I’m about to embark on my own journey as an expat. I’ll be living in Paris with my EU husband.
I speak good French and having lived in France twice before for 9-mo stints each, I am familiar enough with French culture to empathize with the negative and positive critiques that people share on this subreddit. In other words, I know what to expect.
Nonetheless I am still nervous about the move; fitting in, finding a community, finding my tribe. I’m nervous about feeling like I’ve made a colossal mistake to sell everything and move here.
The truth is is that reading this subreddit does not make me féel very optimistic. I read posts lamenting the move abroad, the regrets you have, the challenge adapting, and none of which are unwarranted! I get it Expat life is difficult!
……But my question is…is there anyone here who is happy with their decision to have moved abroad?
So much this. I just wanted to add: a lot of happiness (or lack) that everyone experiences come from within.
You can’t expect a place to ‘make you happy’ if you are unhappy. Obviously, if your quality of life and general conditions improve a lot that helps, but people tend to go to their ‘baseline’ after sometime.
Just my opinion. Happy immigrant to Canada since 8 years ago. I love it here and didn’t like it from where I come from (to the point I started to struggle with normal social interactions or expectations). In my case, it helped a lot to move to improve my baseline happiness.