He Told His Wife Of 15 Years That He Wants To Move Overseas After Their Daughter Goes To College, Whether His Wife Agrees To Go With Him Or Not
This 55-year-old man informed his wife, 48, that he’s thinking about moving out of the United States once their daughter graduates from high school and goes off to college.
He also told her that he’d still go whether or not she accompanied him.
Both he and his wife work in academia, and they both have built up enough savings for them to be financially comfortable in their retirement.
They’ve been married for 15 years, and throughout their entire marriage, he’s mentioned to his wife that he hopes to move to a different city than the one they currently live in, and he always told her that he would prefer to move abroad.
“The university we work at is an awful employer, and the toxic environment there was at least partially responsible for the deep depression I’ve gone through in the last five years,” he said.
Whenever he’s brought up the subject of moving out of the United States to his wife, she always insists that she doesn’t feel confident enough in what she’s accomplished so far in her career and doesn’t feel sure that she’d have luck obtaining another position.
However, he doesn’t agree with this at all. He believes that his wife is an amazing scientist and has a record that would impress so many people.
As of late, during these conversations, his wife has confessed that she enjoys the city they’re living in as well as her research sites.
Even though she feels overwhelmed being a professor, she doesn’t want to resign from the position or move.
goodluz – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
As he’s thought it through, he would have enough money saved up to retire when their daughter goes off to college, but his wife wants to wait until she’s 68 to retire.
Because of their slight age difference, if his wife continued her current professor position until her retirement, he would be 75 years old.
“The lifespan of someone born in the same year as me is 77, and I have a serious cardiac condition that means I probably won’t live to the average lifespan. So, my choices are stay here and spend my last precious years someplace I really don’t like, or start exploring the places I’d like to, in the way I’d like to,” he explained.
He adores his wife and has a lot of love for her.
However, over the years, it’s grown clear to him that despite how much they both love and care for their daughter, he and his wife don’t have a lot of hobbies or passions in common.
Plus, they both have varying thresholds for risk-taking.
Because of this difference it’s caused a lot of tension between them, which has been uncomfortable to deal with.
During the most recent discussion, when he explained to his wife that he would be moving abroad with or without her, she told him that he was leaving her and their daughter behind.
But he pointed out that he would hold off on moving until after their daughter has moved away for college.
He wants to ensure that their daughter’s college education is financially taken care of.
In addition to that, he has arranged for his daughter to receive nearly all of his financial assets aside from his retirement savings.
For his wife, he would leave her their house, and he’s already paid most of the mortgage on it.
Once their daughter leaves for college, he predicts their home will be worth $800,000, and the mortgage will be totally paid off.
He knows that his wife adores their house, and he wants her to thrive and be comfortable even after he’s passed away.
Each year, he and his wife earn about the same salary, and they have roughly the same amount of money in their retirement savings accounts.
But he wants to curb their spending so that he can retire sooner than having to wait longer for his retirement just so that he can continue living in a city he doesn’t want to live in.
He would only be requesting that he keep his own retirement savings for himself, which would equate to about 30% of their total combined assets.
His hope is that his daughter can tell how much he loves and cares about her, and he doesn’t want her to feel abandoned or like he “cheated” her out of anything.
In his view, now was the best time to clarify his future plans with his wife because he believes that they should immediately start making changes to how they handle their finances.
He wants them to be able to track their individual assets separately from one another, and he thinks it was better for him to broach the subject now rather than waiting too long and risk his wife feeling blindsided.
Since he’s resided in a city that he doesn’t enjoy for such a long time, he believes that he has the right to do what he wants and follow his passions without feeling concerned about his wife agreeing to go with him.
Unfortunately, his depression doesn’t seem to respond to traditional forms of treatment, but it seemed to go into remission when he was prescribed other substances.
He clarified that when he was in Chile, he didn’t have as much access to the substances that helped with his depression as he had in the United States. His motivation to move had nothing to do with easy access to substances because he said if that were the case, he would just stay in the US.
When his depression got worse while in Chile, he flew back to the US to pick up his prescription and then went back to Chile, and his depression went into remission once more.
“Having accepted my wife’s desire to stay put, I am going to have lived somewhere that I don’t like for 23 years, and that seems like enough. I had my own successful academic career, but staying here led to me leaving academia because of how bad my working conditions were. So, I have made big sacrifices for her,” he shared.
He and his wife have older children who already went to college, and he has a close bond with them.
When they went off to college, they participated in summer internships or had jobs over the summer, so none of their other children came back home on their summers off from school.
He acknowledged how much of a struggle it is when your children move away from home, but he loves seeing his children succeed and be independent.
Then, he wondered if maybe since he’d had so much experience with his other children moving away, it came off as cold for him to move abroad as soon as his youngest child went to college.
This is a different experience for him now compared to when his oldest child went to college.
Plus, he’s planning to pay for his daughter to come visit him for vacations and during the summer.
From his perspective, everyone’s marriage is different, and he thinks this is particularly true for two people in stressful careers that they’ve both been dedicated to for years.
He believes that when people become parents, their priorities must be on raising their children and caring for them as deeply as possible.
At the same time, he believes over the years, people should be aware of the possibility of a relationship changing, and sometimes, people would feel more joy if they were away from one another.
Then, he pointed out that since 40% to 50% of marriages in the United States end in divorce, other people must understand the concept that people grow apart over time.
In his own life, he’s known of couples who lead fairly independent lives within their marriages or others who decide to divorce but continue a friendly relationship and still get together despite no longer being married.
In a later conversation, his wife told him that she changed her mind and now wants to retire whenever he does. Since they’ll now have both of their retirement accounts and they could rent out their home while traveling, they’ll have more money to fund their trips abroad.
Now, they are planning to travel to countries that are more expensive, and they’ll have more money to leave to all of their children.
What advice would you give him?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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