{"id":50371,"date":"2026-05-13T09:41:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T09:41:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-moved-from-the-us-to-new-zealand-for-love-i-forgot-to-build-my-own-life-when-i-got-there\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T09:41:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T09:41:11","slug":"i-moved-from-the-us-to-new-zealand-for-love-i-forgot-to-build-my-own-life-when-i-got-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/i-moved-from-the-us-to-new-zealand-for-love-i-forgot-to-build-my-own-life-when-i-got-there\/","title":{"rendered":"I moved from the US to New Zealand for love. I forgot to build my own life when I got there."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69fc8beac9dd4cb81cda8065?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The author and her husband in New Zealand.\"\/><figcaption>The author said she regrets not building her own life when she first moved to New Zealand for love.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Ashlyn Oswalt.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>After navigating a long-distance relationship for a year, I took the leap and moved to New Zealand.<\/li>\n<li>I got my happily ever after, but lost a bit of myself in the process.<\/li>\n<li>If I had it to do over, I&#039;d do some things differently.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When I met CJ at a Montreal hostel, I didn&#039;t expect to purchase a one-way ticket to New Zealand around a year later. But after months of enduring a long-distance relationship between Chicago and Toronto (where he was living at the time), and falling deeply in love, I chose the path of least resistance: a New Zealand work visa and a flight to Christchurch, CJ&#039;s hometown.<\/p>\n<p>I moved without a shred of research, convinced love would be enough to build a personal foundation in a foreign country. I was in for a shock.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a032912e1443b8dc48e436c?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The author and her now-husband take a picture of their reflection at the Cloud Gate in Chicago.\"\/><figcaption>The author and her now-husband took their first photo together while seeing their reflection at the Cloud Gate in Chicago.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Ashlyn Oswalt.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>I relied on my partner&#039;s social circle, instead of finding my own<\/h2>\n<p>CJ grew up in Christchurch, and I lazily relied on his established group of mates to become my social circle. While they were lovely, our lives couldn&#039;t be more different. They were buying homes and having children, while CJ and I were still in the discovery phase of our relationship.<\/p>\n<p>Everything changed when I made my first American friend. We bonded instantly over the things we missed from home and the friction of life here, and I finally felt seen. This relationship opened the door to my own community, and soon I had a group of people who knew me for me, not just as CJ&#039;s partner.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a0329deba7ef34b41f375b1?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The author pets a sheep while holding a glass of wine.\"\/><figcaption>The author admits that she relied too heavily on her partner&#039;s social circle when she first moved abroad.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Ashlyn Oswalt.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Professional isolation seeped into every facet of my life<\/h2>\n<p>I kept my remote US marketing job when I moved. Earning USD was great, but it meant I was physically in New Zealand while mentally and socially stuck on another continent. I had no reason to leave the house, no local colleagues, and nothing anchoring me to New Zealand \u2014 aside from CJ. That&#039;s a heck of a lot of pressure to put on a relationship.<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, I landed a copywriting role at a Kiwi outdoor brand. It was a dream job I&#039;d struggled to find in the US. Being part of an iconic company connected me to my new home and provided me with a professional identity that finally felt like me.<\/p>\n<h2>I focused on assimilation instead of identity<\/h2>\n<p>I suppressed my &quot;Americanisms&quot; for years \u2014 overenthusiasm and my love of country music, just to name a few \u2014 trying to fit in. I didn&#039;t want to stick out like a sore thumb, but I was quietly destroying myself. I didn&#039;t bring my full, authentic self with me to New Zealand, and this was a reason for my constant homesickness.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a03297ae1443b8dc48e4373?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The author&#039;s husband helps prepare to host a Thanksgiving dinner at their home in New Zealand.\"\/><figcaption>The author said she tried to keep her American side quiet for many years. It wasn&#039;t until she embraced her true self and started doing things like hosting Thanksgiving that she could truly feel at home in New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Ashlyn Oswalt.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It took years, but I slowly relearned who I was, sharing parts of my life I&#039;d packed away. I hosted Thanksgiving dinners and threw country-music themed BBQs. I celebrated where I came from, and became comfortable with where I was.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>I got my happily ever after<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The road to happily living in New Zealand was long and hard, but here I stand, at the other side. My own rom-com played out well in the end. My partner and I are happily married and settled, but I could have saved myself a lot of hardship if I had done things a bit differently.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;d do it all over again, but if I could give myself one piece of advice, I&#039;d make sure I created my own life when I landed. Creating a strong foundation for myself, one that my partner and I could stand on without fear of cracking, would have made the journey so much easier.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The author said she regrets not building her own life when she first moved to New Zealand for love. Courtesy of Ashlyn Oswalt. After navigating a long-distance relationship for a year, I took the leap and moved to New Zealand. I got my happily ever after, but lost a bit of myself in the process. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}