Even though it looked like the right choice at the time, sometimes moving house can turn out to be a rather miserable experience.
You move to a new city, you move into a new home and sadly enough, you’re not feeling the way you thought you would. After a quick fantasy-meets-reality clash, everything in the new place and everyone you meet seems strange, unfamiliar, cold, and unwelcoming.
And then, all of a sudden, you’re starting to feel the pangs of regret – the unmistakable feeling of sadness and disappointment that you have moved house.
Post-move regrets can be really tough to deal with. Moving house is a big change in life but the focus of your post-relocation period should be to get genuinely excited and focus on the new challenges ahead of you, not to feel dejected and get consumed by regret at your decision to move in the first place.
How to deal with regret when moving to a new place?
Give yourself more time
You may feel regretful the minute you reach the new city or walk into the new place. In most cases, that strong feeling of regret turns out to be nothing more than a sudden wave of nostalgia for the old life you just lost and might never get back.
Do NOT give in to that distressful sense of disappointment by the decision to move house. Instead, give yourself more time to better understand the volatile mix of emotions immediately after the move. Keep in mind that moving house is an exhausting endeavor, both physically and mentally, so you just have to give yourself a break by allowing yourself more time to relax and figure out everything that’s happened in such a short period of time.
Just gift yourself more time to try to make sense of it all. After all, it’s fair to admit that it could be the house moving exhaustion clouding your judgment and messing up with your feelings immediately after the move.
In the meantime, you should try some proven techniques to help you adapt faster to the new environment and help you deal with any lingering move-related regrets you may have.
- Keep in touch with your loved ones. Most of the time, your major regret will be leaving behind the people you love – family, friends, and even neighbors. And if that’s the case, then the move may well be one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to go through. To alleviate the pain of separation, you’ve got great modern options to keep in constant touch with your loved ones. /Keep in touch with friends/
- Explore the new city or town. If you regret moving to a new city, then the only way to cope with that rueful feeling is to get to know that unfamiliar place in the hope of discovering its charms. Don’t hide in your new home – just go out and take a walk around the neighborhood first, then visit interesting places around the city or town itself. /Explore a new city/
- Make new friends. Ok, that’s easier said than done. Still, the fastest way to speed up the adaptation period after a house move is to meet new people and hopefully befriend some of them. Surround yourself with good-hearted, caring, understanding and positive people to end any regrets you may have about the move in the first place. /Make friends in a new city/
Must-read: How to overcome relocation depression
Find out what’s causing your regret
Do you regret moving? If your answer is YES, then you should ask yourself WHY – why do you regret moving to that new place? Ultimately, it’s the why question that will suggest the right solution to your regretful house moving situation.
Instead of letting yourself be consumed, little by little, by sadness and disappointment, or maybe even anger at your decision to move house, your priority task should be to try to pinpoint the source of your regrets.
Think about what exactly is causing your post-move regret? People can feel regretful for a number of reasons – now, you need to find what your own reasons are to feel this way.
- Friends. One of your biggest regrets when moving may be the friends you had to leave behind – the best friends you’ve ever had. And now you find yourself in a place where everyone is a complete stranger and you have no one to talk to and hang out with.
- People. In general, the people in the new town or city may be seemingly too cold, distant, and unfriendly or, believe it or not, too friendly to your liking. It’s hard not to draw any comparisons when placed into a brand-new and unfamiliar environment.
- Home. If you truly loved your old home, then it’s only normal that you’d feel a wave of regret the minute you step into your new house or apartment. It’ll take time to get to like your new place, and of course – some efforts to turn it into your new home, and hopefully – the home of your dreams.
- City. This can be a major regret after moving to a new city – the charm, allure, beauty, cleanliness, and safety of your old town or city may quickly be gone, never to return.
- Job. You may happen to regret leaving your old job, especially when the new one is worse and you don’t really get along with your new co-workers either.
- Routine. Losing your familiar routine can really throw you off balance after the house move. In time, you will create a new daily routine for yourself but the tough adaptation period can cause you to question whether you did the right thing moving in the first place.
- Climate. Moving to an area with a drastic change in the climatic conditions can prove to be too much for you – for example when you’re moving from a state with a Mediterranean climate (California) to one with a continental climate (Maine, Minnesota).
Once you manage to locate the exact source of your regrets after the move, it should be easier to find temporary or permanent fixes for them.
Read also: What are the effects of moving to a new city
Move again in search of true happiness
It can be really disheartening to regret moving to the place you are right now. Knowing what you had to go through to make that move a reality, now it can be painful to even think about having to move again.
But if these regrets of yours just don’t go away even when you’ve given yourself plenty of time and have pinpointed the things that make you miserable in a wish-I-had-known-that-sooner kind of way, then you may have to move house… again.
- Move to a new new place. Everyone deserves to be happy and when you know that the current city and residence just won’t work out for you, then the logical solution will be to move to a brand-new place. The difference is that this time you’ll have learned the important lessons and will make sure you won’t have to deal with the same types of post-relocation regrets.
- Move back to the old place. Sometimes the nostalgia proves to be too strong and you miss just about everything about the place you left, mostly the people who made it so special that you wish to return there once more. In such cases, it’s better to make a step back since you just know deep inside that you’re not ready for that step forward.
If extra time is not really helping you overcome your regrets after moving, then it’s time to get on the move again. Get in touch with the best moving companies in your town or city and request free moving cost estimates to set the relocation wheels in motion once more.
