Worrying whether house move was the right thing to do

[houseandcar]

We moved out of London last year. Neither of us are from London and we never really felt at home there, so we had always planned to move out after having kids but it took us a while to get sorted.

We were able to move to a much bigger and nicer house in a village we both like. We also have lots of good secondary school options here which was a constant worry in our old area.

The problem is I can’t stop second guessing whether it was the right thing to do. And kind of romanticising our old area.

Our old area is actually a nice part of London which I often see recommended on here, although we had our reasons for leaving. But we never settled there. I think I managed to make a grand total of one proper friend in our seven years there. Yet I am still in some FB groups for that area and I sometimes see things advertised (family fun days or whatever) and imagine us attending and having a great time. I don’t know what this is actually based on as we never went to these events when we actually lived there 😂

I think about DD’s old primary school a lot (she only attended for one year and it was quite disrupted due to covid) and the other parents, and I imagine that maybe if I’d got to know them better they could have been life long friends etc. It was a lovely school, but DD has also settled in really well at her new school so there’s objectively no real reason to pine for the old one. Academically she is probably doing slightly better at the new school in fact.

I don’t really miss any of the things people usually say they miss about London e.g. food, culture, museums as we never used them much anyway!

Yet I find pretty much every day I’m weighing up the pros and cons of our old and new areas and trying to justify the move to myself. Which is ridiculous as we don’t be moving back. So I don’t really know what’s wrong with me and why I can’t be happy?!

Has anyone been in this situation? Am I crazy?

We moved last year and I frequently say things like this to my DP about where we lived before. I'll see flyers about the brass band in the park or the annual fete and feel sad we won't be going - I lived there 15yrs and NEVER went, yet for some reason I feel like I'd have gone this year if we hadn't moved.
I really really miss being a few mins walk from the woods and countryside walks but again, I only actually did those walks a handful of times.

Not sure if it just comes down to me not liking where we moved to. We still have a wanker for a neighbour to deal with and despite being classed as a semi-rural area, it feels less like the countryside than where I moved from.

A big problem for me is we've inconvenienced ourselves. We no longer have small supermarkets or a post office in walking distance, there's nowhere to take the pram out for a walk and although there's lots of fields, there's no right of way or anywhere to walk to plus there's bypasses everywhere so tons of traffic. I think this is why I'm romanticising where I used to live.

It takes more than six months to settle.

I would advise saying to yourself 'we are here now, we will see how it goes' or something else neutral as a mantra and just try to calm down the active thinking.

There may be things you always miss about London, alongside the things you think are better about the new area. That's ok and normal.

Instead of trying to 'be happy' I would try to accept how you feel and just accept it. Moving is a big, unsettling thing.

@PissedOffNeighbour22 yes exactly the same about the events! I tell myself that we definitely would have gone this year and I imagine it would be really great. And yet there are similar events happening in our new area and I don’t romanticise those.

Is there any possibility you might move again to somewhere with more amenities in walking distance? I suppose nowhere is perfect and there are issues wherever you go!

@carefullycourageous I think you’re right, I’m putting far too much pressure on myself to be happy and think everything is perfect, which is unrealistic.