California woman refuses to move to Texas with her on-again off-again husband who she has been with for 19 years: 'He agreed to stay in California!'

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

Sep 6, 2026 7:45 PM EDT

Is he trying to get her to break up with him again? If so, he's doing a pretty good job.

Before you get married, you should have a long, hard discussion about where you would and wouldn't be able to live. Some people think they love their partner so much that they could live anywhere as long as they followed them there. That's all well and good until your partner wants to live in rural Siberia for five years to do missionary work, and you start to realize that love alone isn't enough to sustain a life somewhere you hate.

A lot of people are willing to move somewhere for a job opportunity within reason. They would move from Illinois to Texas because they received a job offer they couldn't pass up. Others know they want to stay in one place for the rest of their lives, so they only date people who share the same goal. If you're a big-city boy and always have been and always will be, you are fundamentally incompatible with someone who grew up in a rural area and is uncomfortable living anywhere else. The only place where two people so fundamentally opposed could find each other is at University, and often university kids are unwilling or unable to determine whether their incompatibility is so bad that they need to break up. I know two people who met in college and dated for nearly a decade, even though they knew one wanted kids and the other didn't. Talk about fundamental incompatibility!

Once people get older, they're less willing to uproot their lives for a romantic partner. If someone has been alone for most of their life, they're not going to want to leave their friends, family, and community because of a romance that may or may not last. The woman in this story has been in an on-again, off-again relationship with her husband for years, and she's not willing to uproot her life and business to move to Texas with him. He's having a hard time taking no for an answer, despite how many times she's told him no.

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via Getty Images (Unsplash+)

The Texas flag and the American flag are flying over a suburban development in Texas.
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Would I be the bad guy for telling my husband to move to Texas without me?
I CeCe, (43F) recently remarried my husband, Donald (63M), in May after a long on-again, off-again relationship that’s spanned 19 years. Before we reconciled and decided to get married, he had plans to move from Nevada to Texas, believing his quality of life would be better there. However, when we got back together, I made it clear that I wasn’t willing to move to Texas, and he should come live with me in California. I own my own business, co-own my parents' business, and own my home. Life here is really good for me.
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via Daiga Ellaby (Unsplash+)

A happy middle-aged woman living in California.
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I even offered him a very generous deal: He wouldn’t need to contribute financially to the household for the first year so he could get settled. I live in an OK city, but it works for me, and I could support us both during his transition. He agreed to this before we got married.
But ever since the wedding, he’s been repeatedly bringing up the idea of moving to Texas again, saying how life would be better there and how I can run my businesses remotely. Thing is, I’ve worked hard to establish my businesses and have built strong, personal relationships with my clients and employees. Stepping back and running them remotely from another state sounds crazy to me.
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via Blake Wisz

A woman running a small business with a strong clientele in California.
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I could maybe understand if he were already established in Texas and had a home or a solid plan, but that’s not the case. He wants me to uproot my life, carry the financial burden, and still figure out everything while he "settles in." If that was his plan from the beginning, I would have postponed the wedding until he had a comparable situation there. But he agreed to stay in California!
Now, at least three times a month, he brings it up again, telling me I should move to Texas and manage my business from afar. He even tries to make it about my family, but I’ve been very clear that it’s about my businesses and the life I’ve built here, not about my family.
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via Rana Sawalha

Husband encourages his wife to move to Texas and leave California behind.
_{Individual pictured is a model used for illustrative purposes.}
I’m exhausted from having the same conversation over and over, and today, I nearly snapped and told him, “Just move your ass to Texas, then!” But now I’m wondering, would I be the bad guy if I tell him to move without me?
How can I express that I’m done with this conversation and not the one at fault here?