Posted on 05/23/2021 11:12:28 PM PDT by wac3rd
Sorry about the vanity, but here goes....my wife and I sold our Bay Area home and bought a nice place in suburban Boise. Our kids were in school, limited masks and life was about 80% of normal vs. 20% in California.
Fast forward to May. My wife hates it here. She is conservative but said she would pay the high taxes, property taxes and cost of living to avoid the culture here. She thinks that our school-aged kids will not be able to prosper if they stay here in Idaho. No exposure to worldly things, more blue collar, less sophistication, etc.
I miss our friends in CA, but can work here and make the same money, so can she.
I do not want to go, I think it's going to be a drought/fire/BLM summer and as soon as a new strain of COVID hits, lockdowns and more.
I am at an impasse. I could stay (she offered it) but lose my family, or go and just deal with the insanity.
I am going to move back because my family comes first but am extremely aggravated and sad to leave a place where they value God, the USA and freedom.
Sorry to vent. We have 7 years until the little one graduates HS, so I will hold out until then.
Anyway, anyone else heard of a blue state exodus who does a U-turn in 9 months?
My youngest son arrived in 8th grade. He had an IEP in San Diego. Idaho dropped the ball on that. In time, he dropped out of school. He regrets that decision, but refuses to make any effort to improve even given the resources to do so. The schools in San Diego were not good, but Idaho was not an improvement. My oldest son was admitted to Idaho State University to pursue a degree in Geology. He died May 12, 2012. Age 32. A poor choice of antibiotics for a person with 4 open heart surgeries, 2 artificial valves, a pacemaker and ongoing need for Coumadin. #2 son returned from his USMC tour in Iraq. He has earned degrees in Business Admin and Physics and scratches out a living as a real estate broker.
Idaho culture doesn't fit everyone. Boise was too "big city" and California-like for my tastes. I chose the southeast area for big houses and access to national parks. Low population density and little traffic.
This is what jumped out to me as well. Take care of this #1. Move to a more red part of CA and forget about that argument. Your marriage needs immediate attention. Drop everything else and focus on that. Get counseling and speak with your priest/pastor.
Ending a marriage should only ever happen in extreme cases like serious abuse, unrepentant infidelity, and discovery that the marriage was under false pretenses. Otherwise, every possible effort should be made to salvage this sacred bond. Forget Idaho. Forget the move. Focus on that marriage!
“She is conservative”
Eventually they get tired of pretending
Is it really putting your family first by letting her make the call?
Will it cause her to lose respect for you, will it be the last chance you had to avoid being cowed into obeying for your rest of your days?
Is that really in your kids interest, or she is rationalizing what she wants using them to force and justify it.
If I look at an election map of California, I see a lot of red areas. Would one of those perhaps serve as a compromise? She gets California, but you get out of the San Francisco awfulness?
I worked in SF, Oakland, Walnut Creek and covered 90% of CA for the last 20 years for my work. Central Valley, IE, Redding/Shasta, Sacramento, Solano County, Tahoe, San Diego, LA, OC....I know the state, I know the people and most of it is a 3rd World cesspool, and not getting better.
I loathe Gavin, Feinstein, Pelosi, Schiff, etc.
It just makes me mad.
Oh my...I misread it. So sorry
Raising children in CA insanity is child neglect/abuse IMHO. It is impossible to be sane enough to flee CA, yet insane enough to return. Insane all along is the only explanation.
Story of when a p-whooped man is hands ultimate family authority to a woman wearing your pants. /s
I seem to recall a similar story from the bible, something about looking back and turning into a pillar of salt.
So your wife doesn't value God, the USA and freedom, wants to take the kids back to a place that doesn't value God, the USA and freedom and you're okay with that?
You also didn't mention if she came along reluctantly in the first place. Did she move to Idaho because her family came first?
While I appreciate you moral compass in wanting to keep the family whole, from experience I can tell you the next 7 years will probably be hell. Good Luck.
You’d better figure out which state will serve you better during the divorce.
“Small Town” is a very subjective word. Boise has well over 200,000 people and is one of the more metropolitan cities in the state.
I grew up out there, off Reliez Valley Rd, and it's a beautiful area. It was also conservative when I lived there. It's still beautiful, but filled with a lot of leftists. I'd hate to see what this 9 month vacation is gonna cost ya.
I can't comment on your specific relationship, but in general I'd say this isn't about the kids. SHE wants to go back to CA. Don't assume that in 7 years, she will be ready to leave again.
I can understand your wife’s feelings. My first job after grad school was in San Jose and I ended up spending 12 years there before moving back to the Midwest about 9 years ago. The first few years back were rough as I was constantly nostalgic for my time there. If not for my wife and kids I might have succumbed to the temptation to go back.
I have a love/hate with Cali. I love the mountains, ocean, weather, the redwoods on one side and the chaparral on the other and so much beautiful variety in nature within just a few hours drive. I enjoyed the intellectual engagement I had at work and the openness to new ideas and trying new things, the wide variety of cultures mixing from around the world is exciting and so many options for good food. I had a wonderful church community that was very conservative, in part because we all ran from the liberal parishes that were the norm.
I traded that for a small town in the Midwest where people are very practical and don’t get interested in new ideas easily, they tend to be very insular and parochial. The weather is too cold in the winter and too humid in the summer, and too unpredictable to make any outdoor plans beyond the next couple days. I can drive for hours in any direction and the scenery won’t change much, just go from slightly more hilly with trees to flatter and few trees. I don’t particularly like my coworkers but even if I wanted to go out to lunch with them, none of the restaurants are very good or exciting. The local parishes were lukewarm and there weren’t many choices with such a relatively small Catholic community in the area.
On the other hand I have learned to accept these things because it is better here, much better for my wife and kids. The world is taking an exponentially faster journey into insanity in recent years, with California as an epicenter. Many California friends have fled the state so I wouldn’t even have that circle to return to. Here I have given my family a large home with several acres to roam so that my younger kids have grown up in a radically different environment than the older kids. We are setting up a homestead with chickens, goats, rabbits and just started beekeeping. I have taken up woodworking with tools I never would have had space for in Cali. Those practical, insular locals don’t have any time for the insanity running rampant in the world right now. God has provided for our spiritual needs by building around us a community of families and clergy that are increasingly traditional. And of course the last year as our lives were only marginally changed by COVID, those left in California were living under terror of the virus and draconian restrictions on freedom that made me so thankful that we aren’t there now.
Your wife needs to give it more time. I think she is also projecting her dissatisfaction adjusting to the new place on the kids. They don’t need that stuff she thinks they are missing out on and are in a healthier environment. In the end California is no longer what she remembers it being, the last year has changed it. The natural beauty is obviously still there but the culture is irreversibly changed by current evens in a bad way.
I have a male partner for 13 years, and he is born and bred Southern Californian from growing up in the 60's.
He is what I would call a "passive liberal" like your wife. He is s conservative on economic issues, but is very liberal on abortion and hates gun rights.
I do my best to convince him on the arguements, but to him it is all superficial, it is all about how one looks and what not one says.
I've had some success, he voted for Trump in 16 and Cruz in 18.
He really loathed Beto.
He does not like voting, for if he votes he will get jury duty. I vote for very important votes and issues.
I know I put myself on a limb, we both just want to live in peace, and both agree that the term "marriage" is between a man and a woman.
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