What To Do Before Relocating For A Relationship
When it comes to relationships, they aren’t always straightforward. You could meet the love of your life, only to find that they have to move to the other side of the country or even the world. What happens then? Do you pick up your entire life and follow them, or do you try for a long distance relationship?
It will depend on a number of factors, and what is right for you won’t be right for someone else, so although asking for advice from friends and family – or even strangers through an online forum, for example – is a good idea to put things in perspective, you shouldn’t let it color your entire view.
If you do decide to relocate for your relationship, you will need to make sure you’re completely ready to do so; read on to find out what you should do before making that big move.
Discuss The Future
If you’re making such a big change in your life for a relationship, it makes sense to discuss the future of that relationship with your partner. If it feels like the wrong time to discuss being together long term, or perhaps even marriage, then it might also be the wrong time to move across the world together. You need to know that this relationship is going to last the course.
Try to imagine a life together one year, five years, even ten years into the future. If you can’t, or you’re just not sure, it might be better to try a long distance relationship to test how you feel about one another before making the change and moving.
The last thing you want to do is to resent your partner if you move with them somewhere and it doesn’t work out.
Explore Your Potential New Home
Even if you’re one hundred percent sure that this move is the right thing to do, you still need to visit your potential new home before making that commitment. If you’ve never lived in a big city before, you may not enjoy it much once you’re there. The same is true if you’re moving to the country and you’ve always been surrounded by the hustle and bustle of city life.
Test out your new place by visiting for the weekend or longer, knowing that you can go home again. You need to ideally love where you are living as well as wanting to be with your partner or resentment, and problems might start to creep into the relationship simply because you would rather be somewhere else.
What Are The Living Arrangements?
Something that can easily be forgotten when planning to move is the living arrangements. You may have assumed that you will be moving in together straight away, but will that actually be the case? It’s best to check. Perhaps you will buy your first place together, but need to live separately until you find somewhere.
Or will you be moving into their place? If so, what can you bring with you? How big is it? Will you need to pay rent? Are there roommates there to meet and hopefully get along with?
All of these things need to be discussed, and any issues ironed out long before you pack your things and move thousands of miles from home.
Have A Job Lined Up
Wherever you go, whether it’s to a different city, a new state, or even a different country, you are most likely going to need a job, and it’s best to get that job lined up before you move rather than move and then try to find one. At least then you know that you’ll be covered when it comes to finances.
It will depend on where you are going as to what kind of job you can get, and there might be some training that you need to do beforehand to ensure that, once you start to apply for something, you have more chance of getting it. If you’re into fitness and moving to the UK, for example, you can look into a UK gym instructing course. If you currently work in finance and you’re moving to a different state, you should train yourself to understand the requirements of that state when it comes to taxes. Once you have your new qualification or training, you can start to search for jobs that will give you what you need in terms of money and enjoyment.
Have A Backup Plan
Although many relationships will do well and you will be together forever, sometimes things happen, and the relationship breaks down. If you’ve moved everything away from home, then you’ll have no backup plan, and you could feel stuck and isolated if you were to break up.
Having a backup plan instead. You could lease or sublet your apartment so that you’ve got somewhere to go back to. You could put items into storage so that they are easier to move if you need to. Ideally, none of this will be required, but it’s better to be safe than sorry at least at the start. Once you are truly settled and happy, you can take your items out of storage or give up your old apartment, but until you’re sure it’s best to keep it all just in case.
Save Money
Moving is expensive, and it’s not something that can be done just like that. It will take weeks, perhaps months (depending on where you are going and what visas and other paperwork might be needed) to put a move together, and you will need to spend money during that time when it comes to finding somewhere to live, traveling for job interviews, buying new furniture, and arranging the move itself.
Start saving as soon as you know that this move is a possibility if you haven’t saved already because the more time you put into saving, the more money you will have when the moment comes. Having enough money will make the transition to your new place and new life a much smoother one, and it can mean that stronger relationship because you won’t be struggling right from the start.
What's Your Reaction?
