AIBU - living in England completely insufferable?

[hellosunshine5]

As per the title really, I loved living here for a few years but I now just find the whole country completely insufferable.

Does anyone else feel the same?

For what it’s worth, I’m English and was born here to English parents who then emigrated to NZ when I was 8. Lived over there until I returned to England when I was 20 to get to know my extended family and have an adventure etc. I ended up meeting someone and settling - South East for reference.

Fast forward 7 years and I am really struggling to tolerate life here any longer. I’m making plans to leave, but they’re obviously on hold for the foreseeable.

My reasons?

• I work hard in a fairly well paid job that I commute to in London, but I can still only reasonably afford to live in a tiny one bedroom apartment with no outside space. I see my friends from back home in similar financial situations buying 4 bedroom new build family homes with massive gardens.

• England is over crowded. I find it unbearable to have to circle my local supermarket car park multiple times (whatever time of the day) to find a space. Such simple things in life shouldn’t be so difficult.

• I hate the competitiveness of life over here. Everyone trying to have the newest car, the best holidays, the nicest house, the best schools for their kids, even if they can’t actually afford it. I think people elsewhere in the world are much more humble and happy with their lot.

So, AIBU? Are you genuinely happy living here? Appreciate it’s a difficult question for those that have never lived elsewhere.

I have lived in NZ for many many years, and a husband is a Kiwi too. We moved back to London 10 years ago.
All our Kiwi friends who moved to London when we did eventually moved back home when they got kids. Some who moved back 2-3 years ago are still struggling to adjust and some have since moved to other countries as they found NZ too small...I don’t know where your mates are buying these big houses but Auckland/Hamilton is insanely expensive to buy. Small 2 bed units going for over a million in Auckland.
I can understand where you are coming from though and there are so many nice aspects of the NZ culture/society but I think you might be too homesick to remember so many not so nice aspects of it.
Maybe go back home for a while and trial it out? You can always come back.

We are not moving back (not at this stage) as we found a wonderful area in London where we live and that’s something we couldn’t do in NZ.

I hate the competitiveness of life over here. Everyone trying to have the newest car, the best holidays, the nicest house, the best schools for their kids, even if they can’t actually afford it.

I've lived here all my life, 70 years, and never mixed with people like you described or known any very well. I suppose it depends whereabouts you live and maybe what you do for a living, your interests, etc. Anyone who was very much so inclined would seem to be quite shallow and I prefer depth. I wouldn't say anything because I know there is always more to a person than the image they portray and anyway who am I to judge? However when it comes to people you live amongst and regularly mix with, there are plenty around who aren't anything like that.

Move out of London!

Life is good in the countryside.

I live in the north of the country in a small town, I have a reasonably sized family home which I bought for a good price, so I think your problem is London, it's a really overcrowded expensive part of the country (an amazing city though 😍) would you consider a move to a different part of the country?

Serendipitty- I would not listen to such tosh, I am learning welsh, sing the welsh national anthem and work hard in the community. Each to their own opinion and fair enough, but I love Swansea and I feel very humbled to live very modestly amongst such friendly people and beautiful coastlines. I wouldn't live anywhere else.

The UK is pursuing a rather aggressive form of capitalism, and obviously London is the engine of this. Mindless consumption is the main driver of capitalism in England and this is particularly stark in London.
You can just check out of it, though. I just ignore it. There is so much of England and English people that I do love; in particular English gardens, English humour, baking etc.
Move out of London, or go home to NZ.

Some posters are really taking this personally 😂

I could never live in the area of the country you do. England is such a diverse place, whatever the type of area you would like, there will be somewhere here that would suit. Personally, living in the SE and commuting to London would be my own personal hell. I live in a small market town in Yorkshjre with a thriving independent scene and a progressive streak, commutable to two major cities for work. Green space and hills on my doorstep. I love it here. But NZ is also lovely. There's good in most places.

I think you're home sick

I think YABU. We moved back last year from a few years in Australia (my home country) and England, even with its many, many down sides, is a far less materialistic and more community minded country than Australia. NZ is obviously a different place to Australia! But we moved back to London because we missed feeling a part of something bigger than ourselves. In Australia is felt very much like every man for himself. And there's no way we could have afforded the sort of house in Sydney which we own in London. I know property in NZ is bonkers too, so would you actually be able to afford the fancy 4 bed house over there? Or do your friends have houses like that because they've climbed the ladder?

Since the late 2000s in particular, I have watched England as a whole get more and more racist, narrow-minded, materialistic, overcrowded, reactionary, vainglorious, short-termist in the extreme, and utterly bamboozled by what the mainstream media tells people to think, especially the BBC. Recently, Brexit, the General Election, and now COVID-19 have had my jaw hanging open pretty much all the time.

