Telling My Parents

I decided to tell my parents that I am moving on Monday night. I wanted to give them adequate time to adjust to the fact that I will be moving, and why. After consulting my therapist, we decided to focus on just the fact that the move will be great for my career (even though technically it’s a lateral move, I got a signing bonus AND a raise, and will now be making 9.5% more than I did last year, which wouldn’t have happened if I had just stayed in my same position and same city). So that’s what I did, and my mom did NOT look happy, though she just said, “Well if you’re happy, I’m happy” a couple times while not looking happy at all.

Two hours later, she texted my sister asking if I am moving because of the boyfriend. My sister called me and we discussed it and she decided she is just going to emphasize that the company needed me in that area and that’s the main reason. I wish she would just talk to me about it, but my therapist says that “triangular communication” (such a good term for this!) is common in families (and heck, my mom does this to my sister as well).

So when they talked, she asked my sis if I was moving FOR the bf. Sis replied, “Well she wanted the money, but I’m sure he was a factor in the decision.” And then Mom goes, “Well did you ASK her?” and my sister says, “Why? What’s the point? She’s happy. Let it go.” and then moved on to chat about her wedding. And then when they talked about the wedding, Sis asked Mom why she wasn’t more excited to help plan, and Mom says, “Because I’m sad!” [insert major eye roll here]. For some reason Mom just refuses to believe that my sister is happy and made the right decision for her, same with me. (Except Sis’s bf also does not have a divorce under the belt, or a kid, so Mom really should be liking him more than she does.)

Sorry Mom, I’m so over you behaving this way!

The Move

Well, it’s happening. We are packing up his place and leaving tomorrow morning. I can’t believe this is really happening. Last night was the first time he got sad about it – think it finally hit him. As we lay in bed he cuddled me hard and kept telling me how much he loved me. Ugh, thinking about it right now it starting to make me tear up!

He even told me he didn’t want to move anymore. I said, “Stop it, you know you do still.” And he replied, “Only the Dad part of me does.” To which I said, “Yeah, well that’s a pretty big part of who you are.” And that was that.

It’s going to be so weird to not have him around. I’ve already made plans for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday next week – hopefully I’ll be so busy that I won’t have time to miss him too much. We’ve also spent so much time together these past few months aside from when I was away for Thanksgiving and when he was away after Christmas – even those days added up don’t amount to more than 3 weeks. At least I have a ticket booked to visit on Valentine’s Day and he’ll come up for the last weekend of February for our anniversary. (I already said that in a previous post, didn’t I? Ugh, sorry.)

Welp. Guess that’s that, for now.

Curve Ball #3

(The title of this post just made me think of Mambo #5…totally unrelated side note.)

ANYWAY – yesterday we were thrown yet another curve ball – it turns out, the company he interviewed with turned down THE WRONG PERSON. Yep. The guy who called him to tell him he got the job yesterday was mortified when he found out. All that stress for nothing!

So now we are/he is gearing up for a move at the end of the month – I just bought a one way plane ticket to come back, but I’m gonna drive over with him in the moving truck to help out (ok, mostly to check out new surroundings, since I can’t say I’d be really that helpful with moving any furniture lol).

Then, when I told my sister, she kind of freaked out and got really stressed about everything, especially his financial situation, but also saying that so far, she’s only see me be willing to do “big things” and make sacrifices for him. She kept saying he had “nothing to lose” by moving and having me move with him, whereas I’d be leaving a decent job, great apartment, the city I love, and people that I love for him. Which is all true, but as the bff and I discussed last night, I haven’t needed him to do “big things” or make sacrifices for me. And this is the man I love – of course I am going to do everything I can to make him happy. And I do think I’ll learn to love the new area, and I also know that financially, it’s a much lower cost of living there overall.

Anyway, so I guess the next step is me meeting ex-wife, who, by the way, told him that she’s going to take him to court so that he’ll have less time with their daughter as it’s “disruptive” to her “routine” and she’s happy right now (all of which we suspect is a cover for her just not wanting him in their daughter’s life at all – she’s happy just taking the child support and that’s it). I have a feeling it’s because she doesn’t have anything really going for her aside from their daughter, and she just doesn’t want to feel like he’s taking that away from her. Ugh, sticky situation.

