At the start of the pandemic I moved a 2 hour drive away from my hometown to be with my boyfriend (31m). I’ve been working from home and it was easier to move in with my boyfriend and work from his home. It was only meant to be temporary but lockdown lasted about a year and I ended up officially moving in.
Fast forward to now. I am so isolated from my friends and family. It’s such an effort to go and see them and I often can’t be involved in last minute plans due to the distance. I’ve drifted from friendships cos I can’t catch up with them as often.
My dad recently died and I again feel so alone and isolated. I have been able to make any friends in my new area because I’m shy and we’ve been in lockdown for most of it. My boyfriends friends and wives are all at different life stages than me with children and I haven’t been able to spend much time to get to know them anyway because of lockdowns.
My boyfriend is currently unable to change jobs so moving back to my area isn’t an option at the moment.
TL DR; I really am so unhappy and depressed living here. I want to move back home but it will probably lead to the end of my relationship. I don’t know what to do.
6 comments
It’s ok to move back home if that’s what you want to do. If your relationship doesn’t survive the move then perhaps it’s not meant to be?
I’m sorry about your father’s passing, that must be really tough for you
Two hours isn’t really a long drive and it’s fairly normal to drift apart from the close childhood friends and family as one gets older (at least to a healthy degree)
Making last minute plans isn’t important. What does become important is being able to make the big life events—birthdays, holidays, etc., or planned events—sports games, concerts with the friends, etc.
It’s also important to make the place that you’re at home too. Meetup groups and volunteer organizations have been really helpful to me when it comes to making connections. It can seem very intimidating, but everybody there is in the same boat as you and it’s more likely that not they’ll all be really friendly
If your relationship is otherwise really good, I would recommend staying and trying to refocus and work on making friends and meeting people in the place you live in now
However, do you feel like your boyfriend is in any way—whether actively or passively, intentional or unintentional—trying to isolate you?
I know this sounds like a “should I break up or not” conundrum, but I don’t really see much in the way of you being swayed to stay with your boyfriend. Usually people in similar situations like you toss in a “but I love him so much I can’t imagine etc etc.”
But there’s none of that here. You sound pretty checked out already. Or, more likely, you’ve allowed your worsening depression to sort of chip away at that side of things to the point where you’ve convinced yourself that moving back is the only way to fix your problems. So yeah, I think you’re going to have to make this hard transition because I don’t think you’ve left yourself a good reason to stay.
And it may fix things for you to go back. Or it may not. Two years is a long time to put a life on pause and then expect to slide right back into it. You’re also hitting a point in your life when friendships naturally shift and slide apart. Don’t be too shocked if you get back and it’s not sunshine and rainbows, either.
Ideally, you should really be trying to get your depression under check before making a major life shift like this. Depression is a monster and it does a pretty good job of skewing reality to you don’t always make the best decisions for yourself while in the middle of an episode. But, again, it sounds like you’re at the end of your tolerance so asking you to stick around and try some sort of therapy for x months is going to go over like a lead balloon.
Start the conversations with your boyfriend about breaking up. Who knows, sometimes the thought of losing someone is a pretty darn good motivator to go from “unable to change jobs” to “oh wait, there’s a plan b, hold on.”
But don’t bet on that. Realistically, you’re going to probably wind up settling on one of those breakups that takes months to sort out. Might as well get started.
Could you stay with your hometown friends or family members for like a month on a trial basis? Then you could see how your relationship fares and if you want to make the move permanent. Not sure how long you and your bf have been together, but you managed to be 2 hours away from him before the lockdown.
Do you only want to breakup with him because you want to go back to your hometown or is there another reason?
This sounds really hard, and I’m sorry you’re struggling.
You’ve just experienced a big loss and it might make sense to avoid making major life-changing decisions right now while you’re in the grip of big grief. And it’s pretty normal to drift from old hometown friends at the age you’re at; that might very well be happening even if you were there. So I’d worry that the life back home you’re imagining, where you’re suddenly part of a social whirl of last-minute plans, wouldn’t exist even if you moved back.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take seriously the clarity you’re experiencing on your priorities.
Can you take a couple of weeks to go spend in your hometown reconnecting with family and seeing if you actually do still feel connected with old friends? Can you start putting a higher priority on making time to make the trip to see them, say, planning a trip once a month or every other weekend for a while? Is your current location/lockdown status such that you can shift some focus to making friends in your new hometown now?
That said, you didn’t tell us anything much about your boyfriend, so I’m just assuming that it’s a good and valuable relationship that you might regret losing later. If this is just the final straw and you weren’t happy with him even before your loss – then sure, just break up. Go home and take some time to figure out what comes next.
Being far from family and friends is HARD, for some people more than others (I’m definitely one of those people so I feel you). Definitely a tough place to be bc moving out and going back to a longish distance relationship feels like a downgrade.
But I think you should move closer to home. I don’t think it has to mean the end of your relationship, but it might, depending on what your bf’s needs are. Hope you guys can have a productive discussion about it.