in Japan so I can relate to your feelings. But the reason I've replied is to say that in many cultures it would be perfectly fine for you to go back to your home country (the UK) while your husband stayed abroad.
For example there is something in Japan called "Tanshin-Funin". tHis means that the husband works in a completely different area of Japan, but the wife (because the kids are in school) stays in the main family home, or in her mother's home (depending on what they can afford).
Many I.T workers here in JApan from India, bangladesh would never dream of dragging their wives to a different country while she's struggling to raise children.
Also, among my "western" friends (canadians, americans) a few of them have got pissed off and gone back home for a year to refresh themselves. They put their kids in school back home during this time. Then they decided it wasn't so bad after all and returned to be with their husbands.

So anyway, although its true that its not ideal, I don't think you have to approach your move back home as the absolute end of your relationship. If you have the money you can visit (or he can visit) and then maybe when you feel up to it you could rejoin him there. ACtually I should imagine that knowing you have the option of going home when you liked might end up making it easier to live abroad eventually.

Just to add, I think the key here is your husband. I don't know how your relationship is with him, but if he's a reasonably mature man (which I'm sure he is) then he should be able to see that you need a "break" and a trip back home to 'refresh yourself'. So his encouragement is important in all of this. There is skype, webcams etc. You can keep easily in touch.
But if he's the type who's likely to act as though you're "abandoning" him (i.e a little immature) then that may become a bigger problem. If he's this kind of unsupporting person, then I think thats even more of a reason for you to go back to the UK.