Thoughtful/"would you rather" question: Which would you choose - love or your land?

I see it on here a lot - really interesting seemingly good people searching for a mate but want their new partner to join them on their land. I've seen some people looking for years now. I want this myself. Does this mean love is less important than place? Those of us on Permies are different than most, and mostly live in rural areas, so there are just fewer potential partners around us. So people post here, in the hope they will find someone. And the thing is, I think likely there ARE great matches on here, but if no one moves it won't work.

Clearly our connection to land matters too, and the work we've already put in, or possibly our connection to community or family in the area. Some of us have children, who are connected to our land too, or have another parent in the area. That gets tricky. Those of us over 40 are more likely to be established where we are.

Partly, love is a gamble - what if you meet your person and you give up your land to go to theirs and then it doesn't work out? That's a real outcome. But love and life choices are always a gamble. Really, love isn't possible anyway if you aren't willing to put yourself out there, to make sacrifices of some kind.

Maybe some of you have a deeper faith/knowing/intuition that the person is coming, you just need to be patient. Maybe they are. Maybe you're just optimistic. Or maybe love just really isn't as important to you.

For me, I am happy with the life that I have, but love feels very important, so I am not sure how to solve this riddle. For now, I try to put myself out there in small ways, and keep hoping.

So here's the question (my 11 and 17 yr old children love to ask "would you rather" questions): If you knew there was no way you could end up with both (love AND your land) Would you rather live the rest of your life on your current land, with no partner, or move somewhere else and have love?

I bought land in Portugal with my husband over twenty years ago.

It was our dream. I thought we would live out our days there.

He did. But then I found I was there alone.

I found a new partner and he moved from Wales to be with me.

The problem was, he was there living with me on my land. In my dream. And no matter what I did with the paperwork, it was always my land and my dream. And after a few months I just said 'Let's sell and get our own place.' And it was the best decision ever for us.

I have the memories of the land and life I shared with my husband, but now those memories are in a box in my mind and my 'new' partner and I are forging a new life, together, that is  very much our own. We are in our house rather than him being in my house, and that makes a huge difference.

When I made my announcement that I thought we should sell up and move, we both went online to see what properties we could find in the area, because I didn't want to move too far away. After about half an hour, I'd found a place I thought might work for us. The right price, enough land to keep me happy, a bit of mountain, a bit of forest, and some flat land and fruit trees for me to grow my own food. Just before I told him about it, he announced that he'd found one too, with a nice sized place to do up, a bit of land for me to play on, and a railway running past! I sort of sighed, because only he could find one with a railway running past, and we swapped links to see what the other had chosen.

It was the same property, just viewed through different eyes. The house was right, the price was right, I had the land I wanted, he had his railway to spot trains on.

And so far we seem to be living happily ever after.

There are beautiful places all over the world.  I think it is much easier for me to find a place where I would love to live, than to find a woman I would love to live with.

I will take the time to be pretty confident that I really want to be with this person before I give up my current home.  And I know myself well enough that I'd feel good about that decision.

So I definitely would choose a partner and a new place, over the same place with no partner.  I've been here eight years and really love this place, and, I have another 60-70 years ahead of me. ;)  I can fall in love with a new place.  

My intuitive answer is "Of course love is more important", and what others have said resonates with me as obviously true as well.

But as I look back at my life so far, I can't help but notice that meeting my wife was an accident, falling in love with her was a natural thing as if it came from outside of me, getting married to her was a simple matter of deciding to, and starting a family was definitely not difficult. Maintaining that relationship has taken a lot of effort on both our parts, but the inertia was already there and the rewards are immediate.

Meanwhile acquiring land is something that requires discipline and patience as I reduce my spending on things I want now so I can save and save and wait and wait. One day when I am finally ready to buy, there will also come the work of searching, and researching, and negotiating, and then once the land is mine there will be more work to turn it into the place I want.

So by doing basically nothing, I got love and a lifelong partner, but only with a lot of labor and expenditure do I get land. Funny how that goes.

Ned, remember the difference between good debt and bad debt, if you wait until you save the money, the land will get away from you.

I chose land. With family a few months in the winter. On the land most of the year.

@May, I'm currently deliberating posting my my own singles post.

Reading your post "51F Seeking a strong, loving, intellectual man interested in moving to me for off-grid family life" hits home hard.

I'm like "that could describe me", I have experience that could land me a job anywhere...

But then my father just passed away and my mother is starting to depend on me, and then when she is gone I have all this family land that my deceased relatives saved for me.
Because I asked them not to sell it...

I donno, its rough as hell.
If my 17 year old daughter asked me that today, I'd say I'm gonna fight like hell to accomplish both, but in the end give it five years I'd move.

If this is going to work for you, I'd suggest posting some photos of your land.

Maybe your post will get more attention as the guys come swarming around your "hot" land pics!

-Dan

John C Daley wrote:Ned, remember the difference between good debt and bad debt, if you wait until you save the money, the land will get away from you.

