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?

  • Prahasaurus@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I’m American, moved to the Czech Republic when I was in my late 20’s, loved it, witnessed other expats come and go. Some loved it, other hated it. I noticed it tended to be quite black or white: they loved it or hated it…

    Here are two observations which may help:

    1- If you are looking for to recreate your home country in France, just with better wine and baguettes, you’re going to have a bad time. It’s obviously going to be quite different. Some accept the bad with the good. Others constantly complain when France does not function like their home country… You have lived in France before, you speak the language, so you should be ok, assuming you enjoyed your time there.

    2- I noticed that when couples moved, the key was the one who was not working. Let’s say the husband is working. He meets people through work, he travels, he has a life through work that keeps him active, ensures social networks, intellectual stimulation, etc. However, the wife, if she is just staying home, needs to actively find her raison d’etre. Either find her own job, or find a serious hobby, or something. If she is mainly at home, it’s harder.

    Because what ultimately happened is all the shit jobs got dumped on the wife, because the husband was too busy with work. Moving to another country can be stressful, but there is also admin headache. You have to submit this form, go to this government office. Or even wait for the plumber who never shows up to fix a leak, or whatever…

    Long story short, in my example above, the wife gets all the shit jobs, while the husband is flying around Europe for business meetings… And of course, the wife then starts to hate her life, hate her husband for forcing her into this situation, is jealous because he is loving the expat life while she is forced to sort out all the issues that come with living in a foreign country…

    But if the wife did her own thing, if she had purpose, if she was very busy with something productive and stimulating, it helped a lot. I could always tell which expats would stay: if their wife was happy, I knew they would be there long term. If not, it was a 1 year excursion, max.

    Good luck.