We did not have any discussions about where we would live. DH was staying at his dad's house until he could get a permit to allow him to stay in his under-construction home. His marital home was already paid for. I was not in an apartment lease. I was not a homeowner or renter. The home we live in now was the second home of DH and XW. It was under construction at the time of DH's filing for divorce. DH and I did not date prior to him filing for divorce, but we did know eachother on an acquaintence level.  XW wanted this new home, of course. But the judge awarded it to DH because DH had built it by hand. That was the only thing the judge really gave DH in the whole divorce. The judge ate up the nonsense narrative of older man leaving wife for younger woman. XW earned a lot weaving that tale. 

The age difference is 15 years. DH is nearing 50. I'm 35. I feel really bad sometimes about asking DH to move because I know those connections in a small town take years to form. DH also really appreciates his church. DH not wanting to move is a decision he can't find a way to change his mind about. I feel bad for him. I wish I could be happy in this town. But I have failed many times, I feel like. Maybe I haven't. Maybe people like me. Maybe I just have bad luck running into the crappy people at the local grocery store. haha I don't know. DH is hoping to work another 10 years. 

The one hope that DH and I share is that I can go live abroad somewhere cheap and safe with the kids for 3 to six months out of the year. We are thinking costa rica. DH can spend a month with us when we first arrive in that country, and he can spend a month with us before we travel home. The kids and I could spend a couple months down there in between. This would keep me from traveling solo internationally with small children. DH really really likes this idea. Like most older people, or really anyone, he likes the idea of spending time at the beach in warm weather during winter in the US.

DS5 wants to be a zookeeper someday. Since I was already planning on homeschooling, or at least supplementing with a curriculum with DS5 and DD18months, we could commit to this travel schedule. DS5 could have incredibly special experiences with sea turtles and conservation from a very young age. He could be fluent in another language with ease. I could have an identity all to myself, in a town that sees me first before DH. It just might be the cure to all this nonsense. 

But like any parent who choosing homeschooling, I worry that I may be making a decision that affects my children's social lives. I certainly don't want them to miss their friends back home, or have a hard time making friends because no one really knows who they are in our current small town. Sports would be the answer there. But there are tricky laws about sports for homeschool kids as the kids get to a more competitive age, like middleschool and highschool. Some schools won't let them play. My other hesitation is that if I choose to homeschool my children, I will never have time to pursue a 9-5 or 4 10s kind of career. I'll be a housewife all my life, allbeit a traveling housewife with really cool photoalbums. 

Thank you for you reply and the hug! I'm going to get through this!

16 years? Wow. I'm sorry. I am amazed that my kids have not eaten any insulation so far. Part of my exhaustion is having to keep them safe amid a house always under construction. I ran a daycare and voluntarily closed it down when I knew heavy interior work was on the horizon. Also, heavy machinery to put in a driveway is not ideal for afternoon outdoor time with toddlers. LOL Lots of tears. Imagine me trying to calculate how long we can be outside before the heavy machinery starts up and scares the babies. 

I also have a door that has rotted out. It's so bizarre. Sort of a good metaphore for my psyche though! Some parts are new and fresh. Others are rotting away before my eyes. LOL This home was designed to XW's need to be what she isn't, someone with culture and taste. It is much to big for my taste, trying to hard to keep up with trends. I would be happy with a 1960s ranch, a small backyard, and less debt.

Our thing is the rentals. Our home always is shoved to the backburner so rentals can be built or improved to bring in more money. I understand that it is a sound financial decision to focus on the rentals. But it is just really sad how long it has taken. DH says things will be different in the spring. 

DH actually got a bunch of unfinished projects done today because I threw a fit about them yesterday. And his crew is out with COVID, so there is time to burn til they are in better health.
 

I grew up in a run down, old house. But it never bothered me because I knew it had to be that way. There wasn't the money to fix it up. 

LOL That's true. I pretty much did go from one fire to another. I think I was my own fire, too. But I did not start their fires! LOL

I talked with my dad today and tattled on myself about my yelling and getting angry with DH. My dad was so cool about it. He told me there was no excuse and to cut out the yelling and getting angry. But he was also so wise. He told me that I need to make a choice to either move away or stay. He said it isn't enough to just "not get mad." I need to be happy. He put up with many years of a foul marriage with my mother. She was awful to him. And I think he is just happy to have some wisdom to share with me.

He said the kids, **my kids** would adjust to whatever. He said, "Wherever you are happy, your kids will be happiest."

I got hit with the double difficulty of being swallowed up by DH's identity, and then spun around by the stressors of being a first time mom. It's easy to get lost in your new identity as a mom. I want to say that I forgive myself for the slide into sourness. I really can handle this. I just need to remember there are plenty of other people working through the same stuff. But the choice still must be made. Stay or go. This small town or the next? I've got to choose. Wisdom is doing the same thing that you want to do, instead of wanting to do something and doing something else. I think that's what the stoics taught.

I need to sign up for some counseling. But honestly, whenever DH and I have visited a counselor about how awful the skids have treated me, the counselors have been way off mark. I remember one counselor was so hopeful that I would be the one to "really be there for SD because both of her parents seemed to be selfishly checked out of her life." I thought, this lady is crazy. I already tried that and I got thrown in the mud for it! Maybe an online therapist. I see that advertised a lot. 

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate it so much.

The similarities of petty, crappy people prove how boring life can get with those people. My DH's XW interrogated my Xbf's mother at her young grandson's halloween party this last year. Apparently for the entire duration of the party. What a LOSER. DH's XW asked all sorts of questions about who I was as a person, where I was working, what I was like in school. All sorts of nonsense.  I found out about it from my Xbf. How embarrassing for DH's XW. Not me!  How did this even happen when everyone lives in a different county? Turns out, DH's XW's new man works with my Xbf's sister's husband. Geez, that was a long sentence to type. LOL 

These people are so utterly forgettable. At least in my experience.

