We moved here 8 years ago. We both made the decision to move here. If she would have said "no" when I asked about moving here for my career, I would have dropped it at that second. But, she said yes and there was no "twisting her arm"

So when teh discussion of moving originally came up, it was basically like this:
She wanted to move back to her family. (keep in mind, if I agreed back then to do this, we would be in the same situation we are now because her family has all since moved from where they lived and is now 3-4 hours away from that town)
I on the otherhand, with a young baby, solid job and positive looking future, did not want to move.

As far as I know, such a decision in a marraige should be an enthusiastic decision by both of us, and I could not enthusiastically agree to leave.

From there, I wished to work with her and figure out a way to fill the void she was missing. I suggested visiting her family more often, how we could make it happen, etc... but on that very first discussion we ever had about it, and ever since, she NEVER enthusiastically worked with me on a way to make her happy here.
Instead, she made me suffer and claimed that I was a poor father and husband.
She set out missions to get things she wanted, and if I wasnt enthusiastic about them she just fought me for them.

At the end of the day, we have everything we need here, and her family is involved. She just wishes they could be involved everyday. And Im sorry if I am wrong about this, please tell me if I am, but when we said "I DO", we both committed to builiding a family of our own.

she is 29, I am 30.

Lang - you're kiddin', right?

Your wife has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder (a very serious mental illness) and has told you that she fully intends to take your kids thousands of miles away and go live with Mommy.

She thinks this is reasonable and normal.

You are sitting here trying to figure out what you maybe might want to do and gee you really hope you're not being unreasonable cause that would be bad.

IF YOU EVER PLAN ON SEEING YOUR KIDS AGAIN, CALL A LAWYER RIGHT THIS MINUTE!!!

THIS WOMAN HAS BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH A MENTAL ILLNESS AND HAS TOLD YOU SHE FULLY INTENDS TO TAKE YOUR CHILDREN AWAY AND YOU ARE SITTING HERE DITHERING!!!

Sorry for shouting, but - crikey!
Mulan

Her life is with you and you children. I believe that with all my heart, but I am old.

My dad told both my brothers when they married to move away and build a family of their own where they would rely on each other as married couples and not their parents. He said couples need to rely emotionally on each other and this is hard to do when they never really leave home.

If she gets to visit her family a lot, I am having a hard time seeing the problem, but then she isn't here to ask.

Her life really is with you and the kids now though. And yes she vowed to make it so when she said "I do".

Lang, I don't understand where you’re coming from. Do you love your children? Are their best interests paramount to you? Do you want to be their full-time father?

What are your answers, pardner? You need to answer them honestly and forthrightly. If you do, without letting anything else enter your mind while considering the questions, the confusion you’re feeling will lessen and disappear.

You have complete anonymity out here. You can answer any way you want to. Tell us why you’re confused, okay? Bounce your confusion off the rest of us and don’t fear attribution.

This is so cut and dried. I can't believe there are any doubts from anyone.

She is mentally ill. Diagnosed mentally ill.

Do not let her take the children anywhere. Not even to the zoo!

I'll say it again: I sure hope you are documenting everything, every conversation.

This will all come up in the custody hearing.


And if she is just going to resent staying, then tell her (not in writing) she needs to go.


With prayers,

I love my children.
I Love my wife.
I am afraid to lose my wife.
I am afraid to take steps to prevent my wife from taking the kids because I am afraid all it will do is make her stay and make us all miserable.
I am afraid that fixing her bipolar and other problems may result in a new person who can be happy, but still is cold and incaring to me.

Im afraid of being successful in saving the marriage cause i can almost gaurantee I will hate her for everything shes done.

I want to be prepared for when I talk to her tonight, so ive added some things that i intend to say, please give me your opnions..

I am going to start the conversation by asking her not to respond to anything until i am done saying what I have to say.

I am then going to tell her that I love her and our children. Then I will tell her that at this point in time, my #1 priority our childrens and my own happiness.
I will tell her that I will concern myself of her happiness as soon as she committs to a life with me and our children, in this town, and also commits to seeking help (counselling)

I will then ask her for a response to the following questions:
1 - Am I a good father?
2 - Am I a good husband?
3 - do I provide stability for our family?
and finally,
4 - is that enough to make you want to work with me and do what it takes to find ways to be happy here?

She will answer yes to 1-3.
If she answers NO to number 4, I will then give her the below choices I had mentioned earlier.

#1 - Leave, but understand that if that is her choice I will stop exhausting myself with trying to make her happy and will instead focus 100% on myself and my children, which may very well result in a court order.

or
#2 - Stay, get counselling for herself, more counselling as a couple, and focus on getting her ilness(s) stabilized. (She also has Obsesiive Compulsive Disorder)

and then I would make it clear that staying under the assumption that she will be miserable is not an option..


and if she asks what i am going to do if she decides to leave, I will respond by telling her I intend to get a court order to keep the children here while I seek counselling on my own to help me figure out what is best for me and my kids.


am i missing anything? is it too much?

I am the biggest advocate for father's rights that you will ever find. But frankly, I think you are being a bit too controlling. It has to be there or no where for you. It seems as though any other discussion is off the table.

POJA would mean that you both enthusastically AGREE where to live... not that YOU get to decide that the staus quo is what happens since to change it you both would need to agree. That is an absolute manipulation of the POJA. You both should be willing to discuss changes that will result in harmony in your home. You seem to want to dictate where you are going to live and for how long. Just because she agreed to move there years ago does not mean that she needs to want to live their now.
Now all of this needs to be tempered by her illness. But I will tell you if that is addressed and she still wants to move... you should be willing to come up with a compromise.

How do I compromise with what she is asking for?

She is asking to move near her family, even if it means me taking a job I dont like, paycut, lose our home etc...

