I didn’t say you should take any risk or that particular risk. I said “refusing to take a risk” can be a mistake. Some people are so worried about the possible consequences of making a mistake that they never do anything.
Why fall in love? I might get my heart broken.
Why take a new job? I might end up getting fired.
Why go to school? I might fail.
Why try Thai food? I might not like it.
You have to be willing to take some risks and recognize you might make some mistakes in order to go anywhere.
Absolutely true. But given that this thread was prompted by the OP taking a, quite frankly, stupid risk, and having it end badly because the guy was a douche, perhaps it would be a good idea to be more specific as to exactly what kind of risk-taking you’re encouraging.
This is ludicrous reasoning. I could potentially be losing a chance to win millions of dollars by putting all of our savings into powerball tickets. That doesn’t mean I’m “making a mistake” not to do it. That’s not how risk/reward works. Not gaining something is not losing something.
That’s kind of what I’m thinking, too - sure, you have to take a risk or two once in a while to get on with your life, but there are risks and there are risks, and when you have a kid, you need to carefully evaluate risks and decide which ones are worth taking and are going to benefit your child. Maybe growing up in New York City would be a great benefit to the child, but more likely he can grow up just fine where he was. Maybe the ex would have made a great father to the child, but he could have made a great father in the home state, too. I would say this risk was only to benefit mom, not her child, and therefore a bad risk.
I dated my son’s father for 5 years and the pregnancy wasn’t planned. I had reproductive problems before (4 miscarriages) and when I found out I was pregnant I wanted to keep my son. His father had other plans. Stayed away until my son turned two and the court ordered him (finally!) to pay child support, then he decided he was ready. He lives about 10 hours away from us so only sees his son once a month and a month in the summer. He was fine with us moving, thought it would be a good opportunity for me (job-wise) and for my son to get to see NYC and all that it has to offer.
We did have a great time while we were there, and my son still talks about the Statue of Liberty, the subway, and taxi cabs.
Moving to New York with a kid is not the equivalent of joining the French Foreign Legion or trying to fly to Mars in a homemade rocketship. Plenty of people live happily and raise children in New York City. I’m sorry it didn’t work out for the OP but it’s not like she was taking some crazy risk.
Feel free to ignore if you want, I’m just being nosy because I don’t quite get how this all played out and I like details:
How old is your son?
Did you tell your son that you guys were going to live in NY, or that it was just a vacation?
If you’re working, wasn’t there a little bit of a “to-do” saying goodbye to his daycare?
Was there a big thing with your family/friends saying goodbye to you both?
Did the daycare have space for him when you returned or did you have to find a new one?
If you’re working, did you resign from your job or is it possible to telecommute from NY?
If you did resign, were you able to go back or are you now looking for a new job?
If you were working, and now aren’t, is your ex’s support obligation going up? (not advocating that you file for an adjustment, just asking) Are you collecting unemployment now?
Did you have to break a lease to move, or did you move when you did because your lease was ending then?
Did you move all of your stuff to NY and then back, or was everything in storage “at home”?
Did you have any job leads in NY and any leads on good childcare/schools?
Did you have savings to support you and your son in NY until you found work?
Yeah, and she can always get a job in a diner with a gruff but lovable chef and his two waitresses, one functionally retarded and the other a beehived slattern with a corn-porridge fetish.
Except that it’s pretty clear that the only reason she was in NYC was for the douchebag. She *moved back *when they broke up. That indicates that she didn’t have a good job/housing/support structure in place in that city. So, yes, if she was going to have to truck 1500 miles back again if things didn’t work out, it *was *a pretty terrible idea.
Everyone, including the OP, has acknowledged that this particular situation didn’t work out. But I don’t see how you feel it was such an obviously bad idea. Do you feel that the majority of people that move across country are doomed to fail? Or that most relationships that go from mostly online to the real world are going to fail?
LDRs are hard. I know this because I’m* in one *right now–my boyfriend is 800 miles away, and we fly back and forth every few weekends (he’ll be here for two whole weeks over Christmas and New Year’s, though, hoorah!). And it’s a sort-of-not-exactly internet thing, because we originally connected about a decade ago because we posted on the same forum, but his parents live in a suburb of my city and he went to high school here, so we first met in person probably eight years ago, and since then we’ve been a part of the same close-knit clique of people that’s traveled through a few different sites together. (Several groups of us also live near each other and see each other not infrequently, and we try to get at least one big group shindig per year.)
I do not think that all LDRs or all internet-based relationships are doomed to fail. I do, however, recognize that they’re *much harder *than relationships with someone who lives close to you, and that if you don’t know the person well before you start them, it’s also very hard to learn about them and grow your relationship from a distance, simply because you’re physically close to each other so infrequently. And that changes a lot of the relationship. I do know people who’ve met online and made it work after moving cross-country to live with each other; I also know of many, many more online relationships that fell apart as soon as the people involved had to deal with the physical reality of the person rather than just words on a screen or a voice on a phone.
I also am very suspicious of any relationship where one or both people are making major decisions after only a short period of time. Five months is not really enough time to get to know someone; and that problem is multiplied by the distance involved. Relationships progress much more slowly in terms of their ability to deepen and develop when there’s distance involved. That’s just how it is–talking to someone frequently is *not *the same thing as being physically around them all the time.
Again, it was not an obviously bad idea because it happened to fail: it was an obviously bad idea because the potential consequences for failure were much worse than if she’d just stayed where she was until the relationship had some more time under its belt. Waiting longer to make such a major move could not have had negative consequences; moving too early clearly did.
My son is 3 years old.
I didn’t tell him we were moving to NYC, I just told him we were going there to see Douchebag (of course at the time, this wasn’t his name and I never call him that to my son now, we don’t really talk about him anymore)
It was my last semester of grad school this past spring, I was staying home with my son, so he wasn’t in child care. I have a Master’s degree in Education. I came back in time to find a job in my current state.
My lease was up when I moved.
I left most of my belongings in storage, but unfortunately I sold my car.
I had some interviews in NYC, but they hire for the school year later there because school starts later, so I was doing some private tutoring.
The *douchebag’s" schedule made it possible for him to stay home with my son during the day (which was his idea, and he seemed excited about that) so I wasn’t really looking for childcare while we were there.
I did have savings, plus the money from selling things I didn’t think I was going to need/want in a small NY apartment.
Agreed. I am not the feeling the “OMG, only five months?!” outrage. The OP knew the guy on an acquaintance basis, struck up something more serious online, spent five months talking/visiting, and then moved to be with him, with what sounds like his full consent and approval. Shortly thereafter he got cold feet and dumped her, but seriously, this could have happened even if they’d been in the LDR for a year or two.
Also, her kid is 3. It’s not like he was being uprooted from all his school friends or whatever. To him this was probably just like an extended vacation with mom. Big deal.
If I had to guess what changed his outlook on things, I’d say it was probably this here. It’s one thing to get along with a kid and like a kid. . . and whole nother to be alone and fully responsible for a three year old. I could very well see that being a shock.
There’s no such thing as building anything “serious” online. Even in real space, five months is not long enough to commit to moving a child accross the country. Five months is nothing.