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How do you make a choice when one spouse will end up unhappy no matter what?

  • I want to quit my job, sell our house, and move our family to a house that has been in my family for several generations. My husband cannot get on-board with this idea. After years and years of working in a very stressful job, I'm rapidly coming to the end of my rope. I want to sell our current home (we would walk away with about $200K cash by selling, even in this market), and move my family (husband, child, me) to the house where I grew up. That house is about an hour from here, in a much more rural area. My husband has about a half-hour commute, and moving would not change his commute, except he'd be traveling in the other direction. Our child starts school in September (kindergarten half-days) and I'd REALLY like to be able to be a stay at home PTA mom. Financially, this makes good sense. The family house does need a little work, but if we put $50K into it, we would still have the other $150K from the sale of our house to provide a cushion for property taxes and unexpected expenses. My husband's salary could pay our other living expenses - it wouldn't be luxury, but it would be easily doable. My husband, however, flatly refuses to consider this. He says he doesn't want to leave our city, loves our current house (as do I, actually, except for the part where I work like a dog to pay the mortgage and heat, and where neither of us have the time to devote to real 'upkeep' since we're both working), and doesn't want to live in the more-rural community. He also feels it will be problematic for us to be an hour away from our core group of friends, and I suspect this is his biggest objection. I've been looking for a new job for almost two years, without success, and the more time passes and the older our child gets, the more I realize that I'm completely missing out on the fun parts of being a mom. Communication isn't an issue here. We're each communicating very clearly about this issue, and we each understand the others' point of view. We're just at an impasse. I strongly want to do this - not only because I want to be a stay-at-home mom, but because I want our child to have the same kind of idyllic, free-range, playing in the creek and climbing trees childhood that I had. My husband strongly does not, mainly because he says he would "feel isolated" in the new community. One of us needs to be unhappy about this. How do we decide which of us is the loser here. You're going to say "therapy". Trust me that this isn't a therapy-worthy issue. Plus, every couple we've ever known who has gone to therapy - even just to "make the relationship stronger' has ended up splitting up - so in the absence of any real problems in our relationship, he's not going to go for that, and I think (honestly) it would be a waste of money. So: recommend books, tools, tips, mediators, flipping a coin - but traditional therapy isn't the right answer here.

  • Answer:

    Well, let's list what each party gets from the suggested move, shall we? You get:To move back to a place you have roots and (presumably) friends inTo move into a house you feel an emotional attachment toTo stop working and spend more time with your childTo win the argumentHe gets:Not to see his friends anywhere near as often as he does nowTo move into a house that he likes much less than the one he now lives in, which will require $50K worth of work and a ton of labor (translating into to less time with his child)To continue working full time, but now as the sole breadwinner for the familyTo lose this argumentYou're asking him to make major, disruptive adjustments to his life to satisfy what appear to be pretty non-compelling reasons on your part. Further, you've dug your heels in and decided that one of you needs to win this argument and one of you needs to lose it, and have framed it in such a way that if he does not give in to your request, he is harming both you and your child, and you have flatly refused to have the issue mediated by a counselor based on some pretty tenuous evidence. You're being unreasonable, and the two of you have got a pretty rocky road ahead of you if this is how you're handling disagreements.

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You are at an impasse because you've constructed a situation where there are only two options. In the "real world" there are thousands of options. One I just thought of off the top of my head: Sell both houses and move to a smaller house that's both more rural and still close to your old neighborhood. It might not be enough mortgage difference for you to stay home full-time, but you might be able to swing part-time or home contracting work.

muddgirl

What SuperSquirrel said. If I were your husband, it would be hard for me not to feel a little resentful. You get to quit your job while I pay all the bills, you get to move back to your family home while I'm stuck in the boonies, and I get...what, exactly? Yes, it's true that marriage shouldn't be approached from a "what's in it for me" perspective, but from the outside, it seems like your motivations are primarily selfish and don't take his viewpoint into consideration. Can you try to see things from his point of view? How could you focus on his needs, too? We can't answer those questions for you since we don't know all the parameters, but it might help to start thinking about this from another perspective than your own. Good luck, and I hope you're able to find a resolution that leaves you both happy, and your marriage strong.

pecanpies

This--a father refusing to make some lifestyle changes so that his wife can be a SAHM reeks of immaturity to me.--is sexist. There's no rule of family that says the instant a mother wants to stay at home, Dad needs to hop to and make it happen. Mom and Dad are partners. Co-parents. Mom staying home might be the best option for the family, but that's not a given. It is absolutely not selfish or immature for Dad to balk at the proposed sudden, drastic change in plans.

Meg_Murry

I don't know what the right answer is here, but my experience has been that if you set up a situation in your marriage where one of you has to win and one of you has to lose, what actually happens it that both of you lose.

mhoye

As parents, the responsibility lies in doing what is best for junior. Seems to me, what's best for Junior is to have parents who know how to compromise with each other, communicate properly and get equal levels of fulfillment from their marriage. Maturity isn't choking down all your needs and a human just to keep your kid's mom at home. There are better, more reasonable solutions here.

spicynuts

What if your husband said "You know, I think I'd like to be the SAHD, actually, how about we move to your family home and I stay at home with the kid and fix up the place?"

jeather

her husband doesn't seem to be worried about finances. He is worried about his social life. That is the very definition of immature. Even if this framing were accurate, how is it immature to want a healthy social life? Staring at each other for months on end = The Shining.

yerfatma

You're making the same mistake that a lot of folks make when they decide to "stay together for the kids." They, and you, are projecting your own wishes onto the best-interests of your child in an attempt to justify the desired outcome. Don't use your kid like that. It makes your kid a pawn. Your husband, on the other hand, is just clearly stating his personal opposition to this plan.

jph

He is a parent now, his desires don't come first. There's a word for people who always put their child's needs ahead of their own needs or those of the relationship, and that word is "divorced". Coincidentally, we also use that word for people who routinely engage in the sort of relationship brinkmanship that's being described by the original poster. Above I wrote that "I don't have the right answer", but on reflection it is clear that the right answer is to do the exact opposite of what the OP wants. Chlldren should have their own childhood, not some fabrication concocted from their mother's memories after she's fled back to her childhood home. That's just creepy. The OP's husband is being entirely reasonable in not wanting to suddenly get taken away from his social network and saddled with an extra $50K in debt and labor as the sole breadwinner, and the fact that the OP is actually threatening him with her own and her children's well-being is further evidence that she's entirely in the wrong. OP: Sell your parent's house. Use that money to fund quitting your job to look for something better, spend the time you're not at work with your kids and get yourself some therapy.

mhoye

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