To suddenly want to return to England

[Brightgirldeadtown]

Mid 40’s now, I’ve lived abroad since my 20’s and travelled lots. Now properly settled with Dh and Dd etc.
I've recently been hit with an overwhelming urge to return to my hometown to live..my family don’t even live there now, Dh’s do, but that’s not necessarily a good thing 🙈some old friends but doubt we’d be close nowadays.
Is this a mid life crisis thing? I keep getting upset randomly in the middle of the day thinking about my *Old life. I also have a strange sadness about Dd not experiencing the same upbringing… should I return? Has anyone else done this?

Peri-menopause can play serious games with your head.

I doubt you'll find many people on MN saying nice things about the UK. It's not the done thing. But I love it here. Everything is so easy, so many lovely things to see, people are so kind and friendly and helpful. I love shopping, going away for day trips, weekends, short stays. All very reasonable on a tight budget. Lots of cafes and eateries and people enjoying themselves. I really love it and feel lucky to live here.
Having said that, you have a settled life there and we often long for something a bit different and build up rosy pictures of how life could be. You might enjoy life more here in the uk or you might not, but it's a lot of upheaval to find out when there's no guarantee.

I live in the same place I grew up and feel sad I can't give my DC the same childhood I had growing up. It's not a place thing, it's a time thing. I often tell them about Sundays in the 80s where the options were go out on your bikes or play/read indoors. But there is no way in hell I'd let my kids go off on their bikes with the state of the roads and traffic now, far too dangerous. Just a small example but shows what I mean.
I've never lived anywhere else but but really think about what you are hankering for, of it's the past, it's not the same.

@Aquamarine1029 - Yep I suspect you are correct

The England in your imagination may not marry up with reality.

DH was having this conversation with a friend from his home village last week. They have 2 friends that have lived in Australia for 25 years.

When they speak, the Oz friends seem to think that everyone is in touch with the same people that they were 25 years ago and are doing the same things.

No, they are not! A lot has changed. People have left, drifted apart or fallen out. It is all very different.

I recognise the experience you are having, although in my case I live in London and sometimes have the urge to move back to Dublin, even though I love London...but at the same time I miss Dublin...

I think the panic comes from the realisation that you cannot go back. Even if I physically moved us back, I have been gone 20 years - I have built a life here and not there. I have 20 years worth of friendships here and not there, work networks, things I would not be able to replace in Dublin because I am in a different stage of life now. And yet in some ways I have never been more tempted because of Brexit and the UK being in a bit of a shit phase.

I think it is just part of the experience of emigrating, especially when you emigrated accidentally and didn't expect it to be forever.

@TheYearOfSmallThings Yes, that’s it, I didn’t expect it to be forever, but just sort of stayed. I had a similar feeling mid-30’s, but then Dd came along a few years later and then covid and we would’ve been sort of stuck even if we wanted to leave. I think a big issue is the language (we speak it but it’s still tricky to be fluent completely) Dd finds it overwhelming at school and I know finds it so difficult, many friends outside school speak English but I feel so guiltily for chucking her in the deep end. It’s made me start to think about all the lovely traditions I had in British primary school and how she’d so love it and would really thrive. It’s a very outdoors life and I know in reality much better for her in that respect but I don’t know

I am mid 40's too. Also had experiences living in different countries before coming to and settling in UK. Lately, since the pandemic, I also have the strong urge to "go" back home. I am not Bristish (not holding citizenship, only permanent residency), DH and DD are. I think it is a bit unfair to uproot them, though; as they're both happy here. But I know that once I go back, I will miss bits and bits about UK. Perhaps because of pandemic, it made me realized that the freedom of travel is not as robust as I thought it would be.

I came back and don’t regret it. Yes, essentially England is getting worse in tangible ways and is likely to continue to get worse. On paper it is not a good move. But for me there’s something about home that is intangibly better than anyway else, just because it’s home.

I think you need to feel at home. I’ve found it and value it.

I'm from the UK and haven't lived there for 15 years. Two of my children were born here. Outside our four walls everything, including the children's friends, clubs, sports etc as well as school and my work are in the local language. I suspect that if your DD was born in your adopted country and is overwhelmed at local school your mostly English speaking social circle is the problem (unless she's neurodiverse or has any processing issues).

Is her life outside school hours all in English?

I wouldn't describe it as a midlife crisis. It's just natural. We're a tribal creature, and we need to belong. I have lived abroad, but no matter how much I enjoyed it, I could never settle. I always felt like an outsider. This island is a part of me, and the Brits are my 'tribe' – for better or worse.

I understand exactly how you feel. My husband and I had been away for 8 years before.our daughter came along. We stayed abroad as a family for a while but (when dd was 3) moved back, and I love it.
I understand all the ways England has gone downhill but have had that deep feeling of "home" since we returned which is worth everything. For us we also have elderly parents and being near them and seeing our daughter making a wonderful relationship with them is just incredible.
It might not be for ever (or for everyone!) but I really wouldn't swap the peace of being back for anything right now.
Good luck with whatever you decided.

I’m mid-40s too, living in London and I miss home every day. My DCs are still young, but I can’t wait to leave.

