Family or Self
Date Posted: December 21st, 2009
An excerpt from Refrigerator Rights of a woman who wrote to the authors:
My husband and I have made three vacation trips to San Diego in the past year. We fell in love with the area the first trip and spent the next two trips scouting out the “small towns” surrounding San Diego trying to find just the right spot. Our third trip we attended our San Diego friend’s wedding and met many locals who were friendly and actually invited us to dinner while we were in town. I have no problem making friends, and although we weill be leaving our friends here, I am positive we will make new friends in California.
Some of our Illinois friends and mostly our family have chastised us for our future plans to relocate. Protests range from … “It’s so expensive out there,” “Aren’t you afraid of earthquakes, you can’t get insurance, you know,” “How can you leave your job and start over?” My husband’s out-of-state sisters advised us to “wait until Mom is gone before you leave her here alone in Illinois.” My mother, who is so emotionally dependent on me, just cries every time I try to put “replacement me” people into place to help her. Both of my siblings live out of state also and have not spoken to our mother for more than a year. We continue to put our ducks in a row to complete this move, but emotionally we are both being drained.
Reading this excerpt really pushed my buttons, especially the bit in bold. I understand we don’t have the full story here, but what nerve those sisters have to tell their brother to stay put. If they really cared about their mother they’d move back home to help! I’m not really sure what to think of the rest. The reasons they give the couple to stay behind are really besides the point. There’s lots of reasons to move from Illinois too!
Should they leave? Should they stay? I’d say it depends on the resentment factor. If staying in Illinois would make the couple feel resentful then they should leave. Martyrdom is not a good place to be. It also sounds like their Illinois people don’t really have the couple’s best interest at heart. (The book all but says otherwise… but the book is very weird.) If they did they’d try to be helpful and set up systems to keep the relationship alive and well. Maybe they’d consider moving to San Diego too. Maybe they’d give them a copy of the book. Maybe try to find out what it is about San Diego that draws them there. Maybe Illinois also has it. There are lots of options. Guilting someone into staying behind, though, while it might work, is a really bad thing. It poisons the relationship. If you want someone to resent you, guilt them into curbing their desires. That’ll make it happen right quick.
I got lucky. Ann Arbor is a place I genuinely want to live and it’s close to my family. I’ve had experience living out of state too. I lived in Austin, TX for 8 months, and while it had its perks it was missing some important things like… fall. 
Another place I considered moving to was Asheville, NC, but in all seriousness it was a lot like Ann Arbor except it had mountains. Might as well stay in Ann Arbor. After thinking about it some more, I realized that the only places I’d really want to move to are Canada and Europe, since the culture would actually be different, there’d be national healthcare, and in the case of Europe, history would be all around me. But I don’t feel really compelled to leave Ann Arbor, right now, so why should I? I suppose that’s the ideal situation. Find a city near your family that actually fits your personality. Then you satisfy yourself and your family.
What do you think?
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