People with experience living abroad

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Whether British in another country, or from another country living in the UK....

Do you/did you ever get homesick? What for? Have you considered moving back to the UK? If you moved back to the UK, do you regret it at all?

I'm asking because I feel unsure what to do with Brexit looming. I really miss the UK and want to come back. On the other hand I'm worried that doing so will remove any chance of residency permits/nationality I could potentially get here (EU) - and what if I'm just romanticising the UK? Would like to read your thoughts, whatever your perspective. The going back and forth in my head is really grinding me down. My heart tells me to go home but my head is telling me I could regret it.

We have been away for about 3 years now and every time we go back for a visit, we fantasize about buying a house and settling down somewhere nice there. Then we remember the schools, the unstable political and social climate, and the rat race nose-to-the-grindstone lives our friends there all seem to be living. Things seem different even in the time we’ve been away. More run down. The first thing our daughter said when we started driving after getting off the ferry on our last visit was, “Mummy, why is there rubbish everywhere?”

Our quality of life here on our adoptive EU country is amazing for families. The schools are great and our children are speaking 3 languages. We have several holidays per year and have been able to buy a nice house in a nice area because salaries match cost of living.

We do miss the UK. It’s nice operating in a country where every interaction is in your mother tongue. You know how things work.

Our plan at the moment is to get citizenship for our kids and ourselves so that we have options. We have no plans to move back to the UK anytime soon, but we do want to make sure that if/when we do (certainly after the Brexit business and fallout has blown over) the children can return to live and work in the country where they are growing up when they are adults if they like.

I miss some aspects of the UK. The food, the beautiful countryside, the history, the NHS, the tv. I don't miss the people generally (i.e strangers, obviously I miss friends)... I find it easier to make friends over here in America. I used to hate the cliquey feel in villages back home. Sometimes I daydream about coming home for good. But certainly not right now with Brexit looming. I'll wait a few more years. Honestly, I don't feel like I have a home anymore in England or America. I feel a bit... lost. Maybe it is time for a new adventure.

10 years in Australia and I still miss Scotland. I miss the food (oh, glorious Mother’s Pride bread), my friends/extended family and feeling like I fit in. It’s like Australian people just don’t get me.

We’re fortunate to live in a luxurious area and have a great lifestyle though. If we were in a standard everyday suburb I wouldn’t see the point. My parents and then my brother also moved out to Australia, so I’m very lucky to have my immediate family living around the corner which has made the move much easier. Had my parents still been in Scotland I think I would have definitely wanted to move back.

There is no right or wrong decision. You can always try it - maybe come for an extended holiday to where you would move to and see how you feel. Good luck.

I've lived in Canada for 10years I love it here but it will never be home. I miss England so much, i miss everything about it. I feel very torn, my head tells me this is a much better place to bring our kids up,neven tho at the moment we are facing ANOTHER teacher strike ( last time they were out for 5 weeks!.) My children all think of this as home although that said my eldest has had a hard time fitting in she is teased daily about her English accent but she's leant to handle that with grace and humor. I find the extreme home sickness runs on a 3 yr cycle I do ok and the bam it hits hard. I also find it really hard after we've been home or had family over it makes me feel unsettled for a good few months after I feel like I don't belong here and I don't know if I belong in England either. Wow sorry that was long you caught me on a bad day. I would have to say whatever direction we go in the futre i will never be sorry i took the opportunity to live overseas ive had some amazing experiences and met some wonderful people that will be in my life forever.

Exactly half my life in France now. Kids born and brought up here. Going back to the UK would be a huge drop in living standards to be honest. DH is French.

We go back for a month a year but we just see the good bits. Wealthy successful childhood friends and family with lovely houses etc if we step briefly into real UK life it's always a shock to be honest. And not really in a good way.

I miss my friends and the familiar. We have to return next year after 4 years in Boston and I am definitely not looking forward to it. We are in the middle class protected bubble but I have become used to the quality of decent healthcare and the positivity.