Also, another similarity in our stories...SD announced one day that she did not want to live with DH and I anymore because she didn't want to "listen to that baby cry" anymore. DS was a newborn. What did she expect? I get that it was a challenging time, but just say you don't want to live with ME anymore. LOL SS17 at the time even called up DH and gave him a "talking to" about how DH had been neglecting SD by not waking up with her for school and making her french toast for breakfast. DH had a call from XW after the birth of DS. XW chewed DH out for "not feeding her children." DH had just had a baby with me. He gave the skids who were 17 and 12 or 13 at the time money for fast food after he drove them all the way back home from the hospital. DH, in the throes of sleep deprivation, had forgotten to stop and get skids food. They live near fast food and SS24 could drive at the time. But XW did not let him drive to the hospital to visit new baby brother because of "insurance" on the car. Nonsense. I remember all this crap. I work hard to forget, but also to remember so that I can remember what they all are capable of. None of the details are worth sharing with anyone except fellow StepTalk people who just get it, who understand the nonsense that transpires often.

I have been doing some dialectic behavior therapy, just at home on my own. It focuses on seeing the gray instead of black and white thinking. It also aids in being happy in general. 

I've spent the last few weeks, maybe even one full month, of being as happy as possible. I've ignored negative thoughts about my town and my place in this town. I've focused on rewarding hobbies and in the day-to-day enjoyment of raising my young children. 

But yesterday, my DH chose to have lunch with the husband of a woman who recently gossiped about me to SS24 at a local bar. The woman was upset with me because I deleted her on social media after she attacked me for remarking how lonely I have been lately. She took offense to my lonliness because, "she barely gets to see her own husband, and so of course she doesn't have time for friends. That's just how adult friendships work. Get over it." I found her reply to be awful. So I apologized to her for hurting her feelings through text, blocked her on FB, and then endured her wrath for blocking her on social media. To me, social media is a privilege. I only had about 65 friends, and I made the post visible to only about 15 of those friends. As part of her wrath, she went to a local bar and showed DH's son a screenshot of my post. Mind you, my post was only up for 10 minutes. When I realized it had hurt her feelings, I took it down. SS then continued the gossip about me with anyone in DH's family who would listen. Embarrassing.

Since then, I have deleted my FB completely and now feel better about greater privacy. I'm not the type to post things that are sad, but I really wanted to reach out and see if anyone was listening. It was the first time in years I had posted something sad. I was right. Several of my friends from High School chimed in with supportive statements. It was an example of how good social media can be.

So back to DH. DH had lunch with this angered and gossipy woman's husband. (Did I mention that I babysat this woman's children for nearly two years? I did a lot for this couple so that they could succeed.) The behavior of her gossiping was never brought up, not even in the slightest and most gentle way of letting her husband know it caused a lot of grief in our home around the holidays. Instead, DH sat through the lunch and jovialy gave business advice to the woman's husband. I felt very betrayed when I found out. How can you sit there and be so friendly to people who basically threw me away after no longer needing me?? DH feels bewildered by my hurt feelings because, to him, I don't even want to have a friendship with that woman, so why does it matter if a recognition of her behavior is admitted? I feel like DH has no backbone, and simply does not care. If there is an advantage to be had business wise, then he will forget all harsh treatment to me. 

Bottomline is this: DH is not a bad person, a bad father or really anything bad. He has different values than me. I value privacy, honesty, my children and the culture I create for them in our home. DH values money, enterprise, stability, being fair even if it means being without any loyalties. DH will never move away from this town. No matter how much pain it brings me, he will never move away. He has offered to move the children and I away and come visit us. He has offered to do everything he can financially to move us abroad, even, so that we can live in what amounts to a tropical paradise.  But he won't be there with us. I'd essentially be on my own for half the year. Further, DH makes all the valid excuses in the world. His business is based here. His friends are here. His rental property is here. He has been here for 30 years. To all of those details, all I hear is, sorry, hunny, you're not important enough. You're important enough to be squeezed into my existing life, to be bragged about as a younger wife, to be arm candy, to be an addition, but not to be honored with a new life somewhere fresh. How awful a feeling, because then every new upgrade to our home, every new social interaction is a testament to me being valued only as an additional feature to his life, not as a focus. I can be certain that if there is ever an incidence at school with the kids where I need DH to back me up on something, DH won't. He will fence sit. That's who he is at his core. A fence sitter. 

My kids, especially DS(5), do not want to live away from their father. They love them and he is good to them. So I find myself trapped. Again. Miserable. Hiding my misery with crafts and pursuits in art.  I have one more year of being home with DD before I put her in preK. Then I will go to work. I know my world will get significantly more satisfying and bigger when I am able to be away from home. You might wonder, why not go get a job and get out of the house now? Well, I have chosen to be a SAHM for the kids until my youngest goes to PreK. I have worked in the local daycares, and with the staff turnover, I don't feel comfortable sending my kids to daycare. So I continue to suffer, at my own choice and because of my chosen values. I guess that's just life. 

But man, it sure is disappointing to have a husband who reveres his social place in a town, his business, and his home more than he reveres his relationship with his wife. I could have done so much better. My only payback for this ill treatment is that I refuse to sing with my DH. He loves the way I sing and he desperately wants to play guitar with me while I sing. Just in our living room. No. I don't think I will even let him hear me sing anymore. I'll sing in the car away from him, that's it. And when he asks, I'll just put it plainly. You won't build a fresh life with me, why should I sing for you? Sounds petty, but my life is pretty small right now. I don't have much power.