The Dark Side of the Expat Life

If you are a member of Rendezvous’s global tribe, “home” might be where your apartment, your work or your belongings â€" or even your family and friends â€" are. But it might also be a place where language and culture are confounding. And deep down, despite the thrills and invigorating challenges of an experience abroad, more often than not, we know it’s not a place we’ll stay forever.

This dislocation â€" psychic as well as geographic â€" comes with inevitable lonelinesses, small and large. There are holidays with family missed, and life events â€" weddings, birthday parties, memorial services, births â€" that happen without you.

When we asked recently who studies abroad, who stays put and why one comment struck many Rendezvous readers as particularly pointed, and poignant:

Alex Ellsworth, a former New Yorker, wrote:

Studying and living abroad has been a fantastic journey spanning twelve years and three continents.

But . . . expat life has a dark side: getting stuck in limbo, neither here nor there. I’ve watched as peers back home have married, had children, bought houses, advanced in their careers. Meanwhile, most of us here in Seoul find ourselves living Peter Pan-like existences. I’m entering middle age with nothing tangible to show for it.

Except wonderful, rich memories, sure. But the future looms.

So should I go home pre-emptively and try to build a life there But therein lies the expat’s problem: there’s nothing back home for me now. Home is not “back home;” home is Seoul. My life is here.

Colleen, in London, responded:

Thanks for your thoughts Alex. I very much share your sentiments about being abroad long term. Today especially I’ve been struggling coming to terms with being away from home for so long. I wanted to move to England for most of my 20s after studying abroad in London for my last semester of undergrad. I completed my MSc here in the UK and really been able to do all that I set out to do. It hasn’t been easy, but it’s been worth it. I would never have the kind of self-reliance and strength of character that I do today if I would have stayed stateside. That’s the really lovely bit of being abroad.

I have been living in England for 3 years now. I haven’t seen my family in 2 years and it weighs heavily upon my heart. Email and skype can only do so much for you. I do worry whether I should return and put down roots permanently for once in my life.

I am about to start a new permanent job, but I worry a lot about finances, visas, finding love and starting a family. I wonder if it would be easier to get on with life if I were in the states. How do you know when to pack it in and head back

I think this kind of thought and uncertainty is good. And it’s nice to have a place to express the thoughts and feelings with other expats.

And Kayan, in Algiers, wrote:

I totally agree with you Alex.

However, we can transform ourselves into “ants”. If you really feel attached to your adopted country, maybe it’s better to think about how to settle down permanently by finding a long-term work contract or establishing a family.

My best Asian friend did that in Paris and he’s just so happy about his family and job.

But it also depends on luck. We’d found love almost at the same time, then I broke up with my partner 5 years later and became “rootless” again.

Now drifted to Africa in my middle 30s, I have exactly the same ominous feelings about my future as Alex wrote.

The Hague, where our contributor Chris Schuetze lives, has several global courts and international headquarters â€" and, therefore, to a large and multinational expat population. Many of them do not learn Dutch both because of the complexity of the language and the fact that virtually everyone speaks English.

Separate American, French, German, Polish, European (with English, Spanish and Dutch streams), international and Indonesian schools mean that not even children â€" who have a much easier time picking up language â€" have to learn Dutch beyond a few playground pleasantries. In such situations it’s no surprise that home abroad never becomes simply “home.”

Join the discussion. Have you left your native country, for work or study Do you plan to return Do you fear that you have stayed too long Have you figured out how to have many “homes” What’s the secret