Moving away from family to start a family?
My wife and I live in Raleigh (RDU area)
She is from up north in New Jersey (Clifton) and is used to having access to NYC and all that comes with a more suburban life.
I am from South FL, I ran away from there due to the politics that no longer worked for me.
The research triangle was a safe move for me. It felt like a transient decision at the time though.
My wife's parents made the move due to the rising cost of living. It was extremely hard for them. They are Puerto Rican and left a huge family when they moved.
My immediate family lives in Hagerstown Maryland which feels like the middle of no where for us.
We are in our early 30s and feel trapped honestly.
We can't afford NJ or Manchester NY area. Which is the only decent move for us that would keep us close to family.
Every other decision takes are far from family..
Which is why we feel trapped. Because we want to start a family in a couple years, but particularly my wife can't envision having kids in the south.
I feel similarly. It's a nice place, but not really what we want. I know she misses more diversity, and having a big urban city to explore.
We both like the idea of being less car dependent as well.
We just visited Chicago and kind of fell in love.
But I went to a subreddit for people who are looking for move and got bombarded with people saying we would regret moving away from my in-laws. That it would be an awful decision.
Well, for context. I have been here for 5 years and have had a hard time connecting with people. I have friends but I don't feel like I'm leaving an entire community behind. It's more about my in laws.
Which we feel stuck here due to that. And it's because we care about them and also because we know childcare is insane.
But again, this leads us to feel trapped.
And I don't particularly enjoy the idea of going through all the logistics to move for a couple years to just come back.
So I'm sharing because I wonder if anyone has advice on this. I wonder if anyone else made the move away from family and if they regretting things or not.
We would definitely wait to start a family and Chicago is not our only option. Like maybe 2 years after moving.
But man the idea of no family around for that is a hard choice! I don't know what is right for us. I fear staying put would slowly suck our souls though.
But we have never been parents, and I fear we will regret having no family nearby when we start our family. At the same time we feel trapped in a State we can't envision ourselves truly settling down in.