AnoukNZ

I don't know what to do...

We have been married for almost 12 years, we have 3 beautiful children, we had a difficult start in our marriage life due to husband's mother being too possesive, he moved out of our house to live with his mum when our first son was only 2 months old ( his mum came to visit, help and live with us for a while....).
It took us 3 years to be able to overcome these problems but after we managed, life was good and I had a wonderful husband, a real family man.

The problem now is that we want to live in separate parts of the world, but we want to be together.....After 10 years of living in a country we decided ( he decided and I agreed for a while) to move to a country closer to our home country where his parents are living so that they can see each other more often. My husband is an only child and his parents are in their late 70's ( my parents have passed away a long time ago). I had enough of this experience now, after almost 3 years and I want us to go back and have the happy life we had before. The problem is he is not able to leave his aging parents alone anymore.
I don't know how we can solve this problem and if we decide that I go with the kids and he comes for half a year every year, how long can this relationship survive???? How can this affect the children????

I am really helpless.....

Blueeyescrying

It is honorable that your husband wants to be close and care for his elderly parents. I think that you should respect your husband and stay with him. Your relationship would be harmed to live in seperate countries for any length of time. You and your husband need to be together. Your children need their father. Staying together would be my answer, if it was me.

AnoukNZ

I don't feel I can live in this place anymore and I can see my children are also suffering.I feel that I am sacrificing myself and the children...

I love my husband and he loves me but I sometimes feel he would be able to sacrifice our marriage for his parents. I trust him and I thought if I were really unhappy here he would agree to go back. I was wrong...When it was clear to me he would not leave his ageing parents again and not look for alternative solutions ( as for example, to come back home to be with them a few weeks once a year) I made my mind up and decided to take the kids and go back by myself, hoping he would follow us. He said he cannot and does not want to stop or force me if this is what I really want....but he would not come with us, he is not able to do this .....
I really cannot believe this, what kind of husband and father would let his wife and kids go without him????

ThinkTooMuch

I'm sorry to say a husband/father who values his parents more than his wife and children. Does your h really have to live near his parents to provide care?

I'm sorry you are going through this, something similar is happening in my life that is leading to separation and divorce. My wife of 20+ years - we don't have children - wants to live close to her aging parents, while for health of my mind and body I need to move.

This is a very difficult issue for your family and mine as well as several close friends who have similar conflicts. There is no easy resolution, a lot of the adults will feel guilt or be unhappy whatever happens.

Have you thought about asking his parents what they want?

I've considered asking my in-laws if they want their daughter to live nearby and divorce or have her married and 3,000 miles away. At this time I'm not sure I want them to say my W, their daughter should move. My once flourishing love for my W has been greatly diminished by her rejection and other issues these past years though I know she is realizing what her decision means.

Where are you and your husband from? I'm guessing there are cultural patterns & traditions in the country your husband comes from that are different than those prevailing in the United States.

I have a fair number of friends from China and India with aging and aged parents. Once every other year one spouse visits his/her parents, every 3 to 5 years they pack up kids and make a long visit seeing both sets of parents. Like many of us with aging parents, my friends send money on a regular basis.

One woman's widowed mother moved from a village in China to the US to help with her grand children.

In all these cases frequent phone calls, letters, photos allow parents, adult children, and grandchildren to share their lives, while money from abroad helps aging parents. I will say that when I sent my dad the money he needed for very necessary dental work, his thanks were worth every dollar I owned, while regular, much smaller gifts to my Mom allowed her to indulge in her favorite activities - praising me to her friends and relatives and shopping for good deals at local malls. I am a fortunate man.

greeneyeddolphin

Well, that question could really be turned around on you: what kind of wife and mother would take her kids away from their father and grandparents? It's not such a cut and dried situation.

You two need to weigh the pros and cons of each solution (staying there together, living in separate countries apart) and determine which one is going to be more detrimental to your marriage. In my personal opinion, I think living in separate countries would be far worse not only for your marriage, but for your kids as well.

I also have to be honest here, and I hope you won't take this as an insult or criticism, because I truly don't mean it that way. But...a man who is this committed to being there for his parents sounds to me like a man who is very committed to his family. This thought makes me inclined to think that although you seem to have taken him to be willing to give you up, you are wrong about that.

