Did you live in a city then move out? How was it? Did it change your energy towards the day-to-day?
This is such a vague thing to post, but in the past few years I've been wrestling with my increasing introversion. I'm always tired. I was talking about my feelings towards friendships to a friend (without an intent to say anything negative) and found myself surprised at how little I mentioned any benefits from companionships. What weighed on me was the time spent, the work spent, the money spent on trying to "keep people happy." (I have a few other closer friends, so it's not the way I feel about everyone). It's a weird position to be in as someone who had once tried hard to make new friends. I find myself struggling with the guilt for how I feel and the desire to just recess, to focus on myself, and to attend to my desire for stability (especially financial stability-- I feel like I things have gotten more expensive). I have deeper and more commitments than I used to, which should make me feel so fortunate. However, as a result, they are also in competition for my time / energy.
I've been feeling really weighted down by this lately, so I'm curious to hear from people who may have gone through something similar. A part of me feels that perhaps if I made my life more stable (a cheaper mortgage instead of renting in a major / global city, a higher paying job, lower-key friendships etc.) then I would feel happier on a day-to-day level.
edit: clarified some things
I lived in Hong Kong and Vancouver for my entire life until I moved to rural Atlantic Canada.
Some cautions: try to still be within an hour drive to a smallish city if possible. It's for reasonable access to emergency services like hospitals that have more than 1 doctor, pharmacies that open at least until midnight, tow trucks, police, and for not being solely reliant upon one local grocer. If I could re-pick a location I would do this. For reference I'm two hours from reasonably sized small city and it's too far. There were plenty of affordable rural living within 1 hr of city.
Social caution. Consider that in a rural setting you're actually going to be more effected by people. When you're in a condo you have 300+ neighbors. If you fall into bad terms with one, that's 1/300, or 0.3%. In a rural community if you piss off one, that's immediately 50+% of your neighbors, depending on how your lot is touching. Plus they're likely related to or have known the rest of your neighbors their entire lives. Keeping people happy will go from "a choice but I can still salt the earth and find new friends" to "you need to make good to survive here literally ".
Will echo this. I grew up in a rural area on the outskirts of a tiny mountain town with a population of about 2k, and it seemed like everybody knew what everybody else was up to. There's not much to do out there, and it turns out that in circumstances like that people tend to fill the gaps with a lot of gossip.
Heck there's even an element of this in the San Francisco Bay Area, depending on one's circles, and the population of that area isn't exactly tiny.
Out of the places I've lived the only place where this vanished entirely was in Tokyo. The more introverted overarching culture there lends to this anyway, but even without that there are so many people that you have to do something really crazy to be anything but a number. Personally I found it liberating.
100% agree, and I would say sometimes even an hour is too far. I live in Western WA, about an hour outside of the nearest small city, and it feels too far. 2 of our family members need specialty doctors, and we miscalculated just how exhausting the treks for appointments would be. We're now trying to get out ASAP to get back to more familiar territory. :/
My sweet spot for this is probably about 20-40m drive from a city, and if possible it's better if the city has an airport big enough to be international. That criteria usually results in 1) reasonable access to the city from home 2) reasonable access to your home by inbound friends/relatives 3) access to a wider array of services, specialists, social circles, etc.
The town I grew up in falls outside of these criteria entirely which makes visiting family a serious logistical challenge. It's easier for me to take a vacation somewhere on the other side of the planet than it is to stop by my parents' place in the same country for a couple of days.
This is excellent advice. When we moved to Northern Michigan, I had to argue my spouse out of getting 20 extremely country acres 30 miles from anywhere, in favor of 1.5 acres within 10 minutes of a county hospital. Given that we're 50-something, he's fond of doing things involving chainsaws and axes, etc., I won the point. And it's a good thing we did. Because shortly thereafter, we both found ourselves in need of specialist healthcare including one heart surgery and two hip replacements. I know people further out who are driving multiple hours each week for work, groceries, physical therapy appointments...
Yes, we have adjoining neighbors, yes, there's occasionally noise and traffic, but I've got people to give garden produce to, we've met nice people, and we watch out for each other.
I lived in NYC, then one of the largest US cities in the Mountain West, and these days I live in a tiny town of ~6,000 people in Northern New England.
