Have moved from London and am crushed: how did you get over it?

[LadyFatboobs]

Hello there

Am having a vast pity party but today is week 6 in our new city and I’ve never missed London more.

We had to move back to my home city as fundamentally we didn’t want to move away from London to a small town in the Home Counties and could afford much more space and a garden up here for myself, DH and the 3 children.

I’m just absolutely desperately thinking WTF HAVE I DONE and now putting loads of lottery tickets on just to be able to afford to run back to London and buy a three bed as I don’t know that many folk here and I forgot how absolutely fucking mega depressing it can be (especially when it rains).

Have any of you felt such intense massive regret about moving and how did you manage to get over it?

We left London 12 years ago and moved to Yorkshire. I loved, loved, loved London. I cried every time we visited London for about 2 years. Over time this has become home. Totally agree w PPs who said 6 weeks is the hard point.

And you're spot on about making friends. We moved 15 miles about 4 years after we moved to Yorkshire, when DD was nearly 3 and I felt so isolated and like I'd never find friends because people w older children seemed to be already sorted with friends. But over time it has happened and I now love where we live.

I think it's important to give it a year. Maybe make a plan for what you can do before the kids break up for school hols (assuming yours are school age), to do things you enjoy and start to meet people?

When I left London I was rather depressed for at least 6 months. Everything felt slow, dull and clumsy in my home city. But I didn’t run back and eventually I forgot ‘that London feeling’.

It’ll take time but you’ll be ok xx

Which bit of Aberdeen?
There are some really good kids things, just depends where you are

Yeah, Aberdeen is tough. Maybe it wasn't the wrong decision to leave London but you picked the wrong city to move to?

We moved t the south coast 10 years ago from london, I was born and bred in london so it’s all I’d ever known, it took a good few years to feel like Home, we went back a year later to visit someone and after that have only been to central to visit certain places. A few weeks ago we went back to my hometown, I can honestly say I’m glad we’ve left, it’s a shithole. I do miss seeing my friends, I do miss all my fave restaurants, half of which have closed. I’m very comfortable here, my daughter was born here my son grew up here and I’m glad after hearing some of the stuff going on around my hometown.
I guess you have to open yourself up to change and you’ll get thier eventually

Hmmm I agree with PP. I think Aberdeen has changed / is changing at the moment. That may or may not be part of the issue. Thought there was a some issues with people unable to move out? No matter. What I’m thinking is that, even if it’s your home city, the city itself might be in a bit of flux so it’ll take time to settle.

Moving back home was always going to feel like a retrograde step OP. We discuss moving to my home town now and again as DH loves it there. I instantly feel suffocated when I consider it though. It's never going to happen. We go there for picnics and stuff and leave it at that. It's enough to keep him quiet for 18 months or so each time!

I think this stage of a move is really hard as you haven't got into a daily routine in your new life. The weather has been ridiculously bad too.
10yrs for us and only in the last year or so do I actually like coming home after a trip to London and refer to the friends I have made here as my friends rather than "the people I know locally". I don't think I am ever going to feel fully settled here as we are simply in this spot because of commute distance, schools & house prices but I do wonder if we will have the guts to move again in the future as this move taught me how hard it can be to make friends and this time
I had the advantage of young children.

We moved to a town from the country. We moved after a nasty incident meant we no longer felt safe in the area we were in. It was my dream house and dream gardens. I'd just spent a few years gutting and building the house up from three walls.

In town we're safe, my Autistic son can access specialist schooling and activities, we have family near and I think the children's prospects are better.

I miss the country every day. Some days I find myself wallowing. I am, five years in, starting to settle and adjust. It is a choice to accept the here and now . It doesnt have to be forever but living without accepting you're there for a while it isn't really living.

I try to do a new thing each month to attempt to feel more part of the town. We have loads of international supermarkets in our town Slovakian, Hungarian, Polish, Asian etc The children say its like going on holiday when we go to one as everyting on the labels is in foreign and we need to use google translate to work out what some things are.

I notice in Aberdeen you have a big Asian food supermarket (Matthews), Edinburgh has a few Turkish ones if you have specific items you're missing.

It is exhausting starting again and I think it's a bit like being homesick. When you're a a bit tired and busy with the DC it's easy to want the familiar.

OP I can understand you finding the move hard. Give it time. Your children will get free uni if the status quo continues. I am sorry you miss Kingston. I like Kingston but it it isn't really London and for that you are a tiny bit U.

FWIW I lived in zone 2 for more than 30 years and loved London. We moved to Surrey 4 tears ago and whilst it's wonderful it will never be London.

OP if it's any consolation we moved from London 13 years ago to a tiny rural village and you wouldn't get me to move back there for a million quid.

