The Cost of Love

Falling in love should never carry a price tag. Marriage, family, the decision to build a life together—these are meant to be the foundations of joy, not a bureaucratic punishment. And yet in Britain today, love itself has been monetised. Falling in love with someone from outside these shores is no longer a simple act of union, it is a transaction, a test of wealth, a prolonged ritual of anxiety.

I know this because I am living it. My wife is born Russian but now a Czech citizen. We are raising three boys together. Before Brexit, none of this would have cost us a penny. Our life together in Britain could have been built naturally, freely, with all the ease of European movement that we once took for granted. But Nigel Farage’s grand project of “taking back control” made sure that love, marriage, and family were recast as liabilities in the eyes of the state. The cost of our love so far is tens of thousands of pounds—for the privilege of living as a family in the country where I was born.

And the irony? This wasn’t about reducing migration. It was about destroying one workforce and importing another. The Europeans who worked here happily and legally left. The gaps had to be filled, so Britain signed trade deals that opened doors to entirely different streams of migration. Net numbers went up, not down. The promises were lies. The costs, however, were real. Families like mine pay the bill.

We are on the five-year route, halfway through, waiting nervously for our extension to be processed. Anyone who has lived through this knows the fear. Every application is a coin flip. You can have your life uprooted by a decision letter. And while you wait, the political rhetoric builds around you. Dog whistles, scapegoating, cheap slogans about “controlling borders.” We hear them every day. What we don’t hear is honesty about the damage already done, or accountability for the disaster Brexit became.

The system is deliberately harsh. To qualify for a visa, you now need to meet savings requirements or earn above a high income threshold—conditions tens of thousands of families simply cannot reach. Many will never even get the chance to live together in the UK. Even those who do, like us, find themselves squeezed. We don’t claim benefits, we don’t ask for anything. My wife has retrained here, gone back to university, qualified as a therapist, and is now building her own practice, with clients and patients relying on her every week. We work hard, we pay taxes, we support our community, we bought property, we have put everything into building our life here. But still, we are made to feel temporary, provisional, undeserving.

And the contrast is staggering. I lived in the Czech Republic for almost two decades. When I applied for long-term residency there, it cost me less than £30 and I had my documents within five working days. Here, the same right costs families tens of thousands of pounds and takes months of anxious waiting, with no certainty of outcome. Why are we penalised for the mistakes of deceitful politicians — politicians who fiddle their own tax arrangements, who take vast sums from lobbyists, who refuse to show their own tax returns, yet demand to scrutinise every detail of our lives?

We don’t want indefinite leave to remain for handouts. We want it for security. The security of knowing we won’t be split apart after years of investment and sacrifice. The security of knowing our children, well-settled in school and thriving in British life, won’t suddenly be treated as strangers in their own home. The security of knowing that love is not conditional on a renewal notice from the Home Office.

And yet, the anxiety runs deeper. Because behind the bureaucracy is politics, and behind politics is populism. Families like mine become the target every time the far right needs a soundbite. We are scapegoats for a crisis they themselves engineered. Nigel Farage has never been held to account for the fallout of Brexit. He won’t admit that it hollowed out our economy, shattered trust, and left families like mine on the hook for the costs. Instead, he doubles down, throwing out lines about immigration that cut into the bone of ordinary people’s lives.

The stress is not just financial or bureaucratic. It’s cultural, it’s emotional, it’s existential. In the Czech Republic, speaking Russian on a bus would draw hostility, even spitting, because of old wounds and language politics. Our families Jewish heritage only layers on another dimension of suspicion and animosity. Now we live in Britain, and even here the story doesn’t end. We are caught between worlds—between Russia and Ukraine, between Israel and Gaza, between populist dog whistles and endless wars. We are a secular family who just want peace, who just want to raise children in safety. But at every turn someone wants to make us the problem.

That’s the real cost of love in today’s Britain. It isn’t only measured in pounds spent on visa fees, though that sum is brutal enough. It is measured in sleepless nights, in anxiety layered upon anxiety, in the grinding stress of being treated as provisional, conditional, suspect. It is measured in the heartbreak of watching a government refuse to defend you, and an opposition too timid to offer clarity.

We fell in love. We built a family. We came home to Britain in good faith, believing in the promise of stability, fairness, decency. And now? We find ourselves trapped in a post-truth world where all that matters are soundbites, dog whistles, and the politics of fear. Populists talk of “control.” But this isn’t control. This is chaos dressed as policy, cruelty dressed as strategy.

Love should not have a price. But in Britain today, it does. And families like mine are paying it every single day.

RW