I thought about this the other day as I was driving through a rural area and noticing the attractive wooded frontages with long driveways disappearing behind trees. An old guy came out to grab his trash cans and I realized "Oh yeah, a lot of properties are taken now, but their owners are elderly and will die about the time I'm ready to buy." An antidote to the worry that there won't be any land left for sale.

As for good debt and bad debt: I'm not afraid of debt exactly, and between my mortgage and my student loans I have plenty of it already. I'm about to have more thanks to this roof. We use a credit card when we're traveling and then pay it off immediately afterwards. But I'm not eager to take on more debt and will avoid it if I can.

I've been enjoying reading these responses. Thanks to everyone! I was expecting mostly singles to reply, so it has been interesting to the hear the other stories from people with partners. Burra, you shared a really lovely story. Sad that your partner died but happy that you found a new partner who wanted to move to you (great to see that DOES happen!) and that it ultimately made sense for you to move to a new place in the same area. I can myself imagine that - staying in this area but moving to a new place. I would prefer to stay here, and I have only been here 5 years and I bought it myself, after divorce, so I think it could be shared with a new person, but if not, I would be open to moving within this area.

Ned, that is wonderful your path to love felt so easy, and that you and your wife are aligned in what you want. What a gift that is! Of course, my answer is also that love is more important....but somehow it just is not so black and white. I very much long for a deep close relationship, and I think that is a normal feeling, and one those of us who don't have it can understand, but I really don't feel free to move. My children are in this area and I love them very much and that love is a high priority too for me. Rootedness matters so much in this world we are in right now. But then, so does love!

T. Smith, great to have perspective from the other opinion - land being more important to you. Thank you.

Dan, I totally understand where you are coming from! It is sad though, that as I said already I do think there are potential matches but neither person feels free to move! So frustrating. Myself, I don't want to wait 5 years. That feels very long. I hope you find the right woman who wants to move to you! If you feel like writing with me in the meantime, I would be happy to talk with someone with similar thinking!

I'm thinking that the following quote might explain it for a lot of us, I know it does for me!
The quote is from a book by Ben Logan called "The Land Remembers".

Once you have lived on the land, been a partner with its moods, secrets, and seasons, you cannot leave.
The living land remembers, touching you in unguarded moments, saying, " I am here. You are part of me."

I think this is where I am with this question, after giving it a lot of thought over the last few weeks. I think it is hard to want to leave your land for a nebulous mystery person. Of course we'd choose our land over that. Not a fair fight. I think if we really want love, we have to open the door, throw a wide net, and see what happens. Maybe we meet someone far and neither of us want to move, but we fall in love and suddenly it feels different. Who knows. I think of course we are all scared of that happening, falling in love and having a hard choice. But maybe it won't be a hard choice when it comes to it, when we have real love on the one hand and our land on the other. Or maybe a solution comes that we had not even thought of.

I just think love is worth it. And a true human need. We all deserve to go through life with a partner, if that is what we want. So I say go for it.

This is a conflicting question alright. Before I would've said the former with little hesitation. After all that's what I did. I left behind multiple once in a lifetime opportunities to steward my own land to be with what I thought was the love of my life and build something together. Then, when everything seemed to be going great, she seemingly overnight changed course and decided it wasn't the life for her and left. Now I am here alone in not such a bad place but not the place I would have chosen were it not for her. I cannot see myself falling in love again for the forseeable future, but even if I were to I would be damn sure of it before choosing to upend my life to be with that other person.

On the other hand, every day when I try to do the things I used to do with her I'm reminded of how limited I am without a teammate and how at some point I will probably need to temper my aspirations and depend on other people more. Which may include buying things I need instead of making them myself. But really that's the way it's supposed to work. If I need to buy more things I can at least try to support more permie-ish producers whenever possible. Ideally having a community would make all of this easier, but that seems to be even more of a challenge to make work than a two person relationship. Oh well we can only do our best with whatever life hands us.

Oh my Goodness, Nate. You have even a different aspect of this question that no one has shared yet. Thank you for sharing your story. I'm really sorry it did not work out. I wonder if she had never lived the homesteading life before?

It IS harder to do it on your own. I see lots of folks on here doing it and many liking doing it on their own, however I myself would prefer a partner to do it with, not just for the extra set of hands but also I find it more fun and interesting and inspiring to share ideas and plan and figure things out with another person. The joy of a shared life purpose. At this point I invite friends over to help me think through projects and get some help when needed, but they have lives too and only have so much time and I don't like to ask for too much.

It is interesting (and sometimes hard) to be single within the homesteading/homeschooling community I am part of. They are great people, but almost all married couples. It highlights my own situation a bit.

It is difficult too to open again after heartbreak. I understand that one too.

This week I've been thinking part of throwing a wide net is also putting myself out there more socially in the area I am in. So I am doing that a little more.

Hoping you find another woman who is the right one for you. Hoping we all find that person!

Love.  There is not much to my 1/16th acre lot