In NYC, I walked around everywhere and took public transit. I would bump into friends randomly about my neighborhood and on the subway. At the peak, I was meeting up with friends 2-3 nights a week (at least), sometimes being social even more than that. I'm a mild introvert, so that was plenty of interaction for me. But even when I first moved to the city, had no money, had a new job, and hardly knew anybody, I appreciated seeing people around me on the street. Even days when I didn't talk to anyone, I felt like I was a part of something.
In <Mountain West City>, things were completely different. Everyone drove around everwhere. I biked about town; other people mostly acted like I was insane for doing that. Even if you saw a coworker driving, you'd never be able to stop and chat and build a friendship. You certainly wouldn't bump into acquaintances on the subway, or on the way home from a work event, and build a friendship out of nothing. I mostly biked to parks and breweries, hanging out with my partner and barely anybody else.
In the tiny town where I live now, people know me. I lead a running club. I walk around town all the time. I spend time at local businesses to socialise. I'm on the town trails constantly. But nobody else lives this way: pretty much everyone else spends at least an hour, frequently much more, driving places. If you like the idea of living a lifestyle where you can completely compartmentalise your life, where you don't have to see another person unless you absolutely want to, where spontaneity is not a factor, a small town might be a good call. I think for someone really organised or someone highly introverted, it could work. But it takes a very long time to build any local relationships with that kind of interaction cadence. I think I saw each neighbor twice in my first year of living here. And our houses are close, because I live right in town! If you're truly somewhere rural, you might never see another human being unless you drive to their house.
Businesses close crazy early. As in, during the winter months, nothing is open past 8 except for a single chain restaurant. It is not a good one.
So YMMV. My brother lives in a similar situation, but he's deeply introverted. I get the impression that he likes it more than living in a city. But he's one of the most introverted people I've ever met, and is content to read a book literally from dawn til well past dusk and not speak a single word all day. If that sounds something like you, it could be an improvement.
Also, if you're in the USA... rural isn't cheaper, at least not any more. Gas and car maintenance is expensive. Rent in rural places has gone truly insane, if you don't own. Buying a house has increased in cost by at least 50% in sticker price since 2020; including mortgage rates, more like 100%. Electricity, heating, and cooling add up quick. Gone are the days where you could buy a cheap rural house and neglect it, because I think most of those houses have already been bought and neglected for 50 years at this point!
This sounds like heaven, lol
My last vacation I spent a week where I said hello and thank you at the store the one time I went shopping, and meowed at my kitties some. The rest of it was books and games.
I wonder what we can to do engineer a housing price crash to allow new buyers into the market.
I assume something has to break eventually when anyone not making six figures literally cannot afford rent or a house or transportation or children.
It is more a question of when, not if. I imagine the ponzi scheme that is our stock market will experience some issues around the same time, unless we find a way to plug the population gap and solve the housing/transportation crisis.
But perhaps not. Maybe in this game of musical chairs we never end up falling on our asses.
Nothing until more housing supply is built. It's different from 2008.
I lived in a major city in the Netherlands for about 7 years. Moved around a bit and even lived there for a while after being in a new relationship after those initial 7 years. Our cities aren't that big compared to say, Tokyo, New York or Paris but I always liked the rural areas more. The pace is generally slower and at least in my current village there is the option to still be reasonably quick in the major city if I had to via a train connection. I enjoy the calmness, the slower pace. Less rushed living and forced rat race to be prettier, more successful, rich, etc. Although you cannot truly ban that entirely from your life sadly. If I could I'd live in a cabin in the woods in Sweden just shy of an hour from say, Stockholm or any major city.
Edit:
To add to this, rural living sure has downsides to. There are no cinema's, no specialty stores or 3rd places to hang out with friends easily. And farming pushes a big stamp on people's behavior here sometimes and as someone's who's wildly against any form of monoculture and systematically milking cows literally dry in the name of profit, it can cause some friction.
I think you're wrestling with two different questions, that do share some overlap.
The first is: How can you find/make friendships that require the level of input/income that you want to put in?
This can be tough, and in many ways can be independent from where you live or your income level.
The second is: Does moving out of the city save money?
