Homesick

[Hearmeroar2]

So we have committed to moving back to the UK in mid 2024, which is something I have wanted since we moved here 12 years ago, having never settled. I'm of course delighted, but finding its making my homesickness worse! I just want to go now, I don't want to wait any longer. Reason we "have to" is that my spouse has sold his business and is tied into staying until mid 2023, if he leaves earlier we get a large financial penalty. He's half heartedly said I could go before him but we have children and it would be awful for them to leave him. So, wise mumsnetters, how do I get thought another year? We have a lot of fun activities planned over the next year, my work is busy and i enjoy it, but still, if you offered me a plane ticket back tomorrow....

We are moving back in 3 weeks after just19 months in Denmark- lots of reasons, mainly practical ones related to work and elderly parent. I get how you feel, once your heart isn't in it it's difficult. I also feel very co dependent as we work together butcwithout family and friends to just pop away too for a few days without significant expense-- is it 2 years for you or 1 - as your post is a bit confusing

Oops, mid 2023 that should have read. I think you're absolutely right - my head is no longer here at all...

Have you got some trips home planned? Do you know what you are going back to... house, job, friends, school?

If your husband has sold his business, does that mean that you are flush for cash? Can you spend a bit of cash doing things you won't be able to do when you move home?

Oh gosh, I had this BADLY. Never settled where we were living, and couldn't wait to leave. Actually left before dh in the end, I was so sad over there. Looking back, I wish I'd made a list of things I actually liked about where we were. Places, shops, cafes, foods, people, sights... anything that I wouldn't be able to get in the UK. Then I'd have focused on those things. Instead I focused on packing, selling stuff I didn't want to bring back, looking into uk stuff for my return, and it just made it feel very... negative, I guess. Like I was living in the future not the present.

Are there enough good things that you can try to do 2 or 3 happy things a week, and really savour them?

Is tough though, I do feel your pain :(

Really get where you’re coming from. I am the same but the other way, have lived for over 20 years in the UK and we’re planning a move to my home country in 2023. We started planning this already a year ago and it’s nearly all I think about. I have irrational fears that something will happen to scupper my plans, like someone will get cancer or become paralysed or even that I will die just when I am so nearly there… at the same time I am actually really attached to the UK after so long here, and particularly beautiful sights can make me think “How can I leave this” and I get a kind of reverse homesickness. These feelings change several times a day, it’s exhausting!

Yes, I'm going back in the summer with the kids for a few weeks to see family and check out the area(s) we think we might live in. We're leaning towards returning to where we left - neither of us are originally from there but it was a lovely area, just a but isolated in terms of transport connections. Im also going to check out two other areas we dont know as well for comparison. We have friends and could get good jobs there. We're not flush per se, but it will hooefully pay off the kirtgage and give us a very different quality of life back in the uk.

I feel like you can see my life, and you're absolutely right. I'm living in the future, thinking already about sorting/packing/selling and need to get back to the present and enjoy what we actually have just now. I'm usually quite good at that, I just think the lure of home being so close is making it harder to block out, if you know what I mean?

Same! I went for a glorious long hike with the kids today and sat on a perfect beach with them. It makes me wonder if I'll regret all this, or worse, they will! I also have fears something will go wrong but tbh I just have to squash and ignore them or ny mental state would really fall off a cliff. Good luck with your move back!

You are me 1-2 years ago! We went to therapy in 2020 to talk about whether to stay or go because we just couldn’t talk about it anymore, by the end of the summer we’d agreed to try to make the move home but knew we needed various things in place and needed more info on others. But I was desperate to just act on it.

2021 ratcheted it all up - we got citizenship in March (just felt like the right thing to do in case we or D.C. want to return), DH got a new (100% remote) job and I broke into an industry I’ve been chasing for ages but thanks to the pandemic can also work anywhere.

last summer we went home on a reccy as well and honestly spending 3-4 weeks looking at schools and areas and talking about it constantly put paid to the homesickness and actually I came back wanting to enjoy here.

now we are 8 weeks away from moving, all our friends here know, we have a bucket list we’re ticking off, our house is in escrow and things are moving very fast and I wake up on our glorious mornings (we have sunshine something like 300 days a year) totally panicked over whether we’re doing the right thing. Like PP the emotional rollercoaster is exhausting!!

time flies, make a bucket list, get the kids on board and excited and start preparing for reverse culture shock!

Thanks @Kobani. It sounds like an exciting time for you! We're going over in the summer to recce some of the areas we're interested in, and maybe see some schools. That feels VERY exciting, but the actual move date still feels too far away. I know when i look back on it thought this time will have flown by and I just need to make the most of it. Kids dont know yet but when we tell them there will be lots of scope for projects. Good luck in your move!