Stay or Go Home: How People Read the Question After Years Abroad

Some people stay because they moved to live somewhere, not to get away from somewhere.

By Neil Solomon · 4 min read

Picture a couple named Ruth and Daniel. They have lived abroad for seven years. One morning Ruth says out loud what both of them have been thinking: "Do we stay?"

Nobody forced the question. Nothing broke. It simply arrived, the way it seems to for many people. I want to lay out the different answers people give, because they are more varied than the usual "it worked" or "it failed".

The ones who stay, and why

Some people stay because they moved to live somewhere, not to get away from somewhere. One writer with ten years in Portugal put it in that spirit. If you left your old home because you were fleeing it, the new place has to carry a heavy load. If you moved to build a life, it carries less.

In Malta, one retiree said ten months in that it beats Spain by a mile. I would not take that as a ranking. I read it as a person whose daily life fit the place. Someone else in Spain may feel the same about their town.

One person who came back to France after a spell in England said she felt rooted again. Going home did not feel like going back. It felt like finding something she had put down.

Another writer in the Netherlands described being hurt by a hard experience and still choosing to stay. Her point was that no country is a perfect place. I think this is a useful way to read the question. If every country has rough edges, the question is which rough edges you can live with.

The ones who leave

A writer who spent ten years in Germany decided to go home. She said home felt different after so long, and she was ready for it. The word that came to my mind was resolve, not defeat.

In Hungary, someone with nine years in the city of their heart saw no future there. Their goodbye was bittersweet. They loved it and could not stay. That is a very human mix.

In Italy, a seaside town no longer felt affordable to one writer, and the early glow faded. Another Italy resident reached year seven with a restlessness she called an itch. The itch did not mean the place was wrong. It meant she had changed, or the place had.

In Ireland, one writer wrote about roads taken and roads not taken. I read that as a reminder that the staying-or-leaving question often brings up the whole life, not only the address.

The ones in between

In Czechia, a long-time resident said the city never lets you go. She had tried leaving in her mind many times. A person who arrived in Lithuania thinking it was a stopover said, four years later, that she may stay for good, yet does not feel she belongs. That is a third answer: staying without being sure you belong.

How the answers differ

What I take from this

Staying and leaving are both ordinary. The people who seem most at peace did not wait for a crisis. They noticed the feeling early, said it out loud, and looked at it. That is hard to do alone, which is why Ruth said it to Daniel.

"I think I could stay," Daniel says. "But I want to know why."

"Then let's write the reasons down."