A Daughter’s Advice
“Are you threatening me?” The words were out before I could stop them.
Against all predictions, the house I owned in Boise with my former husband had not sold. We had not received a single offer since the initial one fell through.
My haste to move had come from my belief, shared by my former husband and our realtor, that there would be no shortage of follow-up offers. They urged me to make arrangements for a new place to live. And so my daughter and I had rented Elizabeth House site unseen, believing the online video was accurate. Sadly, it was not.
July labored on. Our home in Boise was now empty of furnishings, because I’d brought most of them with me to Salt Lake. The day I moved, the empty rooms with their wood floors and bare walls echoed my every step.
It wasn’t long before our realtor began urging us to reduce the price. I arranged a call with her and her business partner, her daughter. I asked a friend to join me.
When I asked my realtor why she wanted to lower the price below several other homes in the neighborhood, she said: “Your house doesn’t have as much to offer.” I asked if they had gone to see the other homes which my realtor deemed superior. She and her daughter conferred. Had they gone? “Well, obviously, we can’t go to every open house,” her daughter said. Having lived in that neighborhood for a quarter century, I had been inside many of my neighbors’ houses. “They don’t have more features than ours,” I said.
I asked why they had not scheduled more open houses at our home since I moved. “Oh, we’ve had several,” one of them said, but when I asked for the dates, they did not provide them.
“Open houses don’t make a difference,” our realtor said. “The market has changed, and what’s needed now is for you to reduce the price.”
My former husband agreed. We arranged to call on a Sunday afternoon to discuss the matter. I drove to the parking lot of my new church, which felt like a safe place to have the call.
Our home was my greatest source of wealth, and for so many years, a great source of comfort and beauty. I’d put every bonus I got from work, every paycheck I earned teaching writing on the side, into making our 1965 split-level Ranch more inviting.
But my former husband wasn’t as concerned about getting the maximum value from our home. He wanted to be free of the burden of home ownership and free of me. He had bought a new car and moved in with his mother. Selling our home was the last hurdle to his freedom.
I sat in the hot car parked beneath a shade tree with the windows down. I explained to my former husband I wasn’t ready to lower the price on our home. I told him about my call with the realtor, how she’d stopped doing anything to market our home.
“When are you going to be ready to lower the price?” he asked, getting to the point.
“I’m not sure,” I said. I felt as if I were melting.
There was a brief pause on his end. Then he said: “Susan, are we going to finally have to bring in the lawyers?”
I knew what he meant. Our divorce had happened without contention. I’d hired a lawyer to advise me, but he did not. He’d said, “I trust you.” I split our assets down the middle. We hardly needed an attorney because, as my friend said, I had project managed the whole thing. The house was the last thing.
“Are you threatening me?”
The words were out before I could stop them. In the past, I never would have called him out. I never would have dared.
“No.” He backtracked. “I’m saying the time may come when we have to lower the price.”
But the threat had been made, and we both knew it. If I didn’t go along, there would be consequences. Between him and the realtor, I felt a pressure building I worried I could not withstand. The realtor texted both of us, asking when we were going to lower the price. But the messages were for me, because I was the holdout. I felt queasy each time I saw her name on my phone. I dreaded reading email.
My daughter was housesitting at this time for a family that had three children and three pugs. The pugs were almost as cherished as the children, and while the family was out of town, her job was to ensure the pugs had no interruptions in their routine. I went to visit her, winding my car up the steep streets of their posh neighborhood nestled at the base of the Wasatch Mountains.
The two of us sat on their deck. We watched the pugs racing back and forth along the strip of lawn that was theirs. I told my daughter my fears about the house. How much it would affect my ability to buy a home again one day if we lowered the price to get a fast sale. Even then it wasn’t guaranteed.
“Mom,” she said. “Don’t do anything you don’t want to do.” She turned in her chair to look at me, giving me her full attention. “Don’t let anyone make you do what you don’t believe is right.”
Her eyes were intent. I knew how much she loved her father. I knew she would never take sides. But here she was telling me to honor myself.
Her words and encouragement braced me against the flood of doubts I had. For much of my life I had been taught it was selfish to heed my own needs and wants, and when I was older, I became a willing accomplice to that belief. But something shifted in me that afternoon with my daughter’s advice, which came from a place of love and respect for me. It was only a small tremor, but it was nonetheless seismic.
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Dear Reader, have you ever felt pressure by others to make a decision you knew wasn’t in your best interest? How did you handle it? Please share in the comments if you’d like, and I’ll respond.
I was not "threatened", but I was deceived into moving out of my "forever" home. When I tried to rectify the deception, by insisting that I get bought out in full for my half of the house, I was met with scorn, and derision, as if I was being the difficult one. I stood firm and I eventually did get paid out in full, and it has played out as the right decision. Remaining partnered on the house until he sold it, would not have been good for my financial or mental health.