Sometimes we miss a place because it holds part of our identity.

Leaving a place does not always mean we have cognitively left it.

Sometimes we grieve places because they have become part of who we are.

Healing often begins by accepting loss rather than reclaiming the past.

A woman, "Mrs Fraught", sent the following email below to Annabel Rivkin and Emilie McMeekan, who write the column ‘The Midults’ in The Telegraph (UK):

My parents-in-law are downsizing, and my husband is so upset about it that he wants to buy the family house in Suffolk where he grew up. The problem is we have always lived and worked in London; the children are at great schools and happy; our friends are fab and mostly local; and we can in no way afford to take on another mortgage. It makes no sense. As lovely as the house and village are, they are for another family with another life. They have had a couple of offers, but he can talk about little else apart from moving home. We are arguing all the time and I’m at a loss about how to handle this.

My parents-in-law are downsizing, and my husband is so upset about it that he wants to buy the family house in Suffolk where he grew up. The problem is we have always lived and worked in London; the children are at great schools and happy; our friends are fab and mostly local; and we can in no way afford to take on another mortgage. It makes no sense. As lovely as the house and village are, they are for another family with another life. They have had a couple of offers, but he can talk about little else apart from moving home. We are arguing all the time and I’m at a loss about how to handle this.

At first glance, the issue seems straightforward; however, it is far more complicated. The writer's husband is about to lose a place he has continued to revisit psychologically, and perhaps physically, over the years; a place he returns to in order to reconnect with cherished memories.

Mrs Fraught, by contrast, appears ready to let the house go. She does not seem to have the same cognitive attachment to it. Given their financial position, their children’s schools, their social life in London, and the practical demands of work and commuting, it seems unreasonable to her to reorganise their present life around a house that belongs, emotionally........

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