I have lived in Germany for about 5 years and I'm planning to leave in an year or two. We have primary school aged kids, and I went on a German parenting forum the other day to ask a quick question about primary school assessment and ended up mentioning when asked that I was planning to leave Germany, and when pressed, admitted that I don't like it here. I then got loads of comments that I wasn't trying hard enough, that of course as a SAHM I must be unfulfilled and I should have done voluntary work and found hobbies so I could make friends and so on.
Maybe I should have done all that but I don't think it would have helped. I do know a few people from the kids being in school - nice people who I like - but hanging out with people while speaking German isn't fun to me at all, it's like a German class, and after an hour or so I'm knackered and desperate to leave. I was always quite an introvert and I think in the UK I got most of my positive social interactions with work colleagues and just as you deal with strangers through your day, saying hello to the lady at the checkout in Tesco's or whatever. Those kind of small scale interactions are really hard, I find, in a foreign language - if you misunderstand one word that's it, you've missed the person's wee funny comment, and the moment is lost. It's no biggie, but (especially in these corona times) when that happens every time you talk to someone it's a bit depressing.
Other than that, I just like being in the UK! I like the way it looks, I like the weather, the food - I like home. We went abroad in the first place because DH had to move for work. We'd already lived in his home country of Switzerland for a year a long while back and I'd hated it then and told him sorry but I want to settle in the UK, and he'd agreed, and then when our kids were little he lost his job and when he couldn't immediately find a new job he started looking in the German speaking world - when he found something I, well, I might have been able to veto it but he would have spent the entire rest of our lives complaining about how his career was hamstrung by the UK, so I thought let's move and at least if I have to give my job up I will see a lot more of the kids... and it's been OK as far as it goes but I didn't exactly arrive here excited about the prospect of life in Germany, I'm still not, I still like the UK much better and is lots of things from there. Is that U? Do we need to be positive about bloody everything? I've found in my younger life that I ended up doing jobs and courses and stuff because I thought it would be good for me and I often ignored the wee voice inside that went "this is shite" and just doubled down and tried harder, and all that ended up happening as a result is that I spent more time doing shit I don't like. AIBU in saying that sometimes you just don't enjoy some things and all the effort in the world won't significantly shift your feelings, and that's probably actually fine?