How Moving to a Bigger Apartment Almost Destroyed Our Marriage
and how we saved it
You know the drill: you go to university, find a job, get married, have children, and move into a nice house or a big apartment. And once you’ve achieved these goals, you have it all. Don’t you?
By the time we were in our mid-30s, my husband and I had reached all of these goals.
However, when we moved from our 80 m² apartment to a larger 160 m² apartment earlier this year, we quickly sensed new stress and conflict in our home.
Suddenly, there was something about our lifestyle that felt deeply, tragically wrong. In hindsight, we felt out of control and on the verge of losing our sanity.
Before the big move, I planned the interior design of the new apartment with 3D models. I got up early to search out the best furniture deals online.
My husband packed boxes and piled them up in the baby’s room. Amongst these towering boxes, we made a little space to work from home.
As new parents, the nights were short. We didn’t sleep anymore when we wanted to sleep. Meanwhile, the days were long. We didn’t get to eat when we wanted to eat or relax when we needed to relax.
We had little time for togetherness, and learned pretty quickly that we had somehow lost control. Being parents felt like an overwhelming job. Moreover, in the evening, there was little time for our passionate side hustles that we needed to work on in order to one day fulfill our dream of working remotely and escaping the corporate grind.
‘When we’re in the bigger apartment, everything will be better,’ we told ourselves. ‘Then we’ll find stillness. Then we’ll have enough space to pursue our side hustles and dreams. Our child will have enough space to play. We can invite guests over and once again make ourselves comfortable on the couch in the evening.’
There was constantly something to do
But our optimistic expectations of peace and inner harmony were short-lived. As soon as the move was done, we realized that the old stress had simply been replaced by a new kind of stress.
There was always something to do. Instead of packing boxes, it was all about unpacking boxes, all of which seemed to be filled with stuff I no longer cared about.
New furniture was delivered to fill the vast, empty space. Pieces that had been damaged in transit had to be sent back. We ordered new furniture. We looked closely at our 3D plans to think about how to place the couch.
At the same time, we were still working and taking care of our little boy. On top of that, I was constantly running around tidying up: making the bed, vacuuming, and mopping the floor. Whereas before we had had just one big room comprising kitchen, dining space and living room, now we had a separate kitchen plus a separate dining room plus a separate living room.
At times, the weight of all the tasks made me feel as though I wouldn’t be able to breathe for years.
Others viewed it differently. ‘Great space! my mother exclaimed when she first walked into our new apartment. ‘It’s perfect! The only thing wrong with it is that it’s not yours.’
In retrospect, we’re glad that, against the advice of everyone around us, we didn’t throw ourselves into decades of debt by buying this place, but continued to rent in order to remain mobile.
The dream is shattered
One weekend, a large round mirror weighing about 30 kg was to be delivered. I bought it online one morning, when my baby and husband were still asleep, at a discount. My husband wanted to hang the beautiful gilded-framed mirror in the hallway, above the new sideboard.
Our baby watched us excitedly as we unpacked the heavy mirror from the giant package. But when we removed the styrofoam and cellophane, we were horrified to discover that the mirror had broken into hundreds of tiny fragments.
As I stared at the shimmering shards, I could see my husband’s face reflected in them, a face wracked with worry and despair. ‘It’s broken,’ he exclaimed. Turning away from us, he went to the window.
I followed him with our baby in my arms and asked what was wrong.
‘I just can’t take it anymore,’ he said. ‘It’s all too much. I would love to end it all.’
Immediately, I felt a knot in my stomach. I looked at him and asked what exactly he meant. Tears filled his eyes and I understood that the broken mirror was a symbol of our life in this new apartment. I remembered the saying of the poet, Publilius Syrus:
‘Happiness and glass, how easily it breaks.’
Our marriage was in danger of breaking, just like the mirror — not because we no longer loved each other, but because we had both imagined our life together and the dream of a larger apartment quite differently.
I realised that it would take a lot of love, comfort and warmth to mend the cracks.
The myth of the big apartment
We fought frequently. Always over the apartment, the responsibilities and tasks that came with it. In hindsight, we understand that if you’re already low on emotional energy, these tasks and setbacks can break you.
The final blow came when, a few weeks later, we all went down with Covid-19. We were physically and mentally at the end. The big apartment had begun to feel more like a step backwards than forwards. A white elephant, a sad lie we had told ourselves about what family life was supposed to be like.
