I'm trying to decide what's reasonable and what's not reasonable. I've been with my DP for a year and we love eachother very much and are hoping to marry before too long; I'm 51 and he's 53. I have one DD of 9, he has DD 21 and DS 18. It's long distance right now and the journey takes 4 hours so we take it in turns to see eachother every fortnight.
The longer it goes on, the harder it becomes for both of us emotionally and physically and he especially says how it's getting to him not being with me. Also he finds the travelling more draining than me because he does a hard physical job during the week.
I can't move because of DD; her father to whom she is very close is up the road and no way would I take her 200 miles away at her age. Otherwise I might consider moving. When DP and his ex split 12 years ago, she took the kids to live over 200 miles away - at that time he was actually living in my area although I obviously didn't know him. He was heartbroken but as a devoted dad travelled to see them virtually every weekend. Eventually about 3 years ago he decided that enough was enough so sold up to move near his kids because he wanted to spend at least the latter years of their childhood partly living with them.
The girl is now at uni and has left home but the boy still lives partly with his mum and partly with DP. He's been been accepted on a local college course in Sept but is undecided about whether he's going to take it. My DP really wants to move back to my area, not only because of me but because his own family live here too. But he keeps changing his mind about things; one minute he's going to rent out his house so his son can live there with some other lodgers whilst he's at college, the next he's going to sell it and the next he's saying he can only relocate if his son decides he wants to go somewhere else and not live at home anymore.
I'm sympathetic to his situation and appreciate the bond he has with his kids. But I'm not prepared to wait forever for him to move; I work full-time as well as being a mum and the journey takes it out of me, not to mention how much I miss him and the expense. DP is very much the sort of person who goes with the flow and doesn't like rocking the boat so I'm wondering if I should take more of an active part in suggesting what we do in the future. I'm worried that if I don't, I might still be doing the 450 mile round trip to see him in 5 years time and getting home exhausted on a Sunday night and it taking me half the week to recover! Or am I being unreasonable in thinking that he should encourage his son to be independent of him? His ex-wife isn't going anywhere so the boy could always go and live with her full-time if he wanted.