How It Works: Stop Telling People to Move Abroad (It Won't Fix Their Problems)
Why geography can’t solve identity, and why the "move abroad" industry is selling delusion.
We need to stop telling people to move abroad.
Not because living abroad is a bad idea—it can be the best decision you ever make—but because we’ve turned it into a fantasy. A cure. A personality upgrade. A vibe you can supposedly buy with a visa appointment and a plane ticket.
When my wife and I decided to move to Spain nearly four years ago now (!), we knew we risked being accused of jumping on a crowded bandwagon. It’s a fad—the honeymoon period will wear off. But we knew that type of talk was nothing but bullshit.
The reality is simple: my wife had a 20-year long dream to move to Europe, and my ever-evolving study of urban planning naturally led me to where I am today. We both have strong conceptual and practical foundations for making this move. Almost one year in and our adaptation to real day-to-day life in Spain makes it clear—we weren’t chasing a trend.
And that’s the thing that can be tough to admit: There are so many trends you feel like you should chase. But sometimes the smartest thing you can do is resist them.
If it’s not for you, it’s not for you. And that’s okay.
Case in point—video content. YouTube. “Building a channel.” I resisted it for years because every time I tried (or was asked to by an employer), it felt wrong. Forced. Not me. I folded my most recent attempt for that exact reason. I don’t need to follow the crowd into a space where my heart isn’t in it and my talent doesn’t align.
This is the same mistake people make with moving abroad.
Many people who get swept up in the fantasy version of moving abroad have no business uprooting their lives, because they’re not actually moving to another country.
They’re moving because it sounds like a good idea. Like a cure-all antidote to the increasingly pathetic cartoon that is American political theater and culture.
Honestly—knowing my propensity for anxiety, I’m a little surprised I’m doing so well here—adjusting, adapting, and embracing uncertainty and discomfort. But, over the last year, I have discovered that when I consider my anxiety, I’m talking about two different things.
The anxiety we all experience—to some degree—in our daily lives and the anxiety our external environments add to our baseline existences. When you significantly reduce external anxiety, you develop a clearer picture of your inherent anxiety. So Spain didn’t cure it, it gave me a better understanding of my anxiety’s dynamics. By taking care of the place, you have better visibility into other aspects of your psyche.
That said—
When people hear “Move to Spain! Move to Portugal! Move to Mexico!” what they internalize is, “My life will be easier, cheaper, happier, and more aesthetic.”
But then they land in their new country and realize—in short order—that nothing got easier except the grocery bill, and everything that made them impatient, anxious, controlling, or chronically dissatisfied came right along for the ride.
Most people don’t move abroad. They relocate their old selves to a new backdrop.
Living abroad isn’t escape. Instead, it’s an opportunity to see what you’re made of. Then, sit with those things, take what you should carry and leave or work on the rest.
When I first got here, I spent the first six months getting upset with myself—and sometimes others—when I had a rough time speaking in Spanish in group settings. Now, I do that less—much less—because I understand it’s part of the process, part of the challenge.
With pretty much everything, I came knowing what to expect. Looking back on what I wrote in 2023 and 2024—and how things have played out in 2025—I predicted right.
Moving abroad shows you exactly who you are without the American system propping up your comfort, speed, convenience, and expectations. And this is the part almost nobody preparing to move—or saying they’re going to move—wants to hear.
They want the fantasy without the friction.
If this resonates… and you want to support an honest, practical, unfiltered version of what it actually means to build a life at home and abroad—at midlife:
How It Works (and Why It Doesn’t) is 50% off right now.
And if you pay in euros, I’ll add an extra 30 days free.
Now that moving abroad has become a lifestyle trend—a meme, a never-ending TikTok post, a personality template—more and more people are confusing desire with readiness.
Here’s what my wife and I learned the moment we told people we were moving to Spain: Everyone suddenly had a “plan” to move too.
Not a real plan—a vibe.
A someday.
A “yeah, we’ve been thinking about Spain (or Portugal or Uruguay or Costa Rica) too.”
It became clear that moving abroad is the new version of “I’m going to write a novel someday.” Or, in LA, a screenplay.
When you strip away the Instagram footage and the fantasy talk, moving abroad isn’t an escape route. It’s not a in-app purchase of a new personality. It’s not a cure for burnout, politics, or the deep dissatisfaction people have crafted their entire adult lives around. It’s not something you’ll get around to doing.
Most people don’t want to move abroad. They want to be seen as the kind of person who would move abroad.
And the move-abroad industry knows this.
It’s crazy, really. The idea that moving abroad should act as some sort of calling card.
I only write about my experience with it because I have been writing about my experience with almost everything for the last 25 years. And—in the 10 years prior to that—talking about it on the radio. That’s my job.
