Retirement, Relocation, and the Loss of the Social Crutch
Some ideas get repeated often enough that we just accept them as truth.
That’s risky at a societal level, but just as problematic on an individual one—especially when we’re navigating change. We start mistaking familiar explanations for accurate ones.
Two examples come up constantly:
That people “lose their identity” when they retire.
And that when you move abroad, you’ll feel more grounded if you learn the language faster or surround yourself with locals.
We’ll dissect the second one later this month. Today, I want to focus on what these two ideas have in common. Because understanding it matters if you’re navigating change at any age, especially in midlife and beyond.
I’ve never retired, but I understand the parallel well enough to see it clearly.
When you retire, it’s not just a shift in how you spend your time. It’s the removal of an entire feedback system:
No boss (except Springsteen)
No performance reviews
No promotion path
No office politics or empty social script
Life abroad triggers something similar.
This doesn’t usually feel like a crisis. You just feel a little off—persistently.
What you lose are the grounding psychological elements of your day-to-day you took for granted. You probably never thought about them on a conscious level. They’re components that might have only existed in your head, but still helped validate you.
You enter a world where far fewer people are managing your emotions for you or reflect an unspoken understanding of who you are, through history and shared experience. When you walk down the street where you’re from, you feel established—even if still a little (or a lot) insecure. You have a track record. It’s just this built-in sense that you’re a known entity. This exists to a far lesser extent—if at all—when you’re living abroad.
Even when you bring your work with you—as I have—this dynamic doesn’t disappear.
You exist to others in a different context. And that can feel destabilizing whether or not you ever liked the systems you lived under.
So many of the things that once told you—constantly—that you were okay simply aren’t there anymore.
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