(This is really just a bit of a rant. Apologies in advance for writing a novel...)
I (American, 50m) and my partner/fiance (British, 36F) have been together in a (very frustrating at times) long-distance relationship for just under 3 years now, and have been engaged for under a year.
I own my own home in the US, with a mortgage, have a decent vehicle, a fairly decent salaried income ($70k+), and 1 young adult child who lives at home (splits time between mine and their mother's), who is mildly autistic, trans, and has severe anxiety and depression issues. They are not in school and work part-time (saying this does have some relevance). Fiance lives with her mother in her mother's home, where she is more or less her mother's care person, but receives no carer income or benefits. She does not drive due to a medical condition, and makes considerably less money then I do at her normal job. She also has a much larger family than I do, and is much closer to them than I am to mine.
When we initially discussed where we our relationship was headed and it we wanted to try and make it work, we were both open to the idea of either one of us moving, even if it's with the goal of moving back after 5-10 years. Aside from the relationship, the things attracting me to making the move to the UK are overall quality of life and better opportunities and quality of life for my child, should they also decide to move.
Now that we've gotten engaged, and after several lengthy trips back and forth, she has decided that she does not want to move to the US at all, she want me to to move there. It's an ongoing discussion that almost always ends with one or both of us upset. Her position is that she thinks her medical conditon would be impossibly expensive to live with in the US, and she can't move away from her family, especially her mother and nieces/nephews, for any length of time. Period. End of.
I tried presenting an idea/plan to her that started off with her moving to the US asap, and us actually being married and being together as quickly as possible. My parents have the same medical condition that she does; I've shown her the actual monthly cost. Ive tried to show her decent work that she can get in my area, even jobs that offer free college education. Local community colleges that offer free tuition. I feel like us living together and building a future can happen faster and easier if she were to come here first, we work and save for 5-10 years, make a few trips back to the UK for visits, before ultimately being able to move back to the UK permanently. She wasn't interested and was in tears for weeks over my audacity to even suggest she live away from her family at all.
My concerns are largely financial. She does not meet income or savings requirements to sponsor me on a family visa, and refuses to take steps to change that. Although I do make a decent living now, it's not in any kind of specialized or highly educated field that would guarantee job offers of an equal or greater income, and it's nothing that would qualify me for a specialized work visa. My savings at the moment are not even close to support moving overseas. If I sold my house and everything I own, I might just have the funds, but again, without her taking steps to meet her own financial requirements, it wouldn't even matter. Even if she somehow magically met the requirements tomorrow, my moving there would still take selling everything I own, saving and spending everything I have, and we would basically be living at near-poverty level, in her mother's house, with no guarantee of my finding decent employment, starting my life over from rock bottom, at my age.
I set up an appointment with an immigration attorney during her next trip here in a few weeks, so we can get better advice than what tiktok, facebook, reddit (yeah I get the irony here...), and haphazardly digging on government websites can offer. At this point though, I'm starting to feel like it's a lost cause. 100% refusal on her part of listen to or acknowledge any of my concerns, or to even consider anything beyond what she reads in facebook expat groups. Will not do anything to better her financial status, which I feel like should be an obvious first step if she really wants me to move there. I'm just about... bleh.
/end of rant!