Why “Where Should I Live?” Is the Wrong Question

Moving abroad isn’t a poll—it’s a decision you should already understand

I spend maybe a minute a day scanning the Facebook groups.

Long enough to feel queasy—and see the same post, over and over.

Someone says they’re moving to Spain—sometimes as soon as “this summer.” Then comes the question:

Any recommendations on where to live?

Alicante. Valencia. Málaga.

Or sometimes: Spain or Portugal. Maybe France. Maybe Italy.

No context. Just a short list of places, offered up for public vote.

The replies arrive immediately:

Málaga has better public transport.

Valencia is more “authentic.”

Alicante is calmer.

If you like sherry, Spain. If you’re into wine, Portugal. If you want friendlier people, try Italy.

Most of it is either untrue or proves shallow and unhelpful the moment you think about it for more than a few seconds.

Someone suggests a town the original poster has never heard of.

A few people express shock.

You’re moving in six months and don’t know where?

What’s striking isn’t the question. It’s how normal it’s become.

Choosing where to live is one of the hard parts of moving abroad—before you arrive and the real work begins. But if you need to crowdsource that decision—especially from strangers online—it usually means you’re not stuck between good options. You’re unclear on why you’re moving in the first place.

This is where the inanity starts.

For a lot of people, moving abroad has become the goal itself. Not a decision grounded in conviction, but a kind of rite of passage. A signal that they’re doing something interesting with their life at a moment when buying a house feels out of reach and climbing the corporate ladder no longer holds the same promise—and neither carries the social status it once did.

Maybe it’s about sounding worldly. Maybe it’s about distraction. I’m not sure, but I don’t actually think the motivation matters much.

What matters is how casually people treat the decision.

We’re starting to talk about relocating to another country the way we talk about dinner plans. Something you’re going to do anyway, so you might as well ask the internet which option sounds better.

Stopping to check Google Maps before going inside a restaurant is one thing. Having relied on a loose consensus of complainers while passing through immigration is entirely another.

The question assumes that living abroad is just something you do. It skips the harder question of whether you’re actually prepared to live in a foreign country once you get there.

When you start from this place—treating location as the decision instead of the consequence—everything that follows gets distorted.

If you’re not going into a move knowing—well ahead of time—why this country, why this city, and why now, advice can’t help you. Wanting walkable but not crowded, lively but not touristy, or “a better quality of life” sounds reasonable, but those phrases collapse the moment you start living the day-to-day.

They’re vibes, not decisions.

If this is how you think—and you’re tired of the same recycled move-abroad surface scratches—How It Works is for you.

Moving abroad isn’t throwing a dart at a map. It’s not a box to check or a status move to replace older markers of success. It’s a choice between lives. And big decisions require conviction.

You don’t need to justify it to anyone else. But you should be able to explain it coherently to yourself—without borrowing language from social media or outsourcing the decision to strangers online.

If you can’t do that, you’re not choosing a place. You’re letting the internet pick your physical and social environment and calling it a plan. And that lack of destination certainty is exactly what turns discomfort into resentment later on.

Think about it in relation to moving, but really in any big decision you make.

If you don’t know why you moved, everything feels like a reason you shouldn’t have.

It always amazes me how people complain about bureaucracy and often let it pollute their experience abroad. Moving for “good” bureaucracy is a lot like choosing a restaurant because you can order from an iPad. Nobody actually moves because they think every administrative task will run smoothly. Yet, they complain when they don’t—indicating that there’s something else that exists underneath their unrest.

Anything that doesn’t go their way becomes evidence the place is broken. But how can you call a place “broken” when you had to ask some random on Facebook where to move? It’s like complaining that a relationship “isn’t working” when you let your friends pick your partner because you couldn’t decide what you wanted in the first place.

Any problem will hit harder when someone expected relief from a place they didn’t actually understand—rather than accepting the trade-offs of everyday life. The place isn’t rejecting them. Reality is just fucking with the fantasy they arrived with.

At this point, everything can fall apart and the familiar spectacle emerges:

• Complaining without adapting

• Comparing everything to “back home”

• Staying angry instead of honest with themselves

• Blaming locals for not accommodating expectations

None of this is about the place. It’s about preparation—or the lack of it.

The irony is that choosing where to live is actually one of the easier parts of moving abroad—if you’ve done the real work first.

If you’re clear on why you’re leaving, what you’re willing to give up, and which trade-offs you’re prepared to live with, the list narrows on its own. When you can clearly answer these questions before you move, the decision stops looking like pizza or pasta and starts looking like a commitment.

But if you arrive without that clarity, no city will feel right. Every inconvenience will feel like a personal affront. Everything that doesn’t go their way will feel like proof they made a mistake.

“Where should I live?” isn’t the wrong question because location doesn’t matter.

It’s the wrong question because by the time you ask it, you should already know the answer.

This is the stuff relocation content skips—because it’s not cute and it’s not marketable.

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