Wife Whose Husband Made Her Choose Between Moving Or Their Marriage Worried She Made The Wrong Choice
She's confident she made the wrong choice, and now she's thinking of throwing it all away.
Ron Lach | Pexels For some, a relocation is an adventure. For others, it's a full-tilt nightmare. And especially given our incredibly polarized times, moving to a different part of the country can be downright destabilizing if your new home doesn't align with who you are.
But when your partner gets relocated, you shrug all that off and stick with him or her. Right? Well, maybe not, at least in the case of one woman who has found herself in an untenable situation after her husband gave her an ultimatum.
A wife was forced to choose between moving and her marriage.
The woman is so distraught by what's happened in the past two years that she wrote into Slate's "Good Job" advice column for insight into what to do. She explained that in 2023, her husband got an incredible promotion. The only problem was that it was in a new city 500 miles away.
"I really didn’t want to move. I’m in my 40s and moved over 25 times in my life," she wrote. More importantly, they were all blissfully happy where they were. "I loved where we lived," she wrote. "I felt culturally at home, my community was local, my career and licensure were local, and I loved living in a city with lots of independence for our sons, ages 14 and 16."
Liza Summer | Pexels
But unfortunately, her husband's promotion offer was "up or out," meaning he was expected to take the promotion or leave his job entirely. So he gave her an ultimatum. "He told me giving it up was all but a marriage dealbreaker for him," she wrote. "We moved."
Their new home is a wrong fit for her in every way, and she is miserable.
Heading into their second year in their new home, her husband is thriving. He loves his new job, fits into the local culture, has made new friends, and loves the lower cost of living. As for her, she's trying: She's planted a garden to feel more at home, has accepted every social invitation she gets, has been volunteering, and "trying to find and notice something to like about each new person I meet."
"But I hate it so much," she bluntly went on to say. The culture has been a shock. She is facing gender role expectations that feel "out of the 1980s" and were not the norm back home, and the political climate is "bonkers." Her job in healthcare is a mess, too, due to an underfunded healthcare system, and she finds it hard to truly connect with people since she's so out of place.
"I’m miserable," she wrote. "I know you can’t go 'home again' and that even if I did move back it would be different [and] I realize that trying to get home would probably be a divorce… What do I do?"
Her husband put his career ahead of his family. It may be time for her to be drastic, too.
Her husband surely had good intentions, but the unavoidable fact here is that he chose his career over his wife's happiness and his children's well-being. The wife mentioned that another of her frustrations with their new area is how bad the schools are, so not only did their kids get uprooted, they're now getting a worse education.
Even if it were ideal, though, ultimatums are rarely fair. They are, however, revealing of a person's priorities, and this story is full of red flags. The fact that her husband also seems to fit right into an area and culture that is so opposite to who she is says a lot, too.
In short, it really seems like these people may have grown too far apart to fix this. In her response, Slate's Doree Shafrir recommended the wife talk to a divorce lawyer just to get some information, especially given that divorce laws in many conservative states are far more punitive towards women than other parts of the country.
Of course, there are always ways to find your people in a new area. Shafrir suggested many. But I am of the mind that when you're already even considering divorce, your relationship has crossed a rubicon. That doesn't make it unsalvageable, of course. In fact, it can often be the gateway toward healing it.
But that can only happen when both partners are willing to commit to confronting and solving what's gone wrong. Perhaps he'll approach it differently this time, but the ultimatum he gave her the first time around could not have made his priorities any clearer.
Sometimes relationships are already over, and we're simply unwilling to accept it. Regardless, sticking it out at this point is just delaying the inevitable. These two are no longer on the same page, and the circumstances they're in aren't going to help them get back there.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
