Help needed explaining why I need to return home.

[Snowoctopus]

Please could anyone who is in the same position help me to explain to my partner why I want to return to the UK?
We moved to NZ with our 3 year old son last year and agreed to be here for 5 years. I cannot remain here for that long and know that I definitely want us to return home.
There are many reasons, the global pandemic has really got me as now it’s so much harder to get back. I want to bring my son up in my own country. I need to be closer to my friends and family.
I am so incredibly isolated here. So these are some of the reasons and if you could please comment with your own reasons and experiences I’d be so grateful.
I’m not sure if I can convince my partner to return but I have to try!
Many thanks in advance.

I have been in your situation and I saw your other thread. I too agreed to giving it a go for a couple of years and got stuck there. Once you live there and your dc are habitually resident then you can't take them back to live in the uk.

Your situation seems ore difficult than my own as my dh wasn't from Australia originally and our relationship hadn't broken down.

In the end he just realised that I was hugely unhappy without my family and we moved to the UK. I absolutely hated the fact that my dc grew up without any extended family. The catalyst was my mum not being well and ending up in hospital and we decided to move. My dh does believe that Australia is a 'better' place to be and we would be having some sort of super charged lifestyle over there but he loves me and I was miserable.

It was a big problem for us getting my dh into the uk as you can't just bring a non-EU spouce in, even if you have British children. You have to come first and get a permanent job and earn over the threshold for six months. So that was another spanner in the works!

We are always going to be in a situation where one of us is not happy with where we are living.

https://www.gov.uk/uk-family-visa

Thanks so much for your reply and for sharing to experience with me.

Hi, NZ can be a very lonely place, and it’s so easy to get isolated, especially with Covid-19, people won’t be as sociable as normal and worried about mixing with new people. People either love it or hate it there. In some ways it’s very English but at the same time a whole world away from the UK culturally.

I can totally understand why you would want to move back to the UK. I lived in NZ for a very long time and it’s home to me, I had no desire to move back until we had children but if I’m honest I’d move back tomorrow if I could.

Moving to a new country only to have everything shut down on you a short time later is very different to what you had planned when you moved there. Have you spoken to your other half about this? I’ve known many English people who, like you, couldn’t stand being so far away from family and moved back home straight away. But also lots of others who said it was the best thing they ever did x

I’m in a slightly different situation at the moment. My hubby has a job in Ireland which he’s due to start in a few weeks. Under normal circumstances I’d be jumping at the opportunity, spending weekends and holidays there looking for a place to live, but Covid 🤬 means it’s not possible to do that. People keep saying get the house packed up and go, but after my 2 primary aged children missing 6 months of school and just settling my preschooler into preschool I’m not keen to just pack up and go with all this isolation going on. My husband understands so is going to commute (has its own problems with quarantine/isolation periods), at least till the end of the school year so we can figure out what’s what.

If I was going to give you any advice it would be see the summer out in NZ before you make any decisions. The last thing I’d want to do is come back to an English winter, especially in the middle of a pandemic. Right now NZ is far safer than here and you may feel better over the summer months there x

Can I ask where you live in NZ?

Good luck x

Bid876 thanks so much for your reply. We are living rurally in the lower half of the North Island. The isolation is a huge contributing factor, as is the distance from friends and family.
I have found people here to be friendly on quite a superficial level but not super welcoming. You’re absolutely right about the timing of our arrival and right now I would love to plan move back next Spring... thanks again for yo reply and for sharing your own experience.

I'm not sure from your post whether your spouse is a Kiwi? Irrespective it doesn't feel like you have given yourself much of an opportunity to settle in?

I live in the UK and my parents and siblings in Ireland and while it is nowhere near the distance in many respects it might as well be. Both parents are vulnerable so visiting without a total lockdown 14 days quarantine is not feasible especially with two children in tow. "Holiday" from hell really. So I just wanted to say that the reality right now is that the grass is far from greener.

Weirdly it's much easier to make friends when your kids start school or you are working and not running off home every evening to a childcare pick up. Particularly hard to integrate in a close knit community too sometimes.

So what are you going to do over the kiwi summer to feel like you've given it your best shot? And at least not wasted all the money getting there?

I'm not sure now is the time to move. I'd give it another year and see how you go. I wouldn't be too impressed if I were your partner. You've not really given it a chance. I'd say agree a timeline of at least two years and then reassess.

@Snowoctopus No wonder you feel isolated, NZ is not as compact as the UK, it takes a while to get use to the time it takes to get anywhere, even worse if your rural. It’s different if you have grown up there. I also understand what you mean, Kiwis in General are very friendly but it’s a different kind of friendliness/relationship than UK friends, it’s hard to explain, it’s that very similar to English culture but at the same time different thing. Have you tried online expat forums? I had an ex flat mate from the UK, he had a great bunch of friends he initially met through an expat forum, a mixture of UK and Kiwi. Also as someone else mentioned, it’s a whole different story once school starts, your life gets busier, you meet other parents, even busier when they start doing sports and joining clubs x

Bid876 thank you for understanding. We are not very close to Wellington which is where I have found expat forums and events but I’ll have more of a look locally again.
A friend suggested starting a group for international parents which I am considering.
I just really, really want to go home!

The first year is always the hardest. Don't move back. You will regret it. The UK is going downhill since corona. People are becoming more selfish and nasty as a society.

To answer your question Treadsoftly my partner is a Kiwi but he has British citizenship.
If (when) we move back it will be to the Highlands of Scotland.
It is hard to explain how very isolated I feel here. My father only had another year or so to live and is in Scotland, it’s so incredibly hard to know that I may only see him once more before he dies.
In many ways life here in NZ should be much better but I cannot shake this intense homesickness, the world feels so much bigger since the pandemic started.

@Snowoctopus

I completely understand where you are coming from.
I'm currently in the Bay of Plenty area in NZ and I'm also really homesick.
I'm originally from the UK and my partner is kiwi. We met when he was over in the UK and have a house together etc. We agreed to come to NZ for 2 years to let his family see our children and because I wanted to see what life was like it here. We have a 16 month old, born in the UK and a 3 month old born in NZ. We have rented out our house in the UK and aren't set to return until march 2022. I'm on maternity leave from work followed by a career break.

I just managed to get to NZ right as the border closed due to Covid. I was pregnant and it was the most stressful time ever.

I'm so homesick. I miss my family so much. I miss the UK and the lifestyle. NZ really is a beautiful but isolated country. I feel guilty too as my children are my parents first grandchildren. They were hoping to come out here to visit several times but with Covid I think it's unlikely I will see them the whole time I'm here.

I spend a lot of days on my own with my children as I'm a stay at home mum. I've no car. I've tried so hard to make new connections and friends but it's hard. I've joined the local playgroup and met up with a few of my partner's friends wives but it's more polite chat than anything else. I've even joined bumble for friends but had no luck. It's the loneliness that I struggle with the most and some days I don't have any adult conversation. The time difference is lonely too with the UK.
I'm counting down the months until we return to the UK. So yes, I can understand how you feel.

Nel246 oh that sounds so incredibly difficult, especially just arriving as lockdown started!
We are over in Manawatu, but if you’d like to be in touch then I’d be very happy to message and maybe chat sometimes... my days are usually very lonely too, just with my 3 year old.
I have made a few friends but all except from one feels very superficial and they don’t seem very interested in actually getting to know me, it’s hard to explain properly really.

@Snowoctopus yes I'd be happy to message and chat further ☺️

How do we go about it?

Mel, I sent you a message on here yesterday, did you receive it?