I left the U.K. in 1989. I still say “we” meaning where I come from. I never said “we” meaning all of us who live in Italy until Codogno got Red Zoned and effectively my town did too, since so many people had in person, regular contacts there.
”We” is now context dependent as a concept. But that was decades and a pandemic in the making.
My Italian has taken several hits over the years. OPOL, minor brain damage from a TIA caused by Covid, peri-menopause, age. I’m nowhere near as fluent as I used to be. I’m not the easiest of people to live with, so a decline in my ability to communicate perfectly with DH isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s hard to take offence at something unsaid because you could remember the right verb, misunderstood because you mangled it, or didn’t understand because your brain went on strike with some great timing. 😬
The things I got right I think were steering we’ll clear of the expat bubble and making sure our son was as bilingual and bicultural as I could possibly get him, given that we don’t live in my country, and we are not surrounded by my mother tongue.
In my own personal experience expat bubbles took my small irritations and amplified them into proper unhappiness. And I was desperately worried about a language/culture gap between my son and I, because I’d seen it happen in other families and the outcome was not what I wanted for myself. I think it took me about the first 15 years to work out why expat bubbles were a REALLY bad fit for me.
From 21 years old to now in my mid fifties I have been an immigrant. I always will be. I can’t and don’t want, to rid myself of the influence of my formative years, the national and micro-cultures I grew up in. I’ve shifted my thinking over time in some areas. But only once I’d reached a point when I didn’t feel defensive, or outvoted by the majority. I had to get past that in my own time.
I willingly chose being a fish out of water, and wouldn’t have it any other way. But it’s not always the easiest of paths. For the transplant, and the people who love them. It’s not always a “want to be here” versus “want to be back home” thing. It’s just ongoing growing pains of adjusting to not being in the pond you were born in. Life comes in stages and Big Events, being an immigrant (or being married to one, as DH would point out 🤣) can added a little extra on top of the struggle of adjusting to all the curve balls and inevitabilities of the march of time.
Golden Hour helps.
DH & I have one hour a day that is just us (for us it’s the first hour awake, coffee in bed, before the world, duty, kiddo etc. intrudes). I’m that grumpy and uncommunicative by the evening that we have to use dawn to get the best of each other. When there are differences, language, culture, news sources, priorities … life rain and daily shit can turn a gap into a gulf. Leaving one or both partners feeling isolated and misunderstood. The first Golden Hours were not shiny. athey are now though. Some days we might not say much. But often we get to remember what all the extra complication it was all for. And if nothing else we get to hold hands and watch another day get born, which helps me keep my wibbles in perspective.
Reconnecting as “us”, even with few words, let alone any analysis of underlying issues, can be really helpful in kick starting the process of tackling any unhappiness, immigrant status related or otherwise.