Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Why is this decision so darn hard????

My Hubby and I have a bit of a dilemma on our hands.  It sure ain't a matter of life and death but I tell you it is just consuming my mind right now.

We have been talking about whether or not we should move house.  We both long for more space, more land on which to grow vegetables and fruit.  More land where we could raise some animals.  We live in the middle of suburbia on a block just under 600 square metres.  We live in the house that my Exhusband and I bought back in 2001.  When my Ex and I bought it, it was our plan to make this our forever house as it had 5 bedrooms, that gave each of the boys a bedroom each, how perfect it was.  We would be mortgage free by the time I turned 42,,,,that is next year.  Well life happens and life changes and we split up in early 2005.  I met my now Hubby at the end of 2005 and he had a house as well.  We moved in together in my house in 2006 and his Ex moved into his house and "rented" it from him (I use that term loosely as she paid rent maybe once a month and Hubby ended up way out of pocket because of her and we were left with a total mess of a house to clean up, but I won't even go there.....).  We eventually cleaned up and sold his house in early 2007 and my Ex got paid out his share of this house.  Hubby and I got married in late 2007 and since then life has thrown many curve balls at us but needless to say we are a long way from paying off the mortgage and my Ex is renting and has very little money to his name, having blown his pay out on a woman he is no longer with.  The whole thing makes me feel sad.

Divorce sucks on so many levels.  It truly destroys your financial life as well as tearing apart the family.  I feel like the last 6.5 years are just a bit of a blur in a lot of ways.  I look back and wonder where the time has gone.  I feel like I blinked and missed important parts of the kids lives as we were all racing around creating our new lives.

Hubby and I feel like this is the house that we didn't buy.  He inherited it in a way, it wasn't his choice.  It isn't truly "our" house if you know what I mean.  Yes we have put in new kitchen, we have moved rooms around, totally changing bedrooms, we have changed the garden (although now it is actually messier than it was originally lol), but still it doesn't feel like "ours".

Our main problems with moving, I mean the ones other than the fact that the kids don't want to move schools lol, are Hubby's job and his kids and of course the Ex partners.  My Ex is considering moving to Melbourne in a year's time.  He isn't happy and feels like he needs a new start after his relationship fell apart 12 months ago.  I am scared about what that will do to the kids, they will be totally devastated, especially the youngest two.  Even if the Ex decides not to move, we still have a rather large dilemma on the moving house decision anyway.  We would move to the country, but of course with my eldest two at almost 15 and 17 and working part time or starting to look for part time work it will be a huge upheaval for them.  I still want to be able to give them the opportunity to find the jobs they would like and/or study towards that.  We don't know where in the country we would move but Hubby and I both hate the heat so we were thinking of down towards Mt Gambier or over towards the East coast of Victoria or even possibly NSW.  We would love to move to Tasmania or even more ideally New Zealand (Hubby's Homeland), but that just would be impossible with all the kids and their other parents to consider.

So as you can see we really don't know where our lives are heading.  We recently bought fruit trees and I planted rhubarb seeds which have grown.  Naturally I don't want to put these in the ground, only for us to leave and we never get to eat the fruit from these plants.  We have them in pots at the moment, but I feel like I can't make any decisions until we know what we are doing.  Decorating the house is another dilemma.  I want to make this house into "our home" but I don't want to decorate to our tastes if we are selling it in a year or two.  Our taste is to inject some colour into the house but naturally enough for selling it, it is generally better to tone it down a little.

I know this is a ramble but today I just feel really frustrated at our lack of direction in our lives.  We can't seem to come up with a solution to anything right now.  I just feel like divorce makes life so hard.  Blended families are hard work.  We cannot keep everyone happy but I still try.  I don't want to move the kids away from their other parents and of course I don't want to move away where Hubby can't see his kids regularly either.  The extra expense at getting kids around the country if we do move interstate will be ridiculous and I know that financially we just can't do that either.

AAAGHHHHHHHHH I just don't know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

3 comments:

Niki Jones said...

Do it.
Move to the country, you'll never regret it & the kids will adjust.
We have been seriously considering it too. But we have a sick extended family member which makes it impossible at the moment.
Oh I know how you feel. Hard one. My gut says do it though.

Anonymous said...

Oh. tough call!! But at the moment I would say stay, fix the house with some colour even if only for a couple of years, make it a 'home' for you now, extended family and Ex way hard sometime. When its time to move the decision will come easily :)

Unknown said...

Keep the house, rent it out, rent in a country town, something similar to what you might buy, (to see if you are able to maintain that size of a block of land) to get a feel for country life and then make a decision from there. That what if its not what everyone expects, it will be easier to 'fix' (for lack of a better word) Cheers Sue http://notenoughbutter.blogspot.com/