Have you moved back to your home country after living abroad?

[Irreversible]

After living away from my home country for a few years I've finally made the decision to move back home, mainly for family reasons. I have a lot of mixed emotions about it and have been reading up about reverse culture shock and some of what to expect after being away for a few years but just interested to hear from people who've moved back home after living abroad and how easy/difficult you found it?

Ok I was in the back end of nowhere, but still a large city, in India

No. I never want to go back to my home country. Have zero interest in returning there long-term.

Moved back from Belgium last year after the best part of 13 years there, and am very happy to be back. We moved back to our own house, having let it out whilst we were away; our friends are back from their overseas stints, or about to be, and my Mum is about a 15 minute drive away.

Having watched UK TV whilst away, (Hurrah for Freesat), and having ds at sixth form and then university in the UK, nothing felt strange when coming back as I was to and fro frequently, except how cheap food, clothes, food and utilities are in comparison to the prices in Belgium.

There are things I miss like Belgian mayonnaise and the steak frites; and being able to buy ready shredded cabbage and carrots to make coleslaw, but apart from that, we've settled back in without too many issues.

Is there an unwritten rule on MN that everyone should only say a generic "another country"?

No, but like many people on Mn, I'm aware that anyone who recognised a turn of phrase in my writing or a combination of circumstances (age of child, reference to a specific place of living or other places I've lived in other country, a job, the industry DH works in, a nationality) could very easily search my other posts and know who I was.

@HandbagDog That makes sense, thanks.

Left UK for France at 50, nearly 14 years ago. Won't go back.

@debwong Yeah, as @HandbagDog says, if anyone suspected my identity from something I'd said elsewhere on other threads, then reading this would 100% confirm it if I named the country because I can't shut up about having lived there no matter how hard I try

I was in Europe for 13 years and China for 12, but not Shanghai.
My kids were also confused as they had never lived in the uk and wondered if it was safe to drink the water and why nobody wants to check their passport at uk hotels.

I still have to consciously think about what side of the car to get in!!

When we moved back to the uk years ago we totally missed one of the pop band programmers and there was all this talk about HearSay and we had no idea about them.

When we go back to visit it does somehow sting a little when people talk about recent or past events or future events that you’re not part of. They don’t mean it horribly but it just hits home that you’re not part of life there so much.

Also now when we visit it’s not familiar with the DC so much. Dc1 can still remember bits but dc2 doesn’t at all. It’s strange thinking that they are more at home in our adopted country than the UK.

By and large the sacrifice of that kind of thing is worth it though. Lots has happened in the years we’ve been away so emotionally I find it very difficult going back. I expect we could fit back in pretty quickly but it would feel like this stretch of being abroad was just a dream, the kids would lose their language skills and our quality of life would drop significantly. But who knows how we’ll feel in years to come... very conscious that things change and evolve and maybe one day we’ll be ready to move back.

I have moved back to the uk after 25 years of living in Australia in Sydney
I have found you do have to move on and try not to compare all the time. I feel glad to have had the opportunity to live in Australia and was pretty happy there but always missed the UK and family and became so tired of doing the horrible long flight to come back and see everyone.
Now I mostly miss my friends and the beauty of Sydney but I do also love English countryside and culture here .
I do sometimes envy friends here who have all their history here but then i had lots of great times in Australia too and wonderful memories
It's not an easy thing to do as once you leave your home country you can forever feel torn

We returned to Aus after 15 years living in the UK, which was a real wrench for me because of how much I loved living there. I'm a bit of a history nerd and I'd always get a buzz about being so close to everything interesting in the world. Australia literally is at the arse-end of the world and you don't get things like cheap Amazon, next day delivery, lots of shopping choices and decent sausages!

Also, the UK is where I've lived my entire "adult life" so it's been quite an adjustment coming back, just with knowing small things like what medicine to buy for the kids.

Coming back here, honestly, has been perfectly fine. DH is British and he finds absolutely everything here to be so amazing and wonderful and like being on holiday, whereas I'm more of the "meh" opinion.

Our decision came down purely to providing a better experience for our two DC, who were approaching school age. For that reason alone, I have no regrets whatsoever. We had a great school and they're flourishing. We just would not have got that in London.

It's been strange to come back. So much has changed, yet so much has stayed exactly the same. People don't move on really. They stay put right where you left them. Hehe. They are all happily walking the same streets where they grew up, and have nothing interesting to impart other than the new roadworks going on down at xyz street. They also have absolutely no interest in any of your experiences. Whatsoever. It's sad really.

Since I moved in the days prior to Facebook et al, I didn't really come back to an established group of friends/former colleagues. The 2 that I kept in contact with now live in Melbourne and UK, so that's no help. I've honestly found it difficult to "break in" to friendship groups. I've kind of made friends with some parents from school, but they all have their own preferred long established groups and I'm a bit peripheral to be honest. The ones I have come closest to are actually Kiwis and Brits. The ones who've venture out a bit and are a bit more welcoming to strangers. Go figure.

I lived in Korea. I definitely had culture shock when I arrived and reverse culture shock when I came back. Seems weird to say given the current situation, but the biggest one was seeing no one wearing masks when I came home. Plus how expensive it was to eat out here, it was cheaper to eat out than cook in Korea - I once paid £17 for a bag of apples there. Fruit was a treat, our hosts gave us a huge plate of apple and oranges when we got there because it was a luxury to them.

I really miss this amazing takeaway place over there too, I want to go back to Korea just for that. Also, I remember how dirty I found the trains and such when we came back and how they were always late - over there the trains were immaculate and always on time. It is the little things really that contribute to the culture shock.

However, there were many things I was very happy about coming back. For example, I loved all the green spaces, I had really missed that in Korea. There were lots of lovely things about coming back too, but I did feel like a tourist for a while when we first arrived. I also really miss my underfloor heating, but on the other hand, it is nice not having to translate in your head all of the time.