My wife wants me to change my way of life

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All I know is, my husband was an immovable log when it came to things he really did not want to do. I’m sure if it were an emergency situation, such as we were under attack and the only way to survive was to move to City X, he’d have done it, but you don’t marry people expecting to push them to go against their strong preferences when it’s not an emergency. At least I don’t. And he respected my strong preferences in the same way. We had a happy long marriage.

I don’t think one should constantly have to make unnecessary compromises. If there is a real necessity for this move then that’s something for the OP to discuss with his wife. I frankly wouldn’t marry a man who had a whole life out in the rural area that he had set up specifically so he could support himself and raise kids there, and then expect him to move a couple years later. It sounds very unreasonable to me.
 
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Right, but you’re addressing this from the wife’s point of view, whereas the person here asking for advice is the husband.

A flat no is not a good idea for him here, especially since a lot of unforeseen events are possible over the next 15-20 years and the living situation that he loves may not be livable for his wife long-term.

And even if the answer needs to be no, he needs to put some effort into making the situation livable for his wife.

For an extreme example, look at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. On the one hand, I really wonder how that is going to work out for them. On the other hand, they are an example of the fact that people do make major changes in life situations after having children, including changes that would previously have seemed unthinkable.
 
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Agree with Xantippe that while your point of view is legitimate (coming at it from the perspective of counselling the wife to understand her husband’s position, if the wife were the one asking), the questioner is the husband, so our advice has to be about how he can best handle the situation, from his perspective.

And the onus is on him to be as caring and gentle with this process as possible. His wife may not have the same peace of heart in her situation as you did in your situation, for whatever reasons. And her mother is in hospice care, and her first baby is on the way – which you might think wouldn’t affect you if you were in her situation, but we don’t know her total situation, and it might affect her. Everyone is different, in physical constitution, spiritual and mental preparation, external circumstances, etc. Maybe there are things she just really never considered about rural living, and being forced all at once to consider beginning-of-life issues (child coming) and end-of-life issues (her mother dying) is helping her to realize needs/concerns she never realized she had before.

Unless the husband has strong reason to believe his wife is fit to handle a hard ‘no’ right now, the research route of asking probing questions, and continuing to learn more about what she needs, and helping her feel heard, seems probably wisest for now. And it can’t do harm, to find out more about her fears and desires; her husband will only become better able to take care of her by knowing those. Regardless of what their action steps are re: career/geography.
 
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Texas has about 2000 small rural towns with some in nice scenic areas and others not so much. Are we talking about rural hill country, coastal plains, gulf coast, panhandle, or out west? If you’re in a hole in West Texas like Big Lake or Pecos then it’s no wonder she wants to move. Maybe a compromise would be to look at some of the nice small exurbs surrounding Austin and SA. Around Austin you have San Marcos, Marble Falls and Wimberly and around SA you have Boerne, Spring Branch, and New Braunfels. You could potentially have a few acres of land and a nice house and still be close too all the conveniences of city life.
 
Honestly, I cannot fathom walking away from a home you own outright!
 
Hue12 said:
Now she wants me to pursue a new career, which neither of us know what that will be, in Austin or San Antonio.
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Most every responder in this thread is missing this one I bolded from the OP. Talk about cost of living, all well and good. Talk about just how far outside of the city to go before it gets rural, all well and good. But NOT a peep about the OP’s job and career prospects.

Career changes are dang hard to start with. Try complicating that with not having any idea what one is going to get into and add to the the stress of placating his wife while she is going through her own stresses. They’re even harder once one gets well past college. I’ve been there done that career change bit. It was wrenching and traumatic. No idea how much harder it would have been if I had to carry a family on my back. So my heart goes out to the OP. I realize his wife’s feelings have changed, but I’m still feeling less charitable toward her.

I would strongly advise no decisions be taken without consideration for how he is going to make a living. For how she might have to get a job herself after the baby is born. She needs to be a bit less selfish and look at things from his point of view. From which it looks like she is expecting him to abandon everything he’s done to put himself in the very admirable position of no rent/no mortgage. There is a lot to be said for that state of affairs but too few people want to credit the OP for it. I’m not saying suck it up, the discussion should be shut down, I am just saying she needs to be open to his concerns.

I acknowledge there is a lot we’re not being told and I would in no way suggest that the OP clarify further publicly.
 
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A pregnant woman with a dying mother needs a husband who is going to offer her safety, security, companionship, and roots. She’s losing the mother who she may (depending one how long they knew she was dying) have imagined was going to be around to offer some guidance. She may not only be losing a mother; she may be losing a dream and right now moving seems like a way to “fix” everything.

