One of the most frustrating things about divorce has been the fact that despite no longer being married to her, I'm still in many ways tied to XWW. Because of joint custody, I have to live where she lives (and, admittedly, vice versa), and don't have the option of relocating to pursue better career opportunities.
This is particularly frustrating in the line of work I've been pursuing in the 4 years since my divorce, which is the life of a musician. Admittedly, maybe not the most practical choice, but I decided that dammit, I was going to follow my dream and all that.
I've become relatively well-established in my area as a freelancer, but I've done the math and there's a limit to how much I can make doing this where I am, and there are no tenured jobs with salary and benefits in the area save the one world-class orchestra that probably won't have any openings for years (and whose auditions would be so competitive that banking on winning would be ridiculous gamble).
If you want a "real job" doing this, you have to branch out geographically, and spread out your chances. Take auditions all over the country. I haven't been able to do this obviously because I can't move. I'm stuck.
So a few months ago, something surprising happens. An announcement was made of an audition for an attractive position on my instrument. I discounted it because it was too far away. But, XWW actually sent me a message to the effect that, in the event that I were to take this audition and win, she'd be willing to relocate to that location.
Of course, this was no act of charity on her part. There's a job down there that she wants. Specifically, she was offered the job but had to turn it down because... well, same problem I have. Joint custody. She can't move.
Normally I would smell some kind of nefarious plot, but her motivations seem pretty transparent here. She's encouraging me to pursue a job in the place she wants to live so that we can mutually relocate. I don't think I'm missing anything.
So here's where my thoughts get a bit jumbled up and I need some clarity.
I decided that this was at least worth looking into because, as I said, one of the frustrating things about my situation is that I wasn't able to take auditions in other parts of the country. So this seems like an opportunity to do that. I submitted a preliminary recording and had it accepted and was invited to the live round of auditions in Feburary. An encouraging step, but only the first one. In the mean time, there actually was another opening in the same area that I also applied for with auditions in late December.
Both of these are really good jobs with attractive salary and benefits and may represent my best opportunity for stability in this career that I'm likely to get any time in the near future.
I haven't told XWW about any of this. These are going to be very competitive auditions. There's a good chance I'll fly home empty-handed. I kind of want to just take the auditions, see what happens, and talk to XWW only if I win.
But there are problems with that.
For one, if I were to be offered a position, I'd presumably have to give an answer as to whether or not I accept pretty soon afterward. But there would just be so many things to do! Not the least of which would be to renegotiate significant parts of my parenting agreement with XWW. We'd have to do that for any relocation, but particularly for this job, which has a pretty heavy touring schedule. I'd need to have a pretty flexible arrangement with her to allow me to maintain 50/50 custody, and if I can't do that, then it's not worth it. No job, no matter how good, is worth taking away my daughter's time with me.
I feel like I need to know what she'll agree to before I go. It feels like it would be almost impossible to iron out everything that would need to be ironed out in the time between receiving an offer and needing to accept it.
But of course, I don't want to go through a huge hullaballoo to try to iron all that kind of stuff out and then have it come to nothing if I lose.
I suspect there would be arguments and fights with XWW over this stuff no matter how we cut it. I'd want things spelled out to a level of detail that would annoy XWW, while she'd want to wing it and just have me "trust her" (HAHAHAHA!), not to mention the disagreements we'd be bound to have over the details themselves.
I'm just having trouble seeing how this would all work out, and I'm unsure of the next step.
So I guess I'm wondering first of all if anyone has ever done a mutual relocation to a new state with their Ex, and if they could give any advice or perspective on it.
Second of all, I'm wondering if I should try to talk any the hypotheticals out with her prior to taking these auditions or if I should just take the risk of having a shitstorm to deal with all at once if I somehow end up winning.
Or should I just forget the whole thing?