In everyday life, I rarely talk about what I do for a living or the dynamics of life abroad. I have been this way for 35 years.
So, it’s pretty incredible to watch people go on—without any semblance of organization or true intention—about moving the moment they get a whiff of what you did.
It’s this—I don’t know what to call it, maybe FOMO—that relocation “consultants,” grifters suddenly turned “international lifestyle” influencers, and real estate hucksters in expat-heavy cities seize on. They’re all selling the same delusion:
Buy my course, join my community, click my affiliate links, and you too can have the effortless European life.
Except there is nothing effortless about building a life in a new country, especially if you didn’t interrogate the very things that made you want—or even desperate—to leave the old one.
People who get swallowed up by this fantasy don’t just lose sight of the realities—they never considered the realities in the first place. Many don’t have the emotional or intellectual capacity to. They’re ripe to get taken advantage of by the opportunistic cash grab that is the move abroad machine. They’re the same people who probably use psychics or go on and on about manifesting.
It’s all bullshit—anchored in quicksand, not anything close to a carefully-considered reality.
It’s ironic. The American system people want to leave is exactly what trains them to be so gullible when they flippantly consider such as a massive life change. It rewards distraction, urgency, self-righteousness, instant gratification of unspecified urges, and the idea that the world exists to accommodate you.
And when that’s your foundation, moving abroad doesn’t reset your life. It makes it harder.
Because no amount of ocean views or €3 wine will compensate for the internal work you refused to do. Or the work you never even considered might be ahead of you.
No country is going to hold your hand and soothe the parts of you that remain unexamined. No visa is going to rewrite your wiring or dissolve the anxiety you still haven’t learned how to understand.
Moving abroad exposes all of it quickly.
The impatience.
The need for control.
The craving for comfort.
The inability to tolerate uncertainty.
The belief that life should bend to your will and preferences.
And this is exactly why we have no business encouraging people to move abroad.
Not because living abroad is bad. Definitely not because the U.S. is good. But because telling people “You should move abroad!” has become the new version of prescribing medication you don’t understand to a patient you’ve never examined. It’s akin to going from winding down at night with a joint or glass of wine to smoking weed all day and going through two cases a week. That two-week vacation felt really fucking good—we should just move there!
We treat moving countries like we treat self-help hacks: universal, one-size-fits-all, consequence-free.
It’s reckless.
Because moving abroad isn’t a wellness trend—it’s a structural change. It affects your identity, relationships, finances, daily rhythms, sense of competence, sense of self, and every unconscious system you rely on to feel like a functional adult.
And most people aren’t making the decision from self-awareness. They’re making it from exhaustion. From the same idiot America that—since the advent of Fox News—has brought us a new kind of tension.
From fantasy. From comparison. From a TikTok reel. From seeing someone else’s filtered version of their life and thinking, “That should be mine.”
Which is exactly what the “move abroad” industry preys on.
The influencers and masterclass peddlers in Valencia, Mexico City, Medellín—everywhere.
They’re not selling reality. They’re selling the idea that geography can solve identity. They’re creating problems that don’t exist so they can solve them at the same time as they lure countless numbers of people into a world of potential hurt.
This is why we need to stop telling people to move abroad as casually as we tell them to try a new restaurant.
If you would never recommend someone: quit their job spontaneously, throw all their money at crypto, or sell their house and go live on a boat, you probably shouldn’t tell them to move to Europe either.
Because the consequences are bigger. And the self-knowledge and self-assessments required are deeper.
When we told people we were moving, I think more than a few thought we were chasing novelty. In fact, I don’t think many people believed we were actually going until we told them we gave a 30-day notice on our apartment.
But our decision was the opposite of impulsive.
We moved because:
We wanted a built environment that matched how we actually live—walking, biking (again, finally!), street-level public life, density with sanity.
We wanted long-term affordability into old age.
We wanted a city designed for daily life (and old age), not survival or spectacle.
My wife wanted a real runway to build a ceramics career without being crushed by American overhead.
I wanted a new source of creative inspiration—not a retreat, but an expansion.
And we both wanted systems that support the life we want minus the grind of a car culture constantly simmering with hostility and tension.
In other words (as the old, but apt cliché goes): We moved toward something, not away from something.
If you want deeper essays like this — on systems, cities, psychology, and midlife abroad — consider becoming a paid subscriber. It directly supports the long-form, no-bullshit essays I’m building here.
How It Works (and Why It Doesn’t) is 50% off right now.
And if you pay in euros, I’ll add an extra 30 days free.
Great article, Rocco. As I have said many, many times, “No matter where you go, there YOU are.”
Ironically, you're going to be on YouTube today @ 6pm! Woo!