Sometimes “stalling” is called for and I think this is such a time. The husband may need to specifically say that he thinks discussing moving NOW is not a good idea but that he’s willing to have such discussions later. The wife may feel differently once the baby is a few months old and she has time to grieve for her mother.

In the mean time, the husband needs to get her to explain what she thinks they will get out of moving.
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
Most every responder in this thread is missing this one I bolded from the OP. Talk about cost of living, all well and good. Talk about just how far outside of the city to go before it gets rural, all well and good. But NOT a peep about the OP’s job and career prospects.
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That’s fair, but I’d say that that would be part of the “research” phase. He wouldn’t move without reasonable employment prospects.

I’d also suggest saving an emergency fund / relocation fund either way, because a) you need an emergency fund as homeowners with a baby on the way and b) any relocation is likely to require substantial funds. I wouldn’t call it a relocation fund to the OP’s wife, though (so as not to raise hopes)–it’s fine to just refer to it as an “emergency fund.”

The more savings you have, the more options you have. I think that would be a good point for the OP to make to his wife.
Zzyzx_Road said:
From which it looks like she is expecting him to abandon everything he’s done to put himself in the very admirable position of no rent/no mortgage.
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They’re presumably not going to burn the house down and walk away–there should be some equity. We also don’t know that the current house would be suitable for a larger family or even for the three of them long-term, anyway.

OP, how does your wife feel about the house? It may be that she doesn’t like it as much as you do, and that’s partly driving her eagerness to relocate.
 
Our family relocated from DC to medium-sized TX city about 12 years ago, with a 2-year-old and an almost 5-year-old. It’s been a very successful relocation for us.

Here’s how we did it:

–Husband had a job offer.
–Husband kept the door open to going back to his old job (fortunately we didn’t need to do this).
–He did a multi-day interview and got to see a lot of local stuff.
–I perused online real estate ads.
–They flew me out and introduced me to people and I figured out where we’d go to church and where the kids would go to school. (The kids are in the same school, but we changed parishes after the pastor was transferred.)
–I flew out again (!) to find a rental for us. (Possibly unnecessary, but we were very happy with our choice.)
–We decided on an inexpensive rental near my husband’s work, where we lived for the next 5 years.
–We moved to TX.
–We rented, paid off debt, saved, and I visited neighborhoods and saw houses. 6 years after our arrival in TX, we bought a house where we still live. I’d love to fix it up a bit, but it’s in an excellent location in a nice neighborhood. My husband walks to work (15 min.), we can walk to Mass (30 min.) and it’s less than 10 minutes’ drive to get the kids to school. Our oldest is going to be able to live at home and walk to her college classes when she starts college this fall as a freshman. We also plan/hope to have our middle child (now a 9th grader) live at home and go to Hometown U.
–We couldn’t be happier.

We were able to nail down a lot of details (job, parish, school and first neighborhood) before moving. We didn’t buy a house immediately. That was partly due to our financial situation when we moved (big city broke), but the delay was a blessing in some ways, because we were able to take our time and really think before buying a house and we got a good price. Furthermore, our needs evolved as our kids got bigger and we added a third child to our family, so the delay in purchasing helped us get a house that fits our current needs better.
 
X, that’s wonderful you had all that going on. To read the OP, he doesn’t have 90% of what you did. Based on what little we’ve seen from the OP, I would credit you with better intelligence and emotional awareness than his wife.

As the provider, my first instinct would be “no” but I would tell her she needs to think it all the way through. She can’t just be sitting there asking him to move because feelings, she needs to be contributing helpful and actionable items to the discussion of what she can do to help him with the transition, and she needs to be able to see things from his perspective, all without resorting to emotional blackmail. For instance, X above was a full participant with her husband in every aspect of their move. Can the OP get this level of care, thought and participation from his wife? After all, she is asking him to make a huge and likely very stressful change, she better have his back around everything about it.
 
Thanks!

By the time we were thinking of relocating, we were a family of 4, so it was very clear at that point that we couldn’t afford to be impulsive about a relocation. We’d been parents for nearly 5 years at that point (in suburban MD and NW DC), so our ideas were starting to gel about what we needed as a family.

The OP does have it going for him that it sounds like the relocation will be relatively short distance, if I’m reading him correctly.
 
Dave Ramsey has a very good bit where he’s talking to career-changers.

He tells people to bring the boat as close as possible to the dock, rather than jumping off the dock and hoping for the best.

www.ramseysolutions.com

How to Quit a Job Professionally

Thinking it might be time for a job change? Here’s how to quit a job professionally!
www.ramseysolutions.com www.ramseysolutions.com

The same principle applies to relocation.
 