What if she is wrong? what if we move and she is still unhappy, look at what weve lost...

tell me how to compromise.

By the way, she told me 1 week ago that even if I tried my hardest to find a job where her mom lives, she said that if I couldnt, and it were simply impossible to move there, she would STILL leave.

What about the simple fact that she has not tried to be happy here?

Let me rephrase my question .

What if we cannot Enthusiastically agree where to live?
She wants to live in the town her mother does, but I assume somewhere in a 1-2 hour vacinity would be enough for her.

What if I dont want to move there? What if I dont want to take the risk?

Coorect me if i am wrong, but POJA is not acheivable in this situation. Simply because she will only "agree" to live there, and nowhere else.

Is it me be controlling, or is it her?

Like I said, the reasons i dont move there are the same reasons I dont move to the west coast. My job, the life weve built here with our children, and the simple fact that my wife cannot enthusiastically agree to live there.

okay...taking your w's mental status out of the picture for now (we both agree that needs to be addressed and anything we discuss here MUST factor that in). But your job, your income, your home, etc. are all secondary. Doing the things that make each other happy are what matters. What happens if you can't POJA this stuff... call the Harley's to mediate or try harder. Stop being stubborn and LOOK hard for a solution.
I am not saying...repeat NOT saying that your W is handling her end of this in the right way either... I am just saying that your way of thinking leaves NO room for compromise.
Your M has bigger problems than where you guys live though. It sounds like you both have a lot to learn about what is really important in life. Both of you. I will attribute some of that to your age... but you both could stand to mature a little bit here. Her threatening to leave and you being stubborn and putting career and home above family are both immature in my book.
So.. as I see it to answer your question... I think you are both trying to be controlling here and neither one of you is expressing an appropriate level of care for the other. \
MEDC

ETA...


Is this such a simple "fact" to her?

Has anyone ever told you that you are passive agressive?



look at your words... "my kids." They are BOTH of your children. Use the term MY KIDS to her and see where that gets you.

I will tell you that I find you entire post here to be manipulative... and I say that being on your side here. I do not want you to lose the children... but you have a HUGE attitude and control issue with your W. Why?

No it is not a simple fact to her, by any means.

She feels she has done everything to be happy here. But i completely disagree.

Ever since the beginning, she has never agreed to work together on figuring out how to make her happy here.
By that I mean, if she needs to see her family more, we make arrangements to do so, or if she wants the ability to have famiy around to watch our kids while we go out, we could look and work together on making that happen some other way, ie: find ourselves a good babysitter

And I am NOT taking career and home over her happiness. Infact that is what she thinks and it frustrates me immensly.

I am taking my happiness, my kids happinees, all of our stabilty, all weve buil.t here, I am taking that OVER her mission to live by her mom.

Tell me your honest opinion mk,
the one thing she will agree on is that she has a good husband who is a good father, a good home, stable family, etc.... AND she has plenty of contact with her family.

We see her family at xmas, thanksgiving, several other weeknds/weeks throughout the year, and I have offered to figure out away for her to see them even more.

But then she says that she wants to live there because she wants to be able to go rollerblading with her sister at any time, she says that if her mom is having a BBQ she hates the fact that she cant jump in the car and go over there, etc...

Now my point is, Lack of the ability to go rollerblading, go to BBQ's, and other things is NOT something that cannot be done with her family , me and our children.

And arranging for BBQ's on teh days she visits them would be easy.

Seriously, i understand happiness is more important than anything, i guess the real quest i have is, isnt she being unrealistic? are you sure in your mind that her wanting to uproot this family for those reasons is valid?

I dont mean to be rude mk, but please read my post more carefully.
In the first part I am discussing fixing the marraige, which is why I used the word "our children"

in the second situation, it is where my wife leaves, and at that point my concern is for me and my kids. im sure you can understand the reasoning for the use of the words, appropriate or not.


and why do you suggest I am passive aggressive?

I read the posts... and saw the changes in your words.... I pay a great deal of attention to detail.

no, Im not sure that it is... but I'm not sure that its not.
I happen to like her vision of family but that's just me.

im more confused than i was before. but thanks all of you, i have lots to think about.

Now wait a minute here. You cannot, under any circumstances, ignore your WW's bi-polar disorder. It's part of her, period. It's who she is.

Lang, I don't know why you're having these discussions with your wife. What purpose do they serve? You know she isn't going to agree to not move back to mommy, so why are you bothering trying to convince her? You're asking her to be completely logical and I'm not sure she CAN be.

Pardner, if you love your children, do NOT agree to let them move to a home dominated by an individual with bi-polar disorder. Second, do not let them move out of a home with a loving, caring father. Third, do not let your wife make the decision to rip your family apart when her decision may be influenced by the disorder from which she suffers.

Mister, you're going to have to face this head on. Quit dithering around. Frankly, I'd tell your wife SHE can move home if she wants, and the rest of the family will miss her but the children aren't going with her. Lang, love your wife, but understand she’s creating an intolerable situation for less than honest reasons and she is most emphatically NOT being as considerate of you as you are of her.

Man up, Lang! You’ll be sorry the rest of your life if you don’t start taking some strong, proactive measures…and soon.

I second that wait a minute.

What the hey is there to negotiate or POJA?

Don’t negotiate with her. She is too far out there.

This is like, it is exactly like, a WW leaving to move halfway across the country to be with OM and taking the children with her.

It’s a farce to negotiate with such an entitled sick in the head person.

I think MEDC is just arguing for the sake of arguing. Don’t argue this with him or your W.

You and your kids come first now. Your W has demonstrated she cannot be trusted nor can she be relied upon to put her children’s welfare and happiness anywhere near where it belongs.

She certainly cares nothing at all for your happiness! How do you POJA with someone like that, for crying out loud?


Don’t be confused. Prepare!