moving away, I need help!

May 7, 2012 11:03 PM

One day, I would like to move, I need your help. Not actual moving help, decision making help!

I will be divorced soon, yay! Both of my children will be off to college within the next 12 months. Things will change, but right now, I have no permanent job and am not seeing anyone. When I mention the future, I talk of moving away. I have no idea where just yet, but want to move away, I have no ties to the area. I grew up moving fairly often and miss that. What comes up most often is "aren't your friends important, how could you leave your friends". It didn't even cross my mind about leaving friends, I guess I assumed I would stay in touch with some and make new friends wherever I land. So my question is, am I not thinking this through enough? Is it really that bad to want a fresh start? How hard can it be to make new friends? I'll be 50 when I make the leap, if that matters. I am quite independent, capable and outgoing.

posted by jennstra to Human Relations (18 answers total)

I'm half your age, but I move a lot, and probably always will! I say go for it.. you can always move back, but you might always regret it if you don't try it. I don't have a lot of stuff to move, but in my experience it's fairly easy and not that stressful. Being in a new place is very energizing for me. It sounds like you are in a good place to at least try it.
posted by queens86 at 11:14 PM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Best answer: If that is what your heart is telling you to do ... start making the tangible plans NOW so you can make it happen. You "can" always change your mind if you want, but it's much more difficult to pick up and move without plans.

I did this around your age ... and never looked back. Not only did I move, but I travel fulltime. People ask me, don't you miss (fill in the blank) and the answer is, yes, but I sure do enjoy my new life, too.

A fresh start can be a very good thing ... just remember that where ever you go, there you are ... i.e. take the next year to work on any "baggage" you have accumulated that you haven't dealt with yet.

Best of luck to you, and memail me if you want more details.
posted by batikrose at 11:17 PM on May 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

If you can afford it, how about sticking most of your stuff in storage and then just traveling around to different places and see what you like. Or rent a place (room/apartment) for a few months, enjoy the area and then move on to someplace new.
posted by littlesq at 11:18 PM on May 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

Best answer: I'm 42 and have started over in a new place a couple of times. First time when I was 30 and it wasn't so bad to make new friends but I was never able to fully replicate the relationships I had while I was in my 20s back home. That didn't really surprise me so much. The relationships I'd had were the sort that only come in your 20s.

Six years later I moved back home and many of those relationships I'd hoped to rekindle were permanently changed. Trying to make new friends to fill the gap was exceedingly difficult.

Just a few months later I found myself living in Boston and was miserable over my inability to make connections. There's something so insular about Boston that in made only one friend while living there. So in this case I really think the location combined with my age played a role. I know so many people that moved to Boston for school and loved it.

Now I'm living in Denver which is a pretty friendly place and I've been here for almost five years. I've got a few people I'm friendly with, but not really anyone I would bury a body for, if you know what I mean. I'm in the process of a significant effort to make friends, but it's just not easy. I think to some extent we just expect so much more of people as we get older that it's harder to just accept what we perceive as faults or even significant differences when there isn't a significant history backing up a friendship.

From the time I moved back home until six months ago I was traveling a lot for work and relationships and that had an impact in my ability to make and maintain friendships. I'm also a bit of a loner naturally so many of my interests are solo pursuits. It's really only since I've become heavily interested in wine that I have found something social to bound over. If you're a more social person or have interests that lend themselves toward being with others you'll probably have a better outcome than I have experienced.

I wouldn't give up any of the experiences I've had. I'm happy I made those leaps, but it took a while to get used to being solo more in some instances.
posted by FlamingBore at 11:19 PM on May 7, 2012 [2 favorites]

Obvious comment: it's easier to make friends in some places than others. Maybe come back with your criteria and people can discuss how easy or hard it would be to settle in somewhere?
posted by salvia at 11:26 PM on May 7, 2012

You can anticipate weeks and maybe a couple of months of loneliness in a new place at first, but that's not even remotely a reason not to do it. Just expect it and be ready to get past it by focusing on some project you care about. And when you're lonely, go ahead and call up old friends to chat, letting them know you miss them. And then, no, it's not hard to make new friends, particularly once you're established in a job or make contacts related to some hobby. You'll make new acquaintances right away, and to the extent they're available, they'll grow into friends.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 11:31 PM on May 7, 2012

Best answer: This is a fantastic opportunity to start over and build the life you want. It is totally understandable and healthy that you want to start over, and a great time in your life to do so. I like previous posters' suggestions to look for a "friendly" place. Maybe it would be a good idea to also try to select a place that has opportunities to meet the kinds of people you might want in your life (i.e. maybe a place has a strong community theatre scene you can get involved with, or thriving running groups, etc.). Getting involved will go a long way toward putting down new roots in your new city, so pick a place where you can put down the kind of roots you want.

I think your next step is to make two lists for yourself--one for the things you do want in a new home town and one list for the things you don't want. Then start looking from there.

Congratulations on this exciting new stage in your life! Seriously, how awesome.
posted by anonnymoose at 11:37 PM on May 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

I am a former military wife. I am nearly 47 years old. I crossed the country earlier this year to start over. No regrets.

Best of luck.
posted by Michele in California at 11:39 PM on May 7, 2012 [3 favorites]

You've probably already considered this but, if you see this as the start of a new life for yourself, put an effort into minimising the (literal) baggage you have. It's much easier to be mobile if you have minimal possessions.

No, it's not bad to want a fresh start and, even if it is, it's now your turn to make decisions good, bad or indifferent for yourself and nobody else. If it's good for you, it's good.
posted by dg at 11:46 PM on May 7, 2012

Moving is great. One tiny caveat: your kids might not be as into visiting you from college if you're not where their friends are. I don't think this is a reason not to move, but just something to anticipate.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:59 PM on May 7, 2012 [4 favorites]

It's not bad to want a fresh start, but making friends is likely to be much more difficult than you expect it to be. "I've moved--how do I make new friends?" is a common question here, and there's probably a reason for that.

