Advice on partners homesickness
Hey,
A bit of context. My partner (30M) and I (33F) met in Germany while I was doing a working holiday. My reasons for it were I felt I needed to burst my bubble a bit and try to be more independent. I’ve struggled all my life with depression/ctpsd, but therapy and meds did wonders and I was eager to fulfill my dreams of living abroad :)
Very soon after we met, my partner started learning my language and he wanted to come to my country (Latin America) to experience it. It was very clear for me from the start that Germany wasn’t for me (or at least I wasn’t prepared enough). Also, my reason for going abroad wasn’t because I didn’t liked my country, I was curious if this “it’s better in the first world” is true. I layed all of this in the table before we became official and for him this was ok and he also had some disappointments of his own (not sure what do after his studies/disappointment with his career so far).
I made sure to tell him all the info, I knew that migrating to my country is harder just because money is harder to earn. I had a lot of family support for this plan though.
Long story shorter, we fell in love, he was the best support in Germany, a very good partner, we had all the conversations. Like, this is the kind of relationship you make big life changes, I felt like we could grow together.
When my visa ended, I had an extension of 6 months so the time apart wasn’t so much but at the end of my visa I was very very sick, to the point we both were very worried with what was happening to me but for him this image of me was true confirmation that I wasn’t doing well in the country and he felt a lot of guilt that I stayed longer
Luckily when I arrived to my country, I managed all my health issues and everything was ok. He arrived in the midst of this (I had to get surgery), so his welcome wasn’t so nice because I was still recovering.
From then we had so many bureaucracy issues that made us both very anxious. (We did everything the legal and correct way, but life has its way to make hard things harder). I put all my energy into helping him as much as I could and I slowly started see in him fade away and becoming very small, fearful, self conscious. Last year ended with that I though wa/ good knows. He found a job in a school and they were also going to help him finance his studies, which woukd be a commitment of 4 years, long time but also enough time for us to see if staying here works for us. He seemed more stressed about this than anything and I told him that if he didn’t wanted this, it’s ok, but of course that meant breaking up and probably he wasn’t ready for that. He went to Germany, it was tough for me because I felt very left behind but i understood he was with his other loved ones, he arrived with all the energy and seemed very eager to move forward with this plan, putting a lot of effort into his work, etc
We signed for an apartment to live together, and a few days after that he told me he felt lonely and homesick, that he feels like maybe this is not for him, that he’ll give it until the end of the year. And now my heart is a bit broken because last week he looked so eager to find an apartment, have a pet, buy furniture and today he doesn’t seem like he wants to go through this anymore.
I also feel sad because we were planning to go to Germany on the holidays which I was very much looking forward to because I do want to start healing my relationship with the country and coming for visit, see it with different eyes, meet more of his friends seemed like the way of also hopefully imagining myself there someday (as I feel that if you are in a relationship with someone abroad, living in their country is also a possibility)
But honestly now I’m more in the “maybe this is just not for us” mindset.
I don’t necessarily want advice, I want the perspective of others that have move abroad for love.
Thanks you strangers :)