I’ve lived abroad in various countries since I was 30. I also just kind of stayed in London (and I do regret it). It’s not so much that I dislike it here, although there are things do dislike. It’s that I still feel like a fish out of water. I want my country’s cultural, historical, political reference points. I want the lifestyle back home that is utterly unavailable here. I miss my family terribly.

My children are dual citizens and I will be encouraging them to move back to my home country at first opportunity. I’m already making plans with a property purchase for retirement. It keeps me going. Eye on the prize and all that.

Why don’t you go earlier? Out of interest

It depends where you are now and what you would be losing there and gaining in the UK.

I am in an ex-Pat group here and many people talk of wanting to “go home” but the things they miss aren’t there anymore. Some of them left the UK 50+ yeas ago. It’s just nostalgia for the happy days of youth. That’s normal.

I like to visit the UK and spend a few weeks getting my fix of fish and chips, blustery weather, family members, TV shows, etc, But I wouldn’t move back.

MY DP and their father has a relatively specialised job in London and he doesn’t want to go. It’s caused a lot of conflict between us in the past. I obviously can’t leave my children and he would never legally allow me to take them back home without him (something I would also never want to do).

If I was the only decision maker, we would all already be gone. 🙂

Ah op, I get these feeling sometimes too. I'm in Germany and as much as I miss some aspects of UK life / culture and sometimes wish I was raising my children there, I just can't justify giving up the healthcare, the clean streets, the free higher education. In general, I'm happy here though. I did have a burning desire to move back home after not visiting for 2 years due to the pandemic then I went back for a month this summer. It was such an amazing summer but then I felt ready again to go back. It's so different now to what even I remember (I'm early 30s and have been away for 12 years).

Oh right that’s hard. I know many who have moved from my home country and sometimes one wants to move back and not the other. Luckily dh is easy going and probably would but I prefer to stay atm, although I wouldn’t encourage my Dc to live across the world as you do miss out on a lot.

@PorridgewithQuark Its a mix I’d say, as in her gymnastics is in the local language obviously, but everyone speaks English tbh. Our social circle is families from all over the world but mainly all speak English to each other. We try to reach her at home and read books to her in the language here etc and she can count and knows a fair few phrases but it’s still hard for her

I've done this. I've always loved traveling and we were planning to settle in Australia after living in several other countries. After the death of my one remaining family member back in the UK, I found myself increasingly longing to return to the area where I grew up. We did and I haven't regretted it for one second. Our earning ability and quality of life is vastly superior to what we had in any other country we lived in so overall, it was an excellent decision for us.

I'm in my mid-40s and I want to move back to my home town but it's two hours away by train, not another country! My parents still live in the area I grew up in, as does my brother and his family. There are poor job prospects and social problems there but I still feel the pull. I think it's very normal, but I am very aware that the grass isn't greener.

That's really hard for her - she's having the same experience as she would if she'd only recently moved rather than the experience of a child born in the country.

Tbh it does also explain why you still feel as though England is home.

I know "integrating" is pushed and it's tempting to push back, but if you're realistically likely to stay permanently and send your child to local school for the next ten plus years you need to be 90% integrated otherwise you're making your child's life harder than it needs to be. I arrived here pregnant and with a small toddler only knowing a few phrases but really had to throw myself into picking up the language and building a local (not expat) network as we're not in a city. This was incredibly, intensely hard but I must say paid off as my children were absolutely (age appropriate) native speaker fluent before they even started preschool age 3 and teachers were always surprised to learn they were bilingual.

I did it more by luck than judgement so I'm not taking credit! However I've since met people living in English speaking international bubbles in the next city who's children have not coped with local school and had to be moved to extortionately expensive international schools. It's much harder for children whose lives are 90% in English to cope in a school system not in English.

Adults who's social networks are all international also seem to remain in limbo identifying their country of origin as "home" unless they're very wealthy expats on the "circuit" - which is a different experience again.

I think, to be honest, you might have hit a "crunch" point where you have to stop sitting in the "just visiting" international bubble and decide to throw yourself properly into integrating (local almost everything especially for your child, especially doing everything to cultivate local non English speaking friends for her) or return to England. Unless you can afford to be a full on "expat" and pay international school fees.

It's not really fair to keep up the hovering type of not really sure whether you're staying so not really integrating thing once you have a child in the local school system.

@PorridgewithQuark We are integrated and as I say, we speak the language and have friends locally, but our main mix is with international families from everywhere and we’re in a tourist area where it’s frustrating as most local people speak English also. It’s not for want of us not integrating at all

Brightgirldeadtown if that's the case how has your daughter managed to be born in the country but only be able to count and know a few phrases in the community language? How old is she?

It does put the question of whether you should return to England in a different light anyway.

The general feeling of whistfullness and nostalgia could just be the time of year or your age (I'm just a bit older and you do reassess and question a bit in your mid 40s if you're not doing"the expected" I think, plus children moving to a slightly new life phase and being less dependent, sometimes feeling you're not where you should be career wise or financially and it's getting late to do much about etc. it can all lead to wondering whether you should make a big change before it feels "too late"). Moving country isn't necessarily a solution any more than having an affair or throwing it all in and travelling might be for someone still in their hometown.

However it does sound as though your daughter being overwhelmed by school would actually be better in the UK, for the concrete and objective reason that she's struggling because of the language.