I'd go in with fairly low expectations re: friends, and when you're considering where to go, maybe consider where you already know people and weight that in your decision making process.

Finally, I'm thirty, and I've been living where I live for the last five years. Prior to this, I've always had a fairly decent social circle--not huge, but large enough that I was happy about it and had a steadyish stream of things to do and people to see. Now, I have two friends--the male and female half of a couple--and that's it. And that's with me and my partner both trying to make friends, plus we have a school-aged child, which brings us into regular contact with other people who're about our age and in similar places in life. We're seriously considering moving...to another city where we have friends. It's certainly not the case for everyone, but really, for lots of people, making friends is harder than you'd expect.
posted by MeghanC at 12:00 AM on May 8, 2012

One of the first things I did when I started working was to take a retirement course. There are two things from the course that pertain to you:

1. Make sure you have friends when. You retire. Being alone is depressing, and it can be very hard to make friends later in life. Even nursing homes have cliques.

2. Rather than just up and move to Florida (or wherever), rent in the new city and try it before you buy it. Some places are not always greener on the other side if the fence. It is hard to tell that from a map and memories from vacations. Also, places change.

Good luck.
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:04 AM on May 8, 2012

Also, yes you are not retiring - but you are proposing a radical change to the normalcy of your living.
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:06 AM on May 8, 2012

Seconding dg's comment. I got divorced and moved cross country. If you want to be prepared, start unburdening yourself of physical possessions now. In the past couple years I've moved about four times -- both cross-country and across town -- and have gotten rid of stuff each time I moved. And still I have too much stuff.

Purge your home of junk starting now. Be ruthless. Sentimentality costs time, money, and stress.

On a personal level, leaving friends and family was easily the most difficult aspect of my transition. The older I get, the wider the gulf between myself and other people I meet, and the more work it is to become close to other people. I find it easy to make acquaintances, and difficult to make close friends. I suggest putting lots of effort into maintaining the friendships you already have. Write frequently and send postcards, even if you don't receive any in reply.
posted by compartment at 7:33 AM on May 8, 2012

Best answer: I'm your age and I've always moved around a lot. I have maintained connections that go back 40 years. So I always have friends.

I've been married for the past ten years, and the last couple of moves have been harder than they were when I was younger. Easier because I have Husbunny to hang with, but harder because at my age, the friends are fewer and farther between.

First of all, I'm not doing the stuff you do when you're single, going to happy hour after work, partying on the weekends, etc. As you get older, your friends do too, and the stuff you used to do as a group gets fainter and fainter. So I recommend joining clubs like hikers, or Habitat for Humanity, or something at church. Activities where you can meet folks and make new friends.

My parents went overseas with the Federal Government and found that they had built-in social connections on various military bases. That might be a thing.

It is said that you can't step into the same stream twice. Even if you stayed where you are, things will change around you. Your friends might move, your job might change, nothing stays the same.

I say go for it, and just make extra efforts to meet new people!
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 8:48 AM on May 8, 2012 [1 favorite]

Go for it. You move away, and if you don't like it, you can always move back!
posted by BlueHorse at 9:52 AM on May 8, 2012

To add to the "some places easier to make friends than others," I add two thoughts:

(1) As you get older, more of your peers are sucked into family and other obligations and thus less available for the activities that made it easy to spend time with them at 20 (bar hopping, etc.), so you have to work harder to "date" potential friends. Not impossible, just a different slice of availability, of effort. Of course, eventually they come out the other end, as you have, and become available again, but their habits will still be different.
(2) It depends a bit on what you're doing in your new location -- will you have a job that provides a set of interesting coworkers, or the opportunity to meet clients and other interesting people, or are you going to go to and from your isolated cubicle and be "on your own" to make friends?

How relocation goes also depends on you -- do you tend to do things (whether it's volunteering for a church or biking off-road) that bring their own social groups automatically, or are most of your hobbies online? Do you like a lot of solitary time exploring a new location, or do you get sad not knowing anybody to hang with on a Friday night? I'm kind of the former, so I have found relocations easier with time (continuity of online community also helps with that), but I've also noted the phenomenon of seeing less of the friends I have, which sometimes saddens me a bit.

Anyway, if you're excited for new vistas and have experience with what that means, you should probably do it. Just knowing it will be a bit different this time is probably enough, and it sounds like there's something there that hasn't been fed in a long time. Git on wit' ye' already!!
posted by acm at 11:36 AM on May 8, 2012

I'm 25 and have lived in 6 different places in the last 7 years, including 3 states and 2 countries. I say totally go for it, I have loved living in so many different places, but with one piece of anecdata from the other side of the equation:

I am not your kids, but I am an adult daughter of a parent who moved from New England to Europe when I was 21 and he was in his mid-sixties. I consider myself a pretty independent, even stubbornly independent, person, so it's shocked me how abandoned I've felt at times since he's done so, even though he's good "on paper" about christmas, birthdays, visits, etc. Obviously my issues are not your or your kids' issues, and I don't know what your relationship is like with them or that you'd ever find yourself in a similar situation. But if my dad was moving again, I would tell him that I'd totally want him to have a "fresh start" but that it's insidiously easy for an offspring to feel like they are part of what needs to be refreshed unless you are very open with communicating how and why that's not the case. So, even though your kids have moved away to college, they still might need your mom-ness (even from a distance) in ways that can be difficult to anticipate if you don't assiduously maintain open lines of communication.
posted by zingiberene at 12:08 PM on May 9, 2012