This is a guest post by Jared Trueheart of Legends Of Men.com, a site dedicated to masculine literature, culture, and developing as a man. It’s in my shortlist of sites that I still visit on a weekly basis and is something that I recommend you check out. Jared has penned some of my favorite guest posts for this site and I’m glad to have another from in. In this article Jared talks about if you should move or not. Enjoy.
Every day men contemplate moving from their current location to some distant, foreign place. Sometimes it’s from coast to coast, sometimes it’s international, sometimes it’s from the country to the city or the city to the country. In all cases though, it is a decision that cannot be taken lightly. I’ve moved from the west coast to the east coast to a different part of the west coast to Las Vegas and Florida and Texas. I’ve moved from the suburbs to a big city and to a sub-urban environment again. I’ve even moved internationally, spending three years in Japan.
Men like to think that a change in their environment can solve their problems. While it may solve a few, it will also create some. With that in mind, I’ve created a guide to help you decide if and where moving is right for you.
Describe Home
This is the most important step. For some people, including me, home is where they lay their heads. It’s not necessarily a city or a neighborhood. All of these miss the point though. What are you leaving behind? When people make a big move they usually leave their family and closest friends. This is vital. If you leave your support network you leave your tribe. Support from a distance is feeble at best. Although it can be romantic for men to think of themselves as lone wolves nature knows for good reason that alpha males travel in packs. You need the support of people who genuinely care about you. Do not move away from that lightly.
With that said, there are some situations where moving away from your support network may be necessary:
- If they support you too much and you need to learn independence
- If there aren’t any good job near your friends and family
- If you’ve burned too many bridges. This applies more to small towns where everyone knows everyone else.
- If your hometown isn’t safe (i.e. crime rate is high)
What you can’t do is move away from yourself. The first step in deciding if you should move is to describe from who and what you are moving away. The second step is to determine if the reason you want to move is because of a flaw in the environment or a flaw in yourself. If the local economy in your hometown is garbage, you won’t be able to get a good job. It’s understandable to move away from that. If there are good jobs in your hometown but you can’t get them you’ll need to fix yourself. You won’t be able to get a good job when you move if you can’t get a good job at home. I learned this lesson when I moved from the west coast to the east coast and encountered many new problems.
The first two steps are designed to tell you if you need a new environment or to improve yourself. If you need a new environment you can proceed with the guide.
To What Would You Move?
Once you’ve determined that a change in environment is needed, you need to know where to go. This decision should be made based on a few important factors. In descending levels of importance, they are:
- Where are there people who genuinely care about you?
- Where are there jobs in your field?
- Where is safe and has an acceptable standard of living?
A support network is always the most important factor in where you live. Living away from people who care about you will lead to isolation which can have dramatic effects on your mental health. If you have to move to a location where nobody knows you, this move should only be temporary. It should be a short-term move of fewer than five years before you move back to people who care about you. During that time you’ll need to build transferable skills that you can use near your support network. In five years or less, you’ll move back and use your skills in a good job near home.
The presence of an extended support network in an environment conducive to your short-term career goals will narrow the field of possible locations down dramatically. If you have no one outside of your hometown, the location should be made on what is best for work and will allow you to save money and build skills. If you’re isolated, you should move back at five years anyway.
In my experience, whether you only move an hour away from home or six hours away or across the country, the effects on your relationships with your friends and family are still the same. If you’re out of sight you’re generally out of mind. So don’t expect friends to visit you if you live an hour away or more especially if those friends have families. The drive could be made on holidays, but not much other than that.
Bad Reasons to Relocate
The most commonly made mistake is to move because you can’t find a good woman. More often than not, the reason men can’t find a good woman is that they need to improve themselves, not their environment. The second most common reason is that they look in the wrong places. The third most common reason is that they spent time boning sluts and now expect a good woman to fall in their lap.
Social bonds are as strong or stronger than emotional bonds. You’re more likely to find a woman who will be good to you in your hometown because you have mutual friends and shared experiences than you are to find a trad-orthodox girl in a new city. No matter where you go, the women there will have social bonds to the men they know there. You’ll always be easy to leave. Other men will not. You need to find a woman in your hometown because neither of you will be able to easily leave the other. The social pressure to work out your problems is invaluable and extremely beneficial.
Another bad reason to move is for adventure. Adventures require new experiences that are always fleeting. You’ll have to move repeatedly to maintain a sense of adventure, preventing you from developing career skills or maintaining a network of friends. Adventures have ends. Life resumes after the end of the adventures. If adventure is what you seek, you have to make them part of your life that stems from your hometown, which have definite time-periods, and that have purposes. For example, moving to China for a sense of adventure sounds great but it is a net detriment to your life. If you want an adventure in China, work hard, save money, take some time off, and take a trip to China with some set objectives to accomplish. Then go back home.
Theoretically, one could accept a sense of isolation in exchange for a sense of adventure the same way someone would exchange isolation for career and skill development. The problem with this exchange is that, unlike the exchange for skill development, adventures have few lasting pragmatic effects. When you are ready to settle down in your hometown, your years in China will amount to some cool stories but not much more in terms of practical skills. Adventures are very beneficial to your mindset and your confidence and your masculinity. I’d never discourage an adventure, but the harsh realities of the world cannot be avoided. Don’t sacrifice skills that allow you to survive for adventures. Plenty of digital nomads and people I know live with this problem now.
Chances are, moving isn’t all it’s made out to be. Fix yourself and your environment will present new opportunities to you. If you still think moving is right for you, this guide will help.