Instead of freedom, we felt trapped.
The dust settled
To recover, we went to our favorite German island, Sylt, for a few weeks. With the waves of the North Sea, our own ups and downs seemed to smooth out and stillness finally returned. Our corona-ridden lungs felt much freer after just a few days in the salty air. My husband and I also found each other again. And we felt so much more patient, loving, and caring for our son.
We realized that the most important thing for us to be happy is our little family. Our son can play just as cheerfully on 30 m² as 160 m².
The most important thing is to be harmonious and to find our inner peace. And finally, to breathe easy again.
Suddenly we could breathe
In our small, furnished vacation apartment, life felt much easier — a life that had fit in three suitcases in the trunk of our car.
In the evenings, my husband and I even found the time to take care of our side hustles again or to cuddle on the couch. We finally felt liberated again and wanted to maintain this newfound sense of tranquillity for as long as possible.
We decided to extend our vacation by a few days. Because we’re both overthinkers, we began to talk about all the possibilities and opportunities that life now held for us.
During a walk on the beach, with our baby sleeping peacefully in his carrier, we decided it was time to leave our old lives behind, make a new start and realize our dreams.
Just the idea of starting a life on our favourite island made our hearts beat faster. Having less space and more space for the important things made us happy.
A light bulb went off over our heads and, as we dug a little deeper, we realized that the challenge with a big apartment is that you can easily lose focus. You become so busy making everything perfect, you can’t pursue the things that are important to you.
Ironically, having more physical space had reduced our mental space. The revelation came that if we were to keep doing this, we would become overwhelmed by distractions and never be able to move on.
The source of the mess that holds you back in life
When we arrived back from our vacation to our big apartment, we were unsettled at first. We had left the island in the afternoon and driven 700 km into the night.
After midnight we entered the apartment in the dark. We flicked on the light and were amazed. For a few minutes, we felt like visitors — people with an outside perspective that we, inside the house, could never have had.
The high ceilings, the stylish furnishings, the murals, the many rooms, the beautiful lamps, the wing chair with pineapple cushions, the fluffy carpets, the separate kitchen, the children’s room with teepee, the big box-spring bed… All glorious. All perfect.
Had we lost our minds? This is what we wanted to leave behind? We had everything we needed here and more?
Confused and exhausted, we collapsed into bed.
When our baby woke us up the next morning, we opened our eyes and stared around. We were still confused at first. But quickly we knew our intuition had been right when we started thinking: ‘We’ve got to clean this and I’ve got to replace that.’
It felt like having someone constantly walking behind you and nagging.
We figured out that there was a lot of psychological stuff coming up with this apartment and instead of feeling like a safe, sacred space called ‘home’, it was the opposite.
Setting out to reclaim our sanity
Within one day of returning from Sylt, we decided to move. Already from that moment, we felt lighter — if you move, then the world moves too.
We had spent our last three days on the island looking for apartments that we could rent for at least a year. I negotiated the contract with the real estate agent and we signed on a small 40 m² apartment near the beach.
In parallel, my husband nervously informed his supervisor about our plans. Surprisingly, he was all for us taking this step and working remotely from the island for a year.
He admitted he envied us and only wished he could do the same.
Project empty space
Within a week, we started to look at our belongings differently. Our goal was to reduce our possessions down to the point where everything would fit in a car and into our new small home.
Our attic had been filled to the brim with things that didn’t serve us, but which we somehow felt nostalgic about or thought we may need again one day.
When we started cleaning out the attic, we even took memorabilia that we treasured off the shelves. For instance, we used to buy lots of books and have them all over the house. Every book has a memory attached to it. We decided to only keep ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ and some children’s books for our son.
When we were parting with things, giving them away, selling them, or taking them to the recycling centre, we immediately felt like our life was better, lighter, and that we could breathe again.
There is a very real, life-changing moment when you realize the physical and mental connection between decluttering your home and getting rid of all the stuff that you don’t really need, use or love.
That stuff is anything that gets in the way of you getting what you want from life.
Final Thoughts
Moving into this bigger apartment was such a valuable lesson.
It’s the stuff that holds you back.
My husband and I are now looking joyfully into our future filled with love, comfort, and warmth — when we will again love spending time at home and pursuing our dreams.
What we’re aiming for with this move is to take back control over our lives. Because it’s the feeling of being out of control that causes the most stress, especially as parents.
We hope that we will be able to run our new space, rather than having it run us.
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