Hi everyone,
I don't usually post to this forum -- I haven't had a partner in 4 fours. My dh moved out in Feb 2002 (girlfriend on the side, and he's bipolar) and after two years of hoping things would work out and change, they didn't, and I had the divorce drawn up. Since then I completed my grad degree as a Women's Health Nurse Practitioner -- you'd think I'd be able to find a job here, but no. As it turns out, WHNPs scope of practice is incredibly narrow, combine that with the fact that I wasn't an RN before I became a WHNP and so I have no previous RN job-related experience, and that we have an abundance of nursing schools in this town -- no available jobs for me, no one is hiring in my field of nursing (and I can't work legally outside of my scope of practice) and in the last 6 months of looking, really hard, including signing up with a medical staffing company, I have not found a job here.
I enlarged my job searching to other states, because it became clear that I needed to. In Dec. I was offered a job in Ohio but they needed me to start two weeks after the day they interviewed me and I couldn't get my licensure transferred that fast and lost the offer. I was just last week (finally!) offered a position in Massachusetts (where I have friends and family and history) and with my mortgage ($800/mo) and my student loan payments ($600/mo) I really really need that job. I accepted the offer.
We have a ds, 7 yrs old. I am the residential parent and have been since dh left. Dh has continued to be involved and has even been financially more helpful than he was required to be for the last couple of months. I have never denied him access to our ds and we've maintained a good relationship throughout all this, even with his girlfriends. But now that I need to move for this job, things have gotten much rockier.
I've told him that it's not like he's not invited -- he is. He has a job that pays very well, he's welcome to visit any time he wants (and he can afford to), and he could easily find a job where we're headed (he's a programmer and Google is hiring in Massachusetts -- how good is that?). But he's got a job here and a girlfriend and his mother here so he's not willing to do any of that.
Yesterday I spent a couple of hours writing up a parenting plan (visitation schedule -- they don't call it that here). I thought I was being generous, even gave him christmas first. He insisted on more, though, and I rewrote it with more time.
Still -- have any of you been in this kind of a situation before? Divorce and flying to different parts of the country for parenting/visitation? I'm just sucking at this and I'm hurting really badly. I feel like everything I do is just wrong, that even when I try to do everything right it comes out wrong anyway. I tried sooo hard to find a job here and in the neighboring states and no one was hiring for what I do -- I've interviewed and applied all over the place, but with no experience I'm the last person to be considered. Frankly, I'm lucky I got the job I've been offered. I feel like the most awful person in the world, moving my child away from his father, but his father won't come with us and I can't stay. I have to sell our house no matter what because I don't have any money to pay the mortgage because I don't have a job here and it's the only house my son remembers living in because we've been in this house for 5 years.
How do we make this work?
