Settling In
Homesickness runs on a schedule that is worth knowing in advance
It rarely arrives as a steady state; it comes in waves triggered by dates, weather, illness and the ordinary news from home that you can do nothing about.
By Varun Krishnan3 min read
Not a constant, but a pattern
People expect homesickness to be a background sadness that gradually fades. What most long-stay residents describe is different: long stretches of feeling entirely fine, punctuated by sharp episodes that arrive with little warning and pass in a few days.
What makes those episodes manageable is recognising that they are episodic. In the middle of one, the conclusion that presents itself is that the whole move was a mistake, and that conclusion arrives with great confidence. Knowing that it is a wave rather than a verdict is most of the defence.
Nobody should take that as an instruction to dismiss the feeling. Sometimes a place genuinely is wrong. The point is that the middle of a bad week is not when that judgement should be made.
The triggers are surprisingly predictable
Certain things set it off reliably. Anniversaries and holidays, particularly ones celebrated at home and invisible where you are, which is a peculiar experience the first time. Being ill, which strips away competence and makes a foreign language exhausting. Bad weather in a season you did not grow up with.
Then there is news from home about things you cannot attend: an illness, a funeral, a birth, a wedding, a friend’s crisis. Distance converts these from participation into spectating, and the helplessness is the part that stings rather than the missing out.
The reverse also happens. A very good day at home, seen from a distance, can be harder than a bad one, because it demonstrates that life there is continuing perfectly well without you. Photographs of a gathering you would have been at are a specific and reliable trigger, which is worth knowing before you scroll through them on a Sunday evening.
Two lives running in parallel
Underneath the episodes is a structural fact that does not resolve: you now have relationships and obligations in two places, and being present in one means being absent from the other. That is the actual cost of living abroad, and it is not a problem to be solved.
People handle it in different ways and none of them eliminates it. Some visit often, some deliberately do not, some make one trip a year a fixed appointment. What most seem to agree on is that scheduled regular contact works better than reactive contact, because it removes the question of whether to call and gives the relationship a rhythm.
It also matters that contact is ordinary rather than only significant. A dull conversation about nothing keeps a relationship alive far more effectively than an intense one every three months.
What helps, specifically
The measures people report as useful are mostly small and unromantic. Keeping a routine, particularly in the difficult weeks. Physical exercise, which is dull advice and reliably effective. Food from home occasionally, since the sensory triggers are real and a familiar taste does more than it should.
Marking the dates that matter to you, even if nobody around you observes them, and marking the local ones too. Participating in the local calendar is one of the faster routes out of feeling like a spectator in your own life.
And doing something that involves other people during a bad week rather than after it, which is the opposite of what the feeling suggests. The instinct in the middle of an episode is to withdraw and to speak only to people at home, which prolongs it. Going to the thing you already committed to, badly and without enthusiasm, breaks the loop more often than staying in does.
When it is more than a wave
It is worth being clear that persistent low mood, sleep that does not recover, withdrawal that lasts weeks, or an inability to function are not homesickness in this sense, and they should not be treated as something to be endured because you chose to move.
Being abroad complicates getting help — a health system you do not know, a language barrier, no established relationship with a doctor — which is another argument for registering with a practice before you need one. Many countries have services in other languages, and international employers frequently provide access to support.
The move is not a reason to expect less of your own wellbeing, and needing help is not a verdict on the decision to go. It is worth saying because a lot of people abroad quietly believe the opposite.
Common questions
Does homesickness go away?
The acute episodes usually become less frequent as a life takes shape locally, and the structural part — having people in two places — generally does not disappear. Most long-term residents describe managing it rather than being cured of it.
Should I visit home more often or less?
People report both working and it seems to depend on the person. Frequent visits maintain relationships and can prolong the sense of being temporary; rare visits force engagement locally and can make the distance heavier. A regular predictable rhythm suits most people better than reacting to how a month is going.
Is it normal to feel this after a year or more?
Yes. Waves can arrive well after someone is otherwise fully settled, often triggered by an event at home rather than by anything about the new place. It is not evidence that the adjustment has failed.
Editor, Globetrotter Talks
Varun has been reporting on arriving, visas & paperwork, money abroad since long before it was fashionable and is happiest when a piece answers the question completely.