The good thing is he said he’s going to counter and ask for more time, and with that, child support payments will go down. He isn’t even at 50% time right now on their parenting plan, so it’s very likely courts will grant him at least that.

And what about me, you ask? Why thank you for asking – for now I’m going to stay where I am and wait until I have a job offer in hand before I move. Ideally, that’s the situation anyway. Hopefully it won’t take too long before I find a great new job!

Over It/Moving Update

So I decided I’m over it. The whole jealousy thing – I know he wasn’t being insensitive, I was just being too sensitive.

But if you must know, we had a huge fight about it. If I was sensitive about that comment, he was super sensitive about what I told him. It was pretty bad, but then we decided we were tired of fighting and both apologized to each other and now I’m over it.

In fact, I kind of wish I hadn’t even brought it up in the first place!

We did have an interesting conversation yesterday though about the potential move – he has a 2nd round interview- and this time in person- next week, and so was discussing me moving with him and all this stuff. I was like “Whoaaaa – hold your horses. I don’t plan on moving with you the moment you take off and leave – we haven’t even spent time there together; I literally can’t even visualize what life would be like there; and I’m in no way emotionally ready to go.” So he promised that we would go visit together in January, and he also said once he gets a job all the introductions will be made.

He did make one comment though as we discussed me staying behind initially, and that was “Well I hope you end up deciding to move!” Good. I need to instill some fear in him – there isn’t a ring on this finger so I am still gonna do what I want!

I just want to make sure I don’t resent him, and the best way I know to prevent that is to not move until I am 100% confident that this is what I want to do. I know I love him and I do think he’s The One, but I just need to do things on my time, too. And if I move before I’m ready to the worst-case scenario is that I’ll hate my life there and hate him for taking me away from my job, my family, and my friends.

Oops, long overdue update!

So we did talk that night, and it turns out he does have a plan – and the plan is for me to be introduced once he has a job and the move is really happening. Apparently he agrees with his ex-wife in that they don’t think there is any point in me being introduced until I will be spending a lot more time with her. Which, fine. I’m not 100% happy about that, but fine. I can deal with it.

Last night we had another conversation about the whole moving thing, because this past weekend while he was visiting his daughter, I was having a blast with my friends and the more fun I had, the more reluctant I was to move. I was even telling my friends I feel like the moment he leaves, I’m definitely staying behind, basically until as long as I can stand it. I need to be mentally and emotionally ready to move for me, and I don’t want to be yanked out my current life.

So, I couldn’t keep my big mouth shut and kind of brought this up last night. He was upset that the ONLY reason I’d be moving would be for him – but duh, I don’t know how he didn’t realize that before? And that’s partly why I have so much anxiety about it all? I’ve already told him how much I love living where we live now, and all the reasons – job, family, friends, ease of getting around, variety of things to do all within a 2 hour radius, etc.

I can’t help but feel a little selfish about it all – maybe it’s partly because I’ve never uprooted my life for anyone other than myself (except when I was a kid and my parents moved us out of the country), and maybe it’s partly because I feel like he hasn’t necessarily demonstrated how serious he is about me? I mean, we talk about the future and everything all the time, but up until he decides to move I still won’t have met his daughter, still won’t even have met the ex wife which is a means of getting to meet the daughter, nor will I have spent any real time in the area he wants to relocate to. How is that fair to me?

I’m still not 100% happy with any of it, and I know it’s a complicated situation, but still. He suggested maybe a way for me to be excited is to start applying for jobs there and if I get something good that could be exciting for me. I can see what he’s saying because I am very career-oriented and having a job I like is very important to me (especially as a way to make new friends if I do move), but the thought of updating my resume and putting it out there already wears me out – I hate job hunting even more than I hate moving. (But, ok – I did tell myself I would apply for jobs next year anyway since I really need a big raise, so I guess I could do it then regardless.)

I mean, when it comes down to it, I would move for him – I do love him very much. I just hope I’m not being a complete sucker by feeling this way, especially in light of the fact that I don’t think he’s really shown how serious he is about me (or am I taking it the wrong way???). And I also hope I don’t end up resenting him for taking me away from everything else I love so much here and that resentment then leads to the demise of our relationship and then I end up moving back up here anyway – that would be the worst case scenario. The best? We move, I take a huge leap of faith, I fall in love with his daughter and love her too, we get engaged and married and have our own babies too and live happily ever after. Which may not even be that far fetched!