It's like there's this underlying faith that we're all suddenly going to revert to a 1950s Enid Blyton world with lashings of ginger beer that probably never really existed anyway. (Or only for a very small percentage of the population, who would probably be all right if an asteroid hit us tomorrow....)

My only (small) consolation at the moment is that I'm not in America.

I've really wished I had emigrated when I was still young enough to do so - and the countries I mainly considered were New Zealand and Canada, also the US (but that would only have been as a stepping stone to Canada and there are only a handful of states that would have appealed). If we're ever allowed out again, remaining options are now Scotland and possibly Scandinavia although God knows when we'll be in a position to move to either.

Having said that, as others have pointed out, there are some lovely parts of England, but you usually have to go a LONG way north, LONG way east, or LONG way south and west to find them. There are lovely parts of London too, but you really do need money to be able to live there without compromising your health or sanity.

YABU (a bit). Living here is so expensive (no idea how it compares to NZ) and a people are so sodding attention seeking and focused on what they have. The weather is crap in general, apart from the last few weeks.
There are some lovely areas in the UK however. It’s all very well though, saying move but cheaper areas are generally cheaper for a reason and have less good employment prospects.

I have said so many times in the last few weeks to DH that I wish we were 20 years younger and could emigrate. I’d have loved to at least tried Australia or NZ.

I agree it is overcrowded OP, half the population would be better but I guess we cant just make 35 million people emigrate to create space for the rest of us!

If you love NZ then definitely move back, I visited there and it was a beautiful country.

My son refuses to go outside M25 - he says he is not ''in tune'' with the mentality outside London area.

Well considering London is pretty much the financial capital of the world, I can completely see why it’s so expensive.

I’ll be honest, I don’t even know what the capital of NZ is?! 🙈 it’s not on the world stage and doesn’t have the clout the UK has. It doesn’t contribute in the same way the UK (particularly London) does.
Im pretty sure most people in the world could tell you the Prime minister of the UK and the Capital. I don’t think the sand could be said for NZ.

I’m sure it’s a lovely country but it doesn’t have the history that Britain has.

It’s overcrowded because it’s a financial hub and one of the wealthiest cities in the world.... It’s not necessarily a true representation of the UK as a whole.

Whilst I think NZ would be great to visit. Personally- I couldn’t live somewhere with no history!!

Mmm. It’s not a bad country, The lovely, funny people with humour are the best ( lots on here). The wanky opinionated bores are prolific too. But now we are all squished together. Increasingly hard to find your people,
Impossible to find a house (SE)

I am from the UK but live in South Africa...

The UK is overcrowded but it does really depend where you live...re: materialistic values - I think it’s much worse where I am than where I grew up...I went to a private school in the South East of England..

We are in pretty much full lockdown here and we’re not sure when things will improve...things are pretty dire here...I cringe at the attitudes of a lot (not all) of people in the UK...you really don’t know how good you have it

I would much rather be in the UK at this moment than SA or NZ (but NZ does not appeal to me at all...)..

London is overcrowded because it is both the administrative and financial capital of the UK. Whereas many other countries have their administrative and financial capitals in different cities. London is like a cancer in that it thrives at the expense of the rest of the country.

Something Ardern - Jacinta? Economist has been singing her praises recently. Capital is Auckland.

I think you’re going to be a bit disappointed about the future extent of the UK’s ‘clout’. Nor is London the financial centre of the world now.

The capital of NZ is Wellington.

Or Wellington. I forget, but they seem to punch above their weight down there.

The fact that UK citizens are unable to name the capital of NZ is a more damning indictment of the country's general knowledge and education system than it is of NZ's clout.
NZ has dealt with CV far better than the UK. The latter is the object of considerable shock worldwide.

The UK's clout has been waning for some time. Brexit and the refusal to honour the Good Friday Agreement are exacerbating that.

I used to live abroad in a few different countries in Northern Europe. Houses are so much larger there. I’ve put YABU because you described England as insufferable. It sounds as if you’re homesick. The competitiveness depends from area to area. Maybe you need to move somewhere more laid back and less frantic.

England/UK is a big place. Apart from weather, you can recreate New Zealand life further out of London in the country or a cheaper area of uk

NZ house prices finally caught up with and surpassed Australia, the UK, for unaffordability in about 2012-14. Your friends purchasing 4-br houses have not been the standard NZ 1st home buyer.

I agree house prices in NZ have jumped too high - but Auckland is the worst place for trying to buy property (along with tourist spots).
However not everyone lives in Auckland and first home buyers can get lovely houses in other areas as long as they have two incomes.