It'll take time to re-adjust to moving back to Aberdeen again so get yourself involved and in sure it'll be fine.

I'm not quite sure why people are saying Kingston isn't London, not that it really matters, but it is. Or are people just doing the 'I live nearer central London than you do' thing? Like that matters at all.

I’d love to live in Aberdeen. Come and live in Peterborough. It’s closer to London but, god, it really is shit.

@LadyFatboobs
Oh my love, I know Peterborough. Come. Let me show you how life can be even though I’m whingeing on an Internet forum about it.

That was actually for @GoFiguire

Aberdeen!

Gosh that is a move.

I’ve moved around a lot. Different countries every time and each for a few years. Firstly it was new and exciting because of unpacking, finding places to go and food in supermarkets etc, which quickly subsided to homesickness for the last place. This lasted up to 18 months and soon thereafter I got itchy feet to move on as I was so used to it.

I’ve been living in the same house and place for 11 years now back in the uk. It took a while to settle, not get home sick, itchy feet etc. I do pine for my old life but know it’s much better like this now we are parents.

I appreciate this is so much more difficult with children and to a place you grew up. Be kind to yourself. This will eventually become your new norm. It just takes time to adjust and integrate. And if it doesn’t and you don’t, you do have the option to move to one of the places you vetoed or even Kingston. Do be aware life back there will also have moved on so you won’t be going back to the same place.

Blimey that was a big move!

We moved out of London - zone 2 to the London/Surrey borders, so a much smaller move - 4.5 years ago and I still regret it. I hate the commute. I hate the Brexit supporting inhabitants. I grew up in a different part of the London outer suburbs and was really happy to move away. I didn't realise how similar it was here until I was here!

It's good on paper - more space, good schools, lots of green space, etc but I just don't feel it. We will stay here now though as our daughter is in a very good school. The only positive I really feel is air quality. When I go back to zone 2 it feels really grimey now. I didn't notice it when I was living there.

GoFigure
Yeh but you get a lot of your house for your money - silver linings....

Ooh, that is a tough one, OP. I’m not a fan of Aberdeen so I get how hard it must be. Fit like?!

I’m a Scot in London with an English husband who’s obsessed with moving back to my homeland, and the thought makes me break out in hives 😂 we can’t even have a conversation about it any more because I just want to scream ITS NEVER FUCKING GOING TO HAPPEN SO LEAVE IT.

6 weeks is definitely peak regret time for a big move like that, so chin up, it won’t always feel like this.

I’ve moved around a lot. Six weeks is nowhere near long enough to get used to your surroundings. I always suggest giving anywhere a year at least, preferably two, before making any decisions. By then you will have made friends, got used to your surroundings, found places you like to go, got a job maybe, and become more embedded in your community.

I think the difficulty with moving back to your home town is that you automatically expect it to feel like “home” which it doesn’t that takes a while.
You said Kingston grew on you to the point where you loved it (I think I read that) so it wasn’t love at first sight. It takes time.
You’ve got your DH and your DC everything else will fall into place.
One of the previous poster sent a link for a buggy fit class... look at other ones too.. baby sensory... baby cafes.... here jsut outside of Leeds we’ve got a baby cafe and a baby cinema too! So I’d imagine you will do there as well.
It will all fall into place Op

Looking back turns you into a pillar of salt.

We left a city abroad with a similar status and vibe to London, not even to another city - to a complete backwater. It was one of the harder things I've done and there is definitely a period of real grief. 6 weeks is really early days. But you've made your decision for good, thoguht-through reasons and it's important to keep going forward, find your place in the community.

We eventually moved closer to 'our' city (not really close but within an hour's train journey) and have maintained our links with it while accepting it may never be practicable to live there and finding our feet in a new community.

Tbh I do notice a certain cosmopolitan parochiality in some London-dwellers which manifests itself in the idea that nowhere else could possibly be as cultured. It's good to experince other places, other communities, other vibes.

Give it a year then move back down south, revisit your Woking idea, not necessarily there but there are lots of towns similar or at least consider Edinburgh. Use the year to throw yourself into your new life, making friends, joining activity clubs etc. If it help the weather in London is really really crap just now...

I intend to move out at some point, I'm not too far from the Thames so would ideally need to remain near water, possibly Brighton.

We moved back to my home town 4 years ago for similar reasons to you (not from London but from another big, vibrant city). We were the opposite to you in that for the first 6 months- a year it felt fab... loads of my friends were still here, family close by etc. Now. 4 years on we’re massively regretting it and saving manically for a move back. We’ll need about an extra 400k to get the same size house there as we have here though .
We have moved around a lot, including different countries. Some places have felt like home and others not at all. I feel like I’ve had enough experience of different places to know now where I’d like to ‘settle’, and it’s not here.