Cary, I love your writing style and always appreciate your advice/replies while not always agreeing with them. Sometimes however a tiny squeak of puritan, punishing tone slithers in amongst the wisdom. Its a tone I've also noticed before in some 12 step literature and also in letters etc relating to people from the US being traitorous enough to say that they enjoyed life more in some other part of the world.

Today it sounds like the LW is being told, well you had it good in your tropical paradise but now you're back in the real world and you'll just have to suffer in unhappiness like the rest of us. To try to change now would be self destructive addiction driven behaviour. Why does trying to attain happiness and contentment in ones life qualify as destructive addictive behaviour? We should never change our minds? We should never decide that a mistake has been made and that we can change things for the better.

If LW decides to return to her former life she would have to realise that things mightn't be exactly the same as before,however I'm sure some elements that she and her husband enjoyed about the lifestyle would still be present and that outweighs the unhappiness with their lifestyle that they feel at the moment.

David

I, too, lived in a tropical Southeast Asian paradise and recently returned to the US. I moved back for a guy, but we've since broken up. Because of that relationship, I'm stuck in a crappy town at a dead-end job.

Everyday I think about going back to SE Asia. My family wants me to stay in the US, but some of my friends swear I'll go back.

It's not a "addiction" to want to go back. This is a place that still exists, and is not easily re-create-able in the US. In SE Asia, my group of friends was from eight or so different countries and ranged in age from 20 to 45. I didn't own a car, and I ate awesome food everyday. I could run off to the beach for a coupla bucks. All the time I met interesting, educated, engaged, witty people.

That stuff doesn't happen in the dull town where I live right now. It's not a pathology to want that again; it's the sanest thing in the world, as far as I can tell. Although it's often considered "unamerican" to think that maybe Sleepyville, USA isn't the *absolutely best place on the planet to live* here's nothing wrong with being dissatisfied and trying to make your life more beautiful. If that means moving back to SE Asia, then so be it.

The LW is already giving up dreams--of having kids, for instance--and that makes me think she's in the wrong place for her, because she seems to think her dreams are possible somewhere else.

I don't know what the answer is, but I think LW should consider a compromise: somewhere still close to family but more cosmopolitan and with a better job market?

That's my compromise, at least for the moment. But I haven't suffered through a Chicago winter yet, either. I've always got my passport close by.

...then move out of the suburb and into a nearby city. A real one, not a prefab bedroom community with a PF Chang's/Cheesecake Factory minimall for a downtown. You can still go to school, he can find a job in a city with a better economy, and you'll still be relatively close to your kin (few places in the U.S. are more than a six hour flight away from each other).

You can even take the cats with you, though you might end up losing the garden. Maybe not, though.

I agree with Cary on one point emphatically: If you try to go back and find your old life in the old place, it won't still be there waiting for you. I've seen folks move back to their college towns to recapture the je ne sais quoi of their twenty-something existences, only to find that twenty-something existences are truly for twenty-somethings. And who's to say that your life adventure in Seattle or Austin or Minneapolis or Portland wouldn't be as rewarding?

I also lived in a Southeast Asian country with an incredible community of expats. Guess what? You'll never have it again. There is something special in being an expat, that fosters instant friendship. It's just not the same in the States. People here don't get it. So, here's what you do: you either go back, which like Cary said is moving backwards, or you move on. It seems like this suburb isn't working for you. What about a larger city? A real city? Would that improve things? It's something to think about. If not, you do with what you have, and hope to make friends that have had similar experiences.

Tell me! I want to move there myself! Seriously! This couple left their community and now do not enjoy nor fit in with their new community. What's new, different or bad about that? Is it broke? Fix it!

What I read was this couple was homesick for the only home that brought them any real joy. So, if you are homesick, go home. If possible, try to think out the job possibilities ahead of the move back - can you start a home-based business there? Can you get a loan from your parents - or from the sale of the house - to front a business in paradise?

Or, would you find similar happiness in Florida? Baha California? Vancouver?

Whatever it is, it's not happening in the town you presently live in.

But to compare this couple's homesickness with an addiction to the past is, well, stretching it.

As with one of the last letter writer's to Cary's column in which a former PHD student was floundering, the advice Cary gave was...tah-dah!...FOLLOW YOUR BLISS. So...do it!

If that means heading back to paradise, then I only have four words for you: TAKE ME WITH YOU.

All the best!

mariah