TLDR: seeking advice from people who have relocated to follow a partner, or who have considered it. Success stories (or horror stories) welcome. Looking for any tips, things you considered, things you wish you had considered, do’s and don’t’s, etc.
Backstory: I (36M) have been dating a lovely woman, we’ll call her J (34F) for about a year now. We’ve been exclusive, labels etc for about 10 months, and are on the same page on all of the main relationship points – things are going well. For some additional context, I am divorced. My ex and I had no children, and it was a clean break without major drama; we separated approx 28 months ago and divorced thereafter. Additionally, I have lived my entire life in the same US metropolitan area, a smallish city of let’s say 1 – 1.5 million people.
J has taken a much different path. She has chased her career and education around the country and abroad, and ended up in my area on a whim, on a temporary work contract. She was clear from the outset – her contract is set to expire at the end of June 2024, and from that point forward she will getting a permanent position *somewhere*. She wants to set down roots, have a family, but given the niche nature of her work, she was unsure whether it would be in our metro area or somewhere else. There are jobs in her field, but they are not plentiful – there may not be a single job opportunity for her in this metro area.
As you can probably tell, J recently accepted a permanent position…..600 miles away. She’s moving back to her hometown, a similarly-sized city where she has personal and family ties. She’s set to move in July. We’ve discussed going long-distance and are both accepting of it, though we both agree that an LDR of more than ~12 months isn’t workable. What this means is that in all likelihood, if we’re going all-in on the relationship, I would need to move to her at some point in the next 12-14 months.
Conceptually this doesn’t sound like it should be terribly complicated. Despite having been raised here, my entire immediate family has left the area, so I have no close family ties keeping me here. I have a relatively successful (albeit mundane) white collar career that I’d be able to take remote at least temporarily with no loss of income; I have no doubts about my ability to either find a comparable job or start a profitable business in the new city at some point in the future. I do own a house, which I’d probably have to sell as I wouldn’t want to deal with being a long-distance landlord. My main concern is probably lack of a social/friend group – as of today, I know literally no one in her city other than J and her family. While I’m not some super popular life-of-the-party, I do have some close friends here where I live now.
I guess this leads me to the final questions – what am I missing here? What am I not considering? How were you able to navigate this move successfully, especially from a social (i.e. meeting new people, making new friends as an adult etc) standpoint? If you moved and something went wrong, what did you wish you had realized before making the jump? Relationship red flags you wish you had noticed before making the jump? I welcome any comments/thoughts/stories. Thank you for taking the time to read this.