We moved five years ago to a smaller city. DH was very reluctant to move, we had lived in the last place for 35 years raising our children. We did move 3 times in that period, once to a bigger house, once an abortive move to the country which didn't work, once because we ran out of money and managed to lose the mortgage by moving.
The move to our current location was driven by me, I admit. The last of the children had left home, the house was 200yds from a major road and had a river at the back. We came within inches of flooding once and I was always nervous it would happen again.
We now live in one of a pair of semi detached cottages probably built in the 1950s. The garden is huge but steep and runs down to an A road which didn't seem so busy when we bought it but has now been named as the reason quite a few prospective buyers have turned it down.
The elderly man who lived next door has died and a young family have moved in with three primary school age children, we now know that the soundproofing between the houses is abysmal. I am being driven mad by the noise of the children in the house and garden and by the road itself. I can't sleep on the side of the house with the busy road if the windows are open. It's a fast road and much noisier than the one we used to live near!
DH reluctantly agreed to put the house on sale, we have had about 20 viewings with no success. We took it off the market over Christmas but he clearly has no intention of agreeing for it to be put on the market again if he can help it. He is going deaf so the noise doesn't bother him much and he is like that anyway, 'things don't bother him', whatever that means!
I was driven to write this by the roommate thread because the unsatisfactory nature of the house is driving me mad and the fact that he doesn't care how I feel is really upsetting me.
It hasn't been a very satisfactory marriage but perhaps I compromised because we had three children, I was working part time and he had a long commute to a job he loved. It's been hard to make friends here but I am beginning to get involved in a few things but really I want to move to the next county and start again in a better, definitely detached house. I have an activity and a group of people there that I'd like to get to know better.
I'm feeling really resentful of his attitude. He's always been rather passive and wrapped up in his interests. It's not as if he has made any real friends here although he has connected with some people through a class he used to go to.
We don't share any passions, we will watch tv together and we go for walks and talk in a general sort of way but we are another separate rooms/no sex couple. I suppose I'm lonely and unhappy and the only way I can see of progressing is to sell the house and separate. He's being difficult about that too. I wish it could be different but I feel trapped by his lazy acceptance of the house as being fine for him and I have to therefore put up with it. Does this sound like I am being over sensitive to noise? Unable to compromise? I don't see why I should stay somewhere I've come to really dislike, we should never have bought it and why we did is another story partly about our inability to agree on any house, partly the cost of the area. I can't see a way forward and just feel so depressed. Any thoughts?
