Is there an Expiry Date on Expat Life?

How do you know when it's time to go?

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

I’ve found myself feeling tired over the past couple of years - tired of expat life and wondering if it’s time to leave. But the more I’ve sat with these thoughts, the more I’ve realised it’s not just about expat life - it’s about life itself.

As expats, we can be quick to see everything that’s wrong with our current country, circumstances, life, or even the world and use those as an excuse to leave. It’s easy to blur the lines and decide it’s time to go as we do have an alternative waiting: a home country to return to, with all the comfortable familiarities we were raised with.

It’s very easy to throw in the towel when things get hard, but it’s also easier to forget what the reality of life is back home.

The reality is that life overseas is different, but life back home is by no means perfect. The truth is that travel and life overseas changes us, so returning ‘home’ can present its own challenges when our own mindset has moved on, but our ideas of what home represents have been frozen in time.

What happens when the idea of the home you long for no longer exists in the same way? This is exactly why the term ‘reverse culture shock’ exists and is much discussed and documented.

So how do you know when it’s time to go?

Is there a point of no return?

And I never thought I’d start to wonder this. But things have changed.

After nearly 20 years away from the country I was raised in I have found myself only wanting to return to that home each summer. And that is a strange thing really, since my family home has long gone, long since been sold off to new owners after the passing of my parents. My ties to that country have loosened but somehow that’s made them stronger in my heart.

Maybe there just comes a time when the novelty of being overseas wears off?

But expat life teaches you things you might never learn otherwise. It can be hard - despite the appearance of easy living and glamour it offers a unique set of challenges for sure: being overseas with little or no family around you - the only available support network coming from close friends you make or help you can pay for, missing important family and friendship milestones back home, children growing up as third culture kids, the constant revolving door of friendships as the people around you come and go…

But what if your heart says it’s time, you’ve had enough - but it’s still just not that simple? Your head says you’re better off here, but your heart just can’t shake the feeling that it wants to be there.

And everyone will have different reasons for leaving but for me, it just doesn’t add up until life here truly stops making sense. You have to weigh your own pros and cons.

Is it all still worth the sacrifices? For me, yes - despite all the doubts that can creep in over time, I think it all still is. For multiple reasons I can list in my head. (Seeing so much crime right on my doorstep during my most recent visit to London also helped focus my mind!)

But when life here no longer makes sense - emotionally, financially, or practically - then it may be time.

If there is a reason to leave - political instability (as happened to several friends in recent years who were forced to flee Sudan), to be closer to aging parents, forced job loss and so on - then in those situations it clearly makes sense.

But until the answer to the question becomes an unequivocal “no,” we’re here to stay.

Logic also reminds us that moving doesn’t magically fix everything - when you move, your problems move with you, just swapping one set of challenges for another and likely uncovering new ones you hadn’t expected.

The pondering of the ideas behind this post eventually led me to an epiphany of sorts: that expat life is really about a shift in balance between heart and head and in making the best of what we have, wherever we may be.

It may not be perfect, but we can find ways to adjust, to find our own joy and carve out our own happiness - and that is true of life wherever we may be.

Expat life evolves - life itself evolves and so do we. So maybe the question isn’t whether expat life has an expiry date, but whether we can continue to find life within it.