I regret moving abroad and I can’t say so out loud.

Why does the regret surface now and not when I arrived?

The first year abroad hands you a job to do, and regret cannot easily get a word in while you are still doing it.

Finding a flat, working out the tax, the health card, the bank, the word for the thing you need in the hardware shop: all of it absorbs you and gives each day an obvious purpose. Then it finishes. The purpose goes with it, and what is left is the actual life you have made, without the scaffolding of arrival to distract you from it. That is usually when the feeling turns up, and the timing makes it feel like a late verdict on an old decision.

Clients often read that timing as proof of something: if this had been a good move, surely it would feel better by now. I read it differently. One survey of people who had settled in a new country found that how long someone had lived there did not predict how well they were doing; what mattered much more was how at home they felt in the ordinary social texture of daily life.¹ It was a single study of one community, mostly women, so it describes a pattern rather than a rule. But it matches what I see. Time on its own does not do the work, and there is nothing wrong with you because the calendar has not fixed this.

Does regret mean I made the wrong decision?

Regret tells you something is costing you. It does not tell you that the alternative would have cost less.

The comparison your mind runs is not a fair one. On one side sits the life you actually have, in full detail, including this morning. On the other sits an imagined version of the life you left, assembled out of the best parts you remember and none of the reasons you went. That second life has no bad Tuesdays in it, and measuring yourself against it will always leave you short.

• What the regret may be pointing at. A specific loss that has never been grieved: a parent, a language, a friendship, a professional standing that did not transfer.
• What it is usually not pointing at. A single decision that can be reversed to undo the loss. Going back returns you to the place, not to the person you were in it.
• What it tends to hide. Something about the present that could change without anyone moving country at all.

Research on regret separates the emotional side, the ache and the self-reproach, from the thinking side, the review of what happened and what you would do differently. The 2 are closely linked but not identical, and the researchers were careful to say that neither side is automatically the unhelpful one.² That work was done with students and online volunteers in one country, so treat it as a useful distinction rather than a measurement of you. Still, it is worth knowing which one you are mostly doing, because the ache wants comfort and the review wants information, and offering the wrong one is why these conversations go in circles.

Why do I feel this when my life here looks fine on paper?

A life can be good on paper and lonely to live in, and the paper version is the one everybody else sees.

This is the part that embarrasses people most. The salary is better, the city is safe, the commute is 12 minutes by bicycle, and you cannot work out what you are complaining about. So you stop complaining, which removes the only route the feeling had, and then you find yourself quietly furious at a perfectly pleasant Sunday.

A study of people who had relocated internationally found that everyday stress and a sense of isolation were the factors most closely tied to how they were faring, while how culturally distant the new country was barely registered.³ Like the work above it was one survey, and almost all the people in it were women from Europe or North America, so it is suggestive rather than conclusive. What I take from it clinically is this: the question is rarely whether Denmark is the right country. It is whether you have anyone here who knows what your week was actually like.

What if I moved for someone else?

Then the regret carries a second difficulty inside it: the one person who would have to hear it is the person you moved for.

So it stays unsaid, and it does not stay still. It leaks out as irritation about the flat, the weather, their family, the way they are so obviously fine here. They hear criticism of the life you are building together and defend it, you hear your own unhappiness being argued with, and within a year the subject has become undiscussable for both of you.

I would be careful about one thing here. You did not necessarily make a sacrifice they owe you for, and they did not necessarily ask you to. Those are different claims, and couples tend to argue the first while meaning the second. What usually helps is getting the regret said once, properly, as information about you rather than as a charge against them. It is a conversation that often goes better with a third person in the room, which is some of what I do in psychotherapy with internationals in Copenhagen.

What can I do with this without upending everything?

Give the regret somewhere to go that is smaller than a decision about your whole life.

• Say it out loud to one person who is not your partner. Unspoken regret hardens into a conclusion. Spoken, it tends to shrink back into the thing it was: a difficult feeling about a real loss.
• Name precisely what you miss. Not the country. The specific texture of it: being funny in your own language, a particular shop, knowing without asking how long a silence is supposed to last.
• Separate the move from the life. Ask what of this is about being here, and what would follow you anywhere. The answers go in different piles and need different things.
• Put one piece of your old self back into the week. A choir, a sport, the work you were good at before it stopped transferring. Not as a cure, as evidence that the self is still available.
• Set a date to reconsider, not a verdict to reach. A decision you have agreed to look at again in 6 months stops demanding to be made every evening.

Those steps assume a regret that hurts but is liveable. They are the wrong instrument if the low mood has stopped lifting, if things you used to care about have gone flat, or if the thought of another decade here feels unbearable rather than merely heavy. That is not a self-help problem, and working harder at it alone is how people lose another year. It belongs in a room with someone whose job is to sit in it with you.

Questions people ask

Is therapy worth starting if I might leave Denmark anyway?

Yes, and uncertainty about leaving is a good reason to start rather than a reason to wait. The work is about understanding what you are weighing, which travels with you whatever you decide.

Will you tell me whether to stay or go?

No, and I would distrust anyone who offered to. My job is to help you see clearly what the choice is actually between, so the decision is yours and holds afterwards.

What happens in a first session about something like this?

You talk, I ask, and we work out together what the regret is attached to. There is no assessment to pass and nothing you have to have figured out before you arrive.

Should I come alone or with my partner?

Come alone if the work is understanding your own regret; come together if the trouble is that it cannot be discussed between you. People often begin alone and bring their partner in later.

Does it help to do this in English rather than my first language?

English works well for most people, though some feelings only arrive in a first language. When that happens we slow down and let the words come as they come.

If you regret the move but cannot say it at home, I offer relocation psychotherapy as a private place to say it first.

Sources

1. Shekriladze, I. and Javakhishvili, N. (2024). Sociocultural predictors of immigrant adjustment and well-being. Frontiers in Sociology, 9, 1251871.
2. Buchanan, J., Summerville, A., Lehmann, J. and Reb, J. (2016). The Regret Elements Scale: distinguishing the affective and cognitive components of regret. Judgment and Decision Making, 11(3), 275 to 286.
3. Herrmann Aegerter, K., Meyer, A.H., Gaab, J. and Ooi, Y.P. (2025). Expatriation stressors and the well-being of accompanying partners: a commonality analysis approach. Frontiers in Psychology, 16, 1607178.

How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.