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Firstly, CONGRATULATIONS!

Sounds like there’s a lot going on in your family right now, i will keep you in prayer.

From my own experience as a woman sometimes it is easier to jump to a conclusion when emotions are running than understanding what the source of my insecurities or anxieties are rooted in.
I would suggest doing an exercise together that will not directly go after her statements but allow you both to see where the other is coming from. Ask to list (in writing) your personal priorities for this time in your lives. Then share them. Share why each has the place it does and the importance of it being there, then listen to the other and understand what the root of the prerogative is. Take time to collaborate, and yield to the concerns of the other, what holds the most gravity in your lives and where is it derived?

Peace!

Hope this helps!
 
Keep in mind we don’t actually know what kind of ‘home’ the OP is talking about, nor career. All he’s technically said is that he has “no rent or mortgage”, and he ‘provides for himself’. For all we know they’re living in a motor home in a field, and he’s scavenging for roots and berries in the woods.

Yes, that’s probably an extreme and they’re not QUITE in that situation… but it strikes me as notable that the OP hasn’t actually said “I own a two-story house and run a profitable dairy farm” or anything so specific. I don’t think we should jump to any conclusions about the quality of the living situation they already have, unless the OP jumps back in to clarify the current picture for us.

I think we should all be particularly careful about trying to jump in with advice here when we’re only hearing one side of a married couple’s story (and a particularly low-detail side, that seems to illuminate that there must be something going on that we haven’t been told about, for the wife to be expressing what she’s expressing).
 
Zzyzx_Road said:
I would credit you with better intelligence and emotional awareness than his wife.
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Can I jump in to caution us against making assumptions about the OP’s wife? With all due respect to the OP, we don’t actually know anything about his situation beyond what he’s told us, and we know zero from the wife’s perspective. Even what the OP told us from his own perspective is peculiarly vague.

E.g. the OP never told us what his quality of living actually is, right now. We all seem to be assuming he lives in a house – but he hasn’t actually said that. He just said he has “no rent or mortgage”. And he hasn’t said he actually has a thriving, profitable career – only that he ‘provides for himself’. By these vague statements, he could be living in a tent in a field, and scavenging berries and roots in the woods.

Yes, the situation is probably (hopefully!) not that bad… But unless the OP tells us otherwise, I don’t think we should assume they live in a three-story house and run a profitable dairy farm.

The truth is, we just don’t know what the OP’s wife thinks is worth walking away from. We’re not hearing her side of things at all (and the OP is actually being very vague with even his side of things). So I’d suggest, in love and respect to everyone, that we try to avoid making assumptions about (e.g.) his wife having ‘low intelligence and emotional awareness’. I don’t see what good comes from speculating about strangers like that, on the basis of hearing only from a biased party who’s telling us upfront that he’s in the middle of a disagreement with her.
 
Spending many years of my childhood living in a motor home with 3 siblings, mom, dad, usually another extended family member, and two dogs, it can be a great way to live!
 
Haha fair point and I’m not trying to pass judgement on living in a motor home per se. Just, you never know what different people will be okay with, and we don’t know what the situation is for OP & his wife, and what her reasons are for (apparently) wanting to change something about their situation.
 
Well, I doubt that our OP hid his tent, motor home, grass hut, cave or mansion and his occupation from his bride while they were dating/engaged. What I read is that after marriage, she now wants to change the man she married. It happens all the time, people marry folks thinking they can “change them” change a country mouse into a city mouse, change someone’s politics, change their religion, change their manner of dress or their job.
 
MNathaniel said:
Haha fair point and I’m not trying to pass judgement on living in a motor home per se. Just, you never know what different people will be okay with, and we don’t know what the situation is for OP & his wife, and what her reasons are for (apparently) wanting to change something about their situation.
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Whatever his quarters are, she found his situation acceptable enough to marry him. So they can’t be that bad. Then the OP says (emphasis mine):
Hue12 said:
Now she wants me to pursue a new career, which neither of us know what that will be
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I took this part in the bolded to mean what I said about the OP’s wife. Now reread my words more carefully: I didn’t mean that she had low intelligence period, I said that she apparently had less intelligence and emotional awareness than did our contributor X in this thread. The OP’s wife is expecting him to make a change, but like him, she doesn’t have any idea what he should do for a new career. Yet she apparently expects him to slave away at it because feelings. Absent anything more that the OP and/or his wife might add to this conversation, that doesn’t reflect very well on her.
 
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