I love the physical environment here but not the society ie the rich get richer and sod the poor. But I find the UK quite depressing, the safety nets are great but I don’t feel that people strive to improve themselves. Alcohol is also so prevalent in the culture and we don’t encourage young and old to partake in lifelong sports. All very generalized.

I would grab the chance to stay in mainland Europe for the physical environment and the culture. Every country has different positives and negatives but after a couple of days visit to the UK and want to leave!

I live in NZ emigrated from UK in 2003 - love NZ but miss stupid things like M & S, the history and the ease of getting around both in UK and Europe. Came back to UK for 3 years to help my parents and returned to NZ in 2017. Three huge moves and I do not regret any of them but I do spend quite a lot of time in the UK each year as my Mum is still there. I cannot see me ever moving back to the UK permanently - NZ is my home, even if I do still miss a M & S MealDeal

I left the UK in 2004. Now permanently settled in country no. 4. I have no desire to return to the UK and have never really been homesick for it. I feel more at home here than I do in the UK and each time I visit I feel more detached. I only go back to visit parents and grandparents and once they're gone I won't bother going back at all.

I love where I live, but I would move back to the U.K. in a heartbeat if it weren’t for Brexit. I still hope to return one day.

I used to get homesick and I still do miss things but frankly I'm never going back.

I think it totally depends on the situation. I lived in Asia as an expat, never any intention to stay. I did miss things at home (my home country is not the UK), but I think that’s because the cultural differences were much greater and I never intended to live there forever. I missed how easy life was at home and some food and friends and family.

I now live in the UK and have for 8 years. I’m not sure I’ve ever missed my home country. I do miss friends and family and I miss being close to certain special places from childhood (places I wish I could take my dc). But it’s very different. I’m not an ‘expat’ here. I moved with the intention to settle and live permanently (dh is British and we now have 2 dc as well). My life is here and while it’s fine to visit, I don’t miss anything from my home country and I never think about moving back.

I do miss the UK when I’m away though, how easy it is here, how comfortingly familiar, and tea and biscuits and sandwiches (oddly). I wouldn’t be sad to leave the political mess we’ve created behind though.

I moved to the UK from USA 5 years ago. I would not move back anytime soon. I'd prob only move to retire. My work life is 100x better than in the states. Better money, better healthcare although it's quite expensive to live here we're lucky enough to have help from DH parents. The Uk is at a very exciting time and glad to be part of it.

Saying that yes definitely get homesick, and I miss the REAL Mexican food!

I think it all depends on why you choose the country you did, how well you integrate and how comfortable you are.

I moved to Japan over 2 and a half years ago - sure it's hard sometimes but I honestly love living here and don't want to move back to the UK.
Currently there's nothing attracting me back, things seem to be getting more and more ridiculous politically.
I've also made great friends here, married here and have a great relationship with inlaws. My life definitely feels "here", it is my home and last time I was visiting in the UK I was glad to come back.

Of course there are difficult and tough things about living in another culture and language, however much you study it lol.
There are difficult things about living in the UK but they wouldn't stand out so much as a "British" difficult, when it's your home country.

Would you regret not moving back? It's easy to say follow your head as that sounds sensible, but in this situation your heart is really important. I couldn't stay living abroad if my heart wasn't here.

I feel like @MollyButton made some good points too.

I’m a U.K. citizen living and working overseas. I like my life overseas though I do still love and miss London (and friends). I was shocked at the more insular feel to the U.K. on my last visit - not sure if it was ever thus and I now have a different perspective?

I will go back - but hope only 50/50

I get homesick often. Fortunately I'm in a position where I can go home often to see my family and friends.
The problem me and my husband are facing at the moment, which we never gave a thought to when we were younger is, which country do we want to be a pensioner and die in.
Obviously we could die at any time in life regardless of where we are, but, I want to be a pensioner and die in my homeland. My British husband has said that he doesn't care where he is when he pops off.
So, our retirement plan was to move back to my home country when we retire, but now brexit has come along, we don't know how easy this will be when the time comes.