I think those two pieces are often tethered. If you live in a big city with lots of job opportunities then you'll likely have a higher income than an area with less options. But it's not always true.
The happiest I've been in my life had nothing to do with cost of living and income, but instead the community I was able to make. Lots of context below:
I used to live in San Francisco and have now moved to a much smaller town on the California coast. I worked for a non-profit when I was in San Francisco so I made very little money (30-55k a year over the 5 years I was there) so rent and general cost of living was difficult. I slept in a room that was the size of a large closet in the Mission district for $1200 a month. However many of my friends worked for large tech companies (AirBNB, Twitter, Twitch, Gilead, etc...) and while they also complained about cost of living, they were actually able to absorb it quite easily. Like you, I felt awkward about attending our weekly dinners with price tages of 75-200 dollars, so I started bowing out - and was shamed by my friends for doing so. The place I found where we could all hang out for little money was the climbing gym, so that became my "third place" - more on that later.
I then moved to Madrid where I was making ~35,000 euros a year, a 20% pay cut, but in Madrid that was a really good salary. There I rented a 2 bedroom apartment to my partner (who wasn't working at the time) and myself for $1200, and went out nearly every night for food and drinks (~20 euros for 2), and ate a full 3 course lunch out every day at work (~8-12 euros), and was able to save a good chunk of money as well. I didn't mind going out and ended up in the opposite position. I was making more, sometime 3-4 times more a month, than my Spanish friends. So the opposite happened and they would bow out.
Then I moved to Amsterdam with my partner, as she had found a job there. We rented a flat for $1400, but she only made ~$2000 a month at her job with Patagonia so we supplemented with the saving we had from living in Madrid. But cost of living was still quite cheap. Beers were 1-3 euros. Normal food was single digits. Groceries were cheap. But nothing was as cheap as Spain so we went out less. I worked at a climbing gym while we were there and again it became our third space.
I ended up getting into a grad program and moving back to the US, and this time settled on the coast about 1.5 hours from any major city. Here rents are still quite expensive - $2500-3500 for a small 1/2 bedroom house - and wages are quite low. The industries are made up of service industry (for golf), marine science, and agriculture. So the potential for high salaries is low and the cost of living is high. We're in a rural area and I think this is the worst parody between salary and cost of living I've seen.
I had a tough time in San Francisco and Madrid, but there is no correlation between income level and happiness there. I was at the two polar ends of the spectrum. I had an amazing time in Amsterdam and the small town I live in now. The difference there are activities and mindsets that I vibe with - progressive folks who enjoy exercise/outdoors. In the latter case I was able to build a big community relatively quickly - with a core group of about 8 friends in Amsterdam and about 20 where I am now. People tended to move to SF and Madrid for economic opportunity, whereas it feels like people move to Amsterdam and where I live now because they are interested in the cultural and outdoor areas the city provides.
Last big point is about the disappearance of third places. A spot, often free of charge, that you can consistently see folks/friends to build community. In the US we've really commodified third places which leads to the feeling you're having. Not Just Bikes, did a good video on the loss of the third space.
All this to say, I'd consider what your priorities are - outdoor sports vs theater/music shows vs good food/fine dining - and then look at places that might be nice to live. Add into that if you want walkability, what politics you're interested in, and where supports your hobbies. Then think about work and cost of living.
I would suggest that, while there are some practical differences that create some tendencies in various directions, experiences are likely far more influenced by the specifics of the places involved and your preferences and personality, rather than a general urban/rural divide. I also think on Tildes you'll often find people with particular preferences toward particular urban and town environments, which might not be the same preferences as yours.
Driving is not necessarily a burden or an impediment to spontaneity, depending on the area. It can also have the advantage of letting you choose when to be around or not be around people, both those who are your friends and those who are not, and which people to be around. Or it can, depending on the area, be completely isolating and burdensome. A heavily walkable area, meanwhile, can actually be surprisingly unpleasant and isolating if you don't enjoy the people there, or even if a relatively small number are hostile. If you do enjoy the people, it can be wonderful.
I'd also largely disagree with people saying that rural areas are generally not cheaper than urban areas: I think this is heavily dependent on the areas being compared. I think, too, that there can be a tendency, for people who moved to the countryside, to think about what prices had been when they were in a city, when prices have increased everywhere.