The anxiety of not knowing just really freaks me out, if you can’t tell! Ack! Why isn’t there protocol for this kind of a situation? Somebody tell me how I should feel/think or what to do!

Thoughts on Moving

Moving in with someone in a big deal – I’ve only done it once before, and it was a huge mistake. I swore to myself I wouldn’t do it again until I at least had a ring on my finger. Moving in with someone and also moving for them is a whole other ballgame entirely.

Last night I had a slight moment of panic when the bf called me after Face Timing with his daughter and said he wanted to ask our VP if he could telecommute two days a week and just move first, and then work in our office 3 days a week and spend every other weekend with me. He said he could just stay at my place with me (if it was ok) while he was here.

1. I am not ready for a long distance relationship. I’ve had my share of those, and they are not fun.
2. My roommate gave me shit before when my sister crashed at our place, so I don’t think having the bf stay 3-5 days a week would work out with her, and I don’t want to cause tension.
3. – and this is a big one – we talked about his finances a lot yesterday and the day before, and he literally has 0 savings. The divorce wiped him out – he sold his car, his boat, cashed out the 401(k), everything. He isn’t currently saving at all – not in a 401(k), not in a savings account, nothing. This makes me really nervous, especially since I’ve taken a good long, hard look at my own finances lately and am actively saving for my emergency fund as well as paying off debts and other financial priorities. He has a few payments left on a couple things and will be done, but that money is going to go straight back into his trips to see his daughter.

He also told me that the only reason he is still here is because he’s in a relationship with me – that he would have moved already and just taken the first job that came his way even if it was a $30K pay cut, then take his time to find something that pays better down there. I don’t understand if he is barely making ends meet right now how he would have afforded to do that? Also, it makes me feel guilty for being the one keeping him away from his daughter! I’m sure that’s now how he meant it to come across, but that’s how it felt.

And these are my requirements for moving:

1. I need to have a relationship with his daughter. It’s not fair to me to uproot my entire life where I have a job I love, lots of family I love, great work life balance and a great apartment to move for him and his daughter only to discover that maybe she hates me. Maybe I decide I can’t be a stepmom. There are so many unknowns there that I need to have developed a good relationship with his daughter before I can even think about moving.
2. If I move without a job, he needs to make more money than he does now. Not even the same amount, but a good sized raise. This way he can afford to support me for a while as I job hunt. I spent 2013 job hunting for 10 monts and it was awful – too much pressure, too much stress. I can’t do that again.
3. We need to go visit together and scout out the areas he’d like to live. I’d want to see how walkable it is (I hate driving and would like to minimize the driving as much as possible), what there is to do, what the general vibe is.
4. I need for him to know that this moving, or moving in together, is not a “test run”. I need to know for sure there is commitment and he is not going to break up with me for something like us needing to compromise more than we thought when we live together. I’ve read those studies about how one of the biggest common factors in couples who end up divorced is that they lived together before marriage (because of the feeling that they can always break up if it doesn’t work out), and I don’t want that to be an issue. (Although when I think about it, he has only been in really long relationships – an 8 year relationship that ended after an engagement; the ex wife who he was with for about 4 years – so this probably isn’t a huge factor, but still something I worry about.)

Is that unreasonable? I started bringing up some of these things and he was like “Whoa whoa slow down” – but these are all practical logistics that I don’t think he’s even thought about. I need to have a more in-depth discussion with him about it – and not over the phone or text.

He is the love of my life and I do want to work it all out with him and I am willing to move with him, but I need these other things to happen first. It’s a big sacrifice on my part – when I moved to our city now, I thought I was done moving (except within the area) and was more than happy about it. I just don’t want to uproot my entire life for him and it not work out – we need the foundation and as many logistics as possible planned out. I’ve never moved for a guy before – in fact, I once used moving to another country as the excuse to break up with my then-boyfriend. Men were never my reason to do anything (maybe that’s partly why I’m still 30 and unmarried), and doing this for him is a huge step for me.