We lived in the Netherlands for 5 years. It was almost a spur of the moment move. A job came up which I liked the look of, got it and 3 months later we were packed up into people shaped boxes and moved.

We bought a house, DCs went to the local school so became bilingual. In Dutch they were Dutch to the point that people would forget they were English.

However it was a corporate move. The clock was always ticking. At some point my expat employment terms would come to an end. The return was another spur of the moment one. Job was offered, I took it and moved back.

We loved the time we had in the Netherlands. We saw the start of the euro and loved the freedom of movement across the continent. We could wake up on a Saturday morning and decide to do our weekly shop in France.

We loved the village we lived in. The mix of quaint old houses and fascinating new architecture so different from Britain. The shops which werent being crowded out by massive supermarkets so there were still butchers and bakers.

The move back to the UK was hard. House prices had jumped up so we were limited in what we could afford to buy. Like many returners I struggled to settle into my new role at work. Eventually redundancy was offered and I took it.

I have just started year 25 of living overseas and will be moving back to the UK next year. We were in Europe for 13 years and have just started year 12 in China. I
I am not homesick. I went back for a visit last year, but prior to that had not been back for 10 years. There are certainly some things I miss - from the banal (shoes in a wide fitting) to the more serious - not having to apply for visas and permits to do every bloody thing and always needing someone to help incase of misunderstandings.
I will relish the opportunity to go to the bank and sort out my something by myself without having to share all my financial information with someone else!
We have been away so long that the UK will seem like another overseas posting and I am quite excited about it, although the actual moving process and the sheer amount of paperwork fill with horror.

Moved to the States from the UK almost 8 years ago now. I used to get homesick but I don't really anymore. Would NOT want to go back.

I've been outside of the UK for 7 years now and have never felt homesick or felt I made the wrong decision. I am however considering moving back to the UK once my son is a little bit older as I feel the UK is cleaner and less polluted than where I live now but if I didn't have a child going back to the UK wouldn't be something I would be thinking about

Rare visits to the UK only enforce why I left in the first place. The more countries you visit and live in, the less attractive the UK becomes. If I get food cravings, I just order online or learn to cook them. Ribena, Branston and salad cream are the usual content of my parcels.

I think if I lived closer to home (in an EU country rather than the west coast of the USA) I would be less desperate to move home because I could visit more often and just pop home for a week when I wanted to, and even get the train rather than fly 11 hours crossing multiple time zones. I miss my people - my family and friends and culture and habits and familiarity - but as our quality of life is better here and DH and D.C. don’t want to move home, we need a strong reason to move back (brilliant job for example) and me being a bit homesick doesn’t really cut it. I still refer to myself as an expat though because I have every intention of making my way back to the U.K. eventually

I loved living in Europe and never missed the U.K but having visited where i used to live i would not go back, mainland Europe has changed to much and not for the better

I've done three stints abroad, and enjoyed it immensely, but I would say that I am now back in the UK and this is likely to be permanent and I am very happy about that... clearly I'm a home bird at heart.

The two stints that were in Europe were much easier on the home sickness front as it was relatively easy to pop back. By the end of all three stints (about 4 years apiece), I was definitely ready to come home and had been wanting to for about a year...

I loved living in Europe. I loved the lifestyle and the healthier attitudes to work/life balance.

Psychologically it was good to know I was a short plane ride from the UK and a cheap journey back. I think if I'd been further away I may have felt more homesick as returning to the UK would have been a bigger financial undertaking.

I missed crisps and crap snacks - nowhere else on earth has such a wide range of snack food flavours (although this may not be a good thing). I missed decent teabags and sausages and bacon.

For me the most frustrating thing was holidays though. Family expected me to use all my holiday travelling to the UK so I rarely had decent overseas holidays, and my UK holidays were spent fulfilling obligations to pop in to see elderly relatives. Exhausting and not a restful time away from work.

I never understand why people comment on the lifestyle in Europe as if it is one single country. There are huge differences between Finland , Bulgaria, Malta...and within each country. (Ok maybe not within Malta 😉).