I (F29) have been married to my husband (M31) for 3 years, for the past 1.5 years we’ve lived in Australia, which is where my husband grew up and his parents are. I am from Europe, where we originally met 7 years ago.
For the first 1.5 year of our married life we lived in the Middle East, then due to DH’s work opportunities moved to Australia. As we wanted to eventually buy a home, we moved in with my in laws (who are kindly letting us stay with no requirement to pay rent etc) to help save money, obviously with rising interest rates and property prices this is getting harder. I want to make it clear that my in laws are lovely people and have always been nice to me, however it is still difficult to move in with a new family, as every family had their own dynamic and routine. We eat dinners at home together at least 70/80% of the time, we go out for family dinners fairly regularly and spend time with his extended family fairly regularly too (every 4-6 weeks).
Another job opportunity has come up for my DH to actually move back to the Middle East and I am very on board with this move, firstly it will allow us to be in the middle and visit both sets of families fairly easily, secondly I cannot see us purchasing a property in the near future and DH is not keen on renting and eating in to our savings.
The move wouldn’t be for another 5-6 months, my DH mentioned both of us finishing up work here a month prior to moving so we could travel for 2-3 weeks prior to moving over and he mentioned it would be nice to go away with his parents. My initial thought was we’d go somewhere domestic with his parents for a week, or even international for 7-10 days and then another 7-10 days just us as a couple, but when I mentioned this he seemed offended I didn’t want to spend the whole holiday with his parents.
My thought process was that I’ve just been living with them for 1.5 years (potentially 2 years by then), I see them every day and would like for us to go away and spend time together and make memories as a couple, whereas he thinks if we’re moving abroad we should be going away with his parents and spending as much time together as possible, as it will be just us living together in the Middle East anyway. How can I manage this expectation? A part of me is tempted to say my work place would like me to work right up until the move so I can avoid the holiday altogether.