Do you tell people back home how hard it actually is?

I used to hide it completely — brave face, sunny photos — because I'd chosen this and didn't want 'I told you so'. It got lonely fast. Now I'm honest with two or three trusted people and keep the highlight reel for everyone else.

My family worries, so I protect them from the day-to-day struggles but I've found one friend I can be fully honest with. Everyone needs at least one person who gets the unfiltered version, or it festers.

OP here, and 'two or three trusted people, highlight reel for the rest' is exactly the balance I was missing. I'd gone all-or-nothing and picked 'nothing', which was slowly crushing me.

What I've realised is that people back home often can't fully understand anyway — it's not their world. That's partly why forums like this help: sometimes the people who truly get it are other expats, not old friends.

I tell them the funny hard stuff — the comedy of errors — which is honest without being heavy. It lets me be truthful that it's hard while keeping them from panicking and begging me to come home.

At my stage, hiding it from my adult children felt like lying, so I chose honesty. It actually brought us closer — they felt trusted, and they surprised me with how much support they gave from afar.

Pride kept me quiet far too long. Admitting it was hard didn't mean I regretted moving — those are two different things, and letting people see the struggle didn't undo the fact that I'd still choose it again.

Honestly, this thread is the honest conversation I don't always have on the phone home. Reassuring that everyone's doing the brave-face-then-quiet-cry thing. We should all pick our two people and actually use them.