It sounds like you two had a shared dream at one point to move to your home country, and your H is the WAS, so the dynamics may be different.
If you want to move back home, I urge you to be creative and think about ways to make that happen that give your H something he wants as well. It's not about what's fair or right. You have kids together and it is what it is. Otherwise, you are going to have to use the legal system. I also urge you to find happiness no matter your external circumstances.
As we were agreeing to the settlement terms, my STBXW let me know how unfair she thought everything was. What is fair, in her mind (or at least, expressed to me) was her moving back home to her friends and family and support network and better job opportunities and where she wants to live and it's best for the kids and on and on and on... She's made it clear she thinks I'm a bad father and person in court filings.
I can empathize with her desire to move home. I get it. If I didn't exist, that's what she would do and it makes sense. So....... why didn't she try to work something out? I *could* say that she's an uncompromising control freak, but that doesn't really demonstrate my DB skills. More kindly, I could say she was fully absorbed in her own world and probably didn't even consider that UC was a reasonable person who would work with her *provided she was also reasonable*. Trying to get her way with false accusations and court BS is a pretty bizarre tactic, but it does work sometimes and the court system allows it and there are plenty of L's willing to write whatever accusations you want them to write.
What frustrates me is that these dynamics are so common. Sometimes I wonder if there's a better system to help resolve D's for people, but I think there's no easy solution. There is an entire legal system in place to profit from the challenges people face in D. If at least one of the 2 people is going to act uncompromisingly, both are screwed. It just takes one person thinking "I want what's fair and I won't accept less" and then you head to nuclear war unless the other person is a shrinking violet. Sometimes both people want to destroy the other (not the case in my situation but I am aware it happens). There are lousy L's and ethical L's, but even the good ones can't help you if you are in a spiraling vortex headed towards legal and financial disaster. There's really only 2 options: (1) Bully your way into getting your adversary to back down; or (2) Work together with the other party to get a compromise which probably is bitter for you both to swallow but at least respects you both.
I tried #2 for 9 months. Counseling, mediation. This is what people do. They step up the ladder of conflict and try to resolve their D at the lowest rung in the simplest and most cost-effective way possible. Our mediator tried to cut down the tree limb by limb and resolve one issue at a time, and he saw that my STBXW was not going to budge on the issues that were important to me. There was no compromising. So mediation failed. By session 3 he was visibly frustrated with STBXW and telling us we were at an impasse.
I learned... I learned the way to deal with STBXW was not to compromise. I stood up for myself, always willing to compromise if she showed an inkling (which I made clear along the way), but not compromising by default. And it worked! She did not expect me to stand up for myself. We didn't end up settling financially because my STBXW was being reasonable. We settled because she backed herself into a corner with frivolous legal actions and put herself under enormous financial pressure. This was largely her own doing. If she didn't have that pressure, we would still be in court, with L's siphoning off our kids' future. This is how family court works.
Anyways... When I hear anyone (me, my STBXW, anyone on this forum or in real life) say what's "best for the kids", I automatically assume what follows is going to be something that is best for the person speaking and not actually, you know, for the kids. It's nearly always true. In fact, I would say what's best for my kids is probably not 50-50. What's best is having two parents actively involved in their lives (at least I think so based on the fact we both want that, and that is what experts say). Whether the timeshare has to be 50-50, well, that's just a tidy way for adults to handle these cases.
I share kids with a person and that complicates both of our lives. Neither of us want to have to deal with each other again. Too bad. The best thing for my kids is for me to figure out a way to co-parent and keep them out of the conflict. Oops I used the phrase =)