Don't give up and go just yet. Keep looking for another solution.

Mom6547

I am with atruckersgirl here.

A couple of further thoughts. You have the ability to work toward making your location something you can be truly happy with. Maybe it would be fun to consider it a hobby, the reclamation of the place you don't like? Or a challenge of personal growth to find things to genuinely care about in your new community?

If he values caring for the elderly, I might think how well it bodes for me that he does. And though it sounds harsh to say it, I challenge the values of someone who would abandon a spouse because they don't like where they live.

AnoukNZ

Thank you for all your answers.

The situation is not so simple and in a nutshell I feel that my husband is doing now, after so many years,the same thing he did in the beginning of our marriage: choose his mother over his wife and children. If he did it once he can do it again, no???

I had faith in him back then, I really believed we can work things out and have a happy relationship. I was right. But now this past is coming back to me and I feel we are in the same place somehow.....

We are both from Eastern Europe, his parents are living there and we moved from the Southern Hemisphere in the Western Europe to be closer to my husband's parents. We do not live in the same country as his parents. The only difference is that they are only 1200 km away instead of 20000 km away.

The only thing I know is that I would not have done the same thing, I would not have asked my family to move for me and my parents and turn their life upside down. I would have convinced my parents to come and live in the same country with us or I would have visited them as often as I could have.

MsLonely

Did you actually plan to help moving his parents to NZ? Or just walked away & moved yourself and kids?

MsLonely

I don't really need a thank to help my parents that's why I've been the supportive one since my first pay cheque. What I really don't like is the attitude of my mom. She would ask me to call her because she doesn't want to waste international phone bills, so I must call her to let her scold me and dump all her emotional trash on me and I must be understanding her pain and shut up.
Excuse me, she would never dump her trash on my brothers. After more than 100 phone calls I spent, either asking me for sending money or anyhow scolded me, it finally gets old. I'm tired and fed up with my family.
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MsLonely

God is kind to me. I have a loving and supportive husband, (2nd marriage,) my parents in law are very good parents. I love them more than my own parents.
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ThinkTooMuch

Knowing how expensive international calls are I'd like to suggest you use google voice, free if you and your parents have a computer, pretty cheap if only you have one. It works on both Macs and PCs.

https://www.google.com/voice

What is really neat it gives you a single phone number, at least in the US, which will ring as many phones as you want, if you don't answer, it will convert voice to text and send emails.

I've used it with a friend in Shanghai from my Mac, works great.

JennaL10

It is extremely honorable that he wants to take care of his elderly parents. You forced him to choose. He should never be put in that situation. It doesn't work. Now you will always hold that against him. If he chooses you, he will never forgive himself for abandoning his parents and your marriage would have suffered anyways. See the inevitability in this?

However, you should come up with an agreement that BOTH of you can be HAPPY with. THIS IS KEY. Find a marriage counselor who can help mediate this.

AnoukNZ

We still don't know what to do, we are 2 people who cannot come to a common decision or negotiate and compromise a solution in this case and I can't believe we are here after almost 12 years together !!!
I feel lost and I can't immagine an agreement that both can be happy with !!!

We are discussing but in vain it seems, and we will soon be sick of so much discussion with no conclusion.

seeking sanity

If this is the hill you are willing to die on, then leave the marriage and take the kids. But in doing so, you need to know that you will both deeply damage your children and communicate to them that fathers have little value because they are disposable. If you have boys, they will carry that message into their adult lives with unknowable consequences.

AnoukNZ

NO, I don't want to leave my marriage, I don't want to live without my husband and certainly I don't want my kids to live without their father! But it seems that he, my husband, can do that !
I just want to have the happy family life we did before coming here, I just want him to realize what his priorities are and set them in order.
Aren't your children and your partner suppose to be the first priority ???? If your wife is not happy where she is, ( and I really tried for 3 years !) why can't another solution be found???

I really think we need a mediator, a marriage counselor ! I can't find one here where we are as we need and English speaking one. Where can I find a marriage counselor that we can communicate in writing with?