Dear Dáithí: My partner is ready to move home from Australia... I want to stay

At the weekend, my partner suggested we start looking at return flights and making a plan for moving back, but I've fallen in love with Sydney

'I've fallen in love with Sydney! I adore my partner and can see us spending the rest of our lives together, but I think I want that life to be in Australia and not Ireland.'

Dear Dáithí, 

My partner and I, like thousands of others, decided to head to Sydney last year and experience life in Australia.

We’ve been together for years and were on a path to buying a house and settling down to start a family.

Neither of us did much travelling in college, and both got jobs fairly soon after we finished and figured if we wanted an adventure, now was the time to do it. We got jobs pretty easily here and settled into a new way of life very quickly.

The Australians know how to do work-life balance well, and I found myself trying hobbies and activities I wouldn’t have tried in a million years back home.

We’ve made amazing friends from all over the world here. We’ll be here a year in a few weeks. At the weekend, my partner suggested we start looking at return flights and making a plan for moving back.

When we moved here, we were very lucky that both our employers said our jobs would be there for us when we got back. He’s ready to start the next chapter and begin looking at where our forever home might be. 

The only problem is, I’ve fallen in love with Sydney! I adore my partner and can see us spending the rest of our lives together, but I think I want that life to be in Australia and not Ireland. 

I’ve broached the idea of staying on here longer, and possibly long-term, but my partner is adamant he wants to settle down near our families before we move on with our lives and start our own family.

I’m worried that if I move home, I’ll end up resenting him for making us move back, but I also don’t want to stay here without him or risk losing him.

Any advice?

You got to do thing I never did. I, like you, went straight into work after college and stayed in the job and was happy with the way things were going.

The idea of traveling or moving away for a year never really came into my mind, until lately. So, in one sense I am a little jealous of you, and what has happened to you might have happened to me too if I had moved.

Anytime, when I’m away in a different country, I always ask myself if I could settle down there for a while.

It does seem you have settled in really well and have finally gotten the work-life balance we all seek to nail down.

When you get into that way in life, it can be very hard to let go of it, and that is definitely playing its part here. It is amazing that you do try new things when you’re away and, as you said, you wouldn’t ever even think of it at home. 

Because all of this, your decision is much harder and I think you will regret it if you do come home before you are ready — that’s if you ever will be.

In my opinion, you need to have all of this out of your system; otherwise, it’s going to follow you around, and that only worsens over time.

I’d love to know if your partner is having as much fun as you?

And it is strange that the conversation about staying longer didn’t come up before he started talking about booking flights home. I wonder if he was dodging the subject altogether? Either way, there is no dodging anything now because this has to be sorted, and you have a lot of thinking to do.

One thing that jumped off the page to me was, you have fallen in love with Sydney, and you adore your partner, and yes, you do see yourself spending the rest of your life with him. It does sound like you love the place and your new life more than him. I feel that if you both stayed in Sydney, that this would be all great.

So, you really need to have a chat about what you want and how you are feeling about your new home, and before you do that, you yourself need to know what you want for certain. There is no half-baked cake here. If you want to stay in Sydney more than anything else, then that’s what you say. There might even be an ultimatum at the end of all of this, and be ready for that too; you need to have that answer worked out.

If he is hell-bent on coming here, and it sounds like he is, you might have to strike a deal that will keep you both together. You have said you don’t want to lose him or be there without him.

Have a chat about staying one or two more years and say, look, I’ll be ready to come home then; we can buy a house and settle down, and if he is not ready to compromise, then you have a problem. There are two of you in this.

Yes, your partner wants to live near his family — that’s fine, but why does it have to be this year or next year? If you’re giving up all of this, then he needs to change his plans or else he might find himself with a whole new set!

Another thing to think about if you do come home, is whether it's a good plan to go back to your old job? If you are carrying that love for Sydney around with you, that old job will remind you of all the reasons you went away in the first place.

First, it will be the job bothering you, then the weather, and even when Home and Away comes on you might just burst out crying.

This conversation will tell a lot about the relationship and the person who’s in it with you; probably the biggest chat yet and you really need to be ready.

You don’t want to come out of it short changed! You have painted such a nice life picture in Sydney; I can almost feel the sun coming through your letter, and I understand how hard this is on you. This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal, and most importantly, you need to be happy. You have only one life, and this is no dress rehearsal!