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He says he's doing what's best for his kids, but most think he's doing it all for himself.
By John Sundholm — Written on Apr 01, 2023
Even when it's just across town, relocating can be an incredibly difficult process. But when it comes to moving across country? That's a whole other ball of wax, especially when there are kids involved.
A man on Reddit found himself in the middle of this difficult decision-making process when he found the perfect house on the other side of the country for him, his wife and his kids. But as he detailed in a post to the "r/AmITheA--hole" subReddit, a forum where people go to figure out if they're in the wrong in a conflict, there was just one problem—his wife refused to move.
A dad gave his wife an ultimatum when she refused to move across country.
They both had their reasons for sticking to their guns, but he ended up resorting to extreme measures to get his way. He says he was doing it all for their kids, but many felt he was just doing it for himself.
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The dad's parents found a perfect house for him, his wife and their kids in a different part of the country.
In a situation that will be instantly familiar to anyone who's ever lived on the eastern seaboard of the United States, the Redditor writes, "we live on the east coast in a two bedroom small house, [cost of living] here is insane."
So when his mom, who moved down South a few years ago, called him with a perfect house that would not only provide far more space for him, his wife, and their kids but was also far cheaper than their East Coast digs, he was ready to jump. "To me, this sounds amazing," he writes, "everything there is cheaper and we will have more space and more bedrooms for our kids."
He works from home, so his job would be unaffected. His wife on the other hand would have to quit her job. "But I could cover us until she finds a new one," he writes, so he went ahead and talked to realtors about selling their house and buying the new one down South.
But his wife was not nearly as enthusiastic as he was.
She refused to move across the country, so he gave his wife an ultimatum—move or divorce.
"She was totally against it immediately," he writes of his wife, going on to say "she doesn't want to leave her job, she doesn't want to move the kids away from her family and she does want to leave her friends." He went on to say that his wife is born and raised in their area, and has no intention of leaving.
He was furious with her "selfish" unwillingness to move. "I spent all night thinking about it," he writes, "and came to the decision that if she doesn't want to do the right thing by our kids I will." So, he gave his wife an ultimatum. "I laid it out for her, it was up to her if she wanted to move but I had made the decision to move. She could either come with me or we could divorce."
He told her she had a month to make her decision but he was starting the process of buying and selling their house and moving his job down South, immediately.
The man's wife said he was 'crazy' and his friends agreed—and so do most experts.
The man's parents backed him up, applauding him for supposedly putting their kids first. But practically everyone else in his life firmly disagreed. His friend, meanwhile, "told me I am being an a--hole for expecting my wife to change her entire life."
And on Reddit, virtually nobody had anything nice to say about the way he was handling things. "He's just a selfish idiot, he can live with his parents if he wants it so desperately," one Redditor angrily wrote.
Another pointed out that his expectations of how this would all shake out were wildly out of touch. "Good luck getting custody if your kids and ex stay in their home state," they wrote, "and good luck affording any house once child support and alimony is established!"
Experts agree that man's approach is the polar opposite of the correct one. "Always have your partner's back," personal growth coach Jean Walters recently told us when asked for her advice on how to ensure you have a lasting marriage. "It can't be a one-sided arrangement," she went on to say.
And "making unilateral decisions about the big things"—like, say, moving across country—is one of several habits that inevitably lead to divorce, according to experts. And when it comes to threatening divorce to get what you want? Well, as therapist Mary Jo Rapini explains in the video below, that is downright "lethal" to your marriage—whether you mean it or not.
In the end, this Redditor is setting his family up for failure—and some on Reddit suspected that was secretly what he wanted anyway. "The fact that he seems so easy to divorce his wife based on this is very telling," one user wrote. "That in and of itself would let me know as his wife that he’s indifferent to my existence, which would probably mean I’d divorce him either way if it were me."
Careful what you wish for, as the old saying goes.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice and human interest topics.