I’ve lived in paris for 5/6 years, I was fluent when I arrived (years of international school) and my mom had already been living here for several years. Still, it was a big culture shock and adjustment and absolutely levelled up my French to the point where now French people usually assume I am from here.
The problem is even with all that, I just don’t feel at home. Some cultural differences feel insurmountable, the blasé and critical attitude is difficult for me, I’ve always been very high energy and jokey and have a hard time finding people in everyday life who match that energy. Whenever I go back to the states I feel so fulfilled and like myself and it really makes me question why I’m here. I have a very cool job in the non-profit sector, so not super well-paid, and a very stable loving relationship, my apartment, my mom… there’s still something where I feel like I’ll never fully be accepted here. I feel like my American-ness immediately puts me down in peoples’ eyes, I feel like I will never write perfectly or totally grasp codes and it will always take me a slight extra effort to understand things that are easy for people here. I don’t get cultural references and I don’t know the clichés of every tiny town and region.
I’m from New York so I liked living here because I felt that Paris was such a better cost of living/quality of life ratio, and I love the work-life balance and accessibility of culture. However, what use are my 5 weeks of vacation if I spend half of them going back home? And probably, I always will, because my missing home will never go away, my friends and family there will keep getting married or getting sick or just being there ?
And France’s descent into xenophobic fascism is not helping. I know all the issues in the US, but it’s different, I am from there and always will be, whereas I am actively choosing to live in France and contribute to its economy.
Just feeling like the jig is up and I did what I had to do, and now I can leave. This is just venting, don’t know if anyone here can relate, if this is a bump in the road or a red alert.
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Perhaps you would find more joie de vivre in the south of France. Paris certainly isn’t like the rest of France. Or in Montreal, which is also an easier time zone trip to NYC.
Sounds like homesickness to me. It’s a very real problem, as you are experiencing. I think your problems are just part of being an expat unfortunately.
Try another city in France
OP is young, she does not have children, she can move to the US and try it out. She has friends and family there, it seems low risk.
Everyone is reacting to that one sentence about xenophobia but read the rest of the post. She is tired of the blasé attitude, of not getting all the cultural references, of not quite fitting in despite her linguistic skills. That’s enough to warrant trying out the US.
I think you misread. She’s originally from the US, from NYC.
She isn’t considering trying out the US. She’s from the US.
And not just US. NYC.
I just “escaped” NYC and now in London. I can’t believe I stayed there for as long as I did because I heavily romanticised being a New Yorker.
Only 2 months in and I’m enjoying where I am now because of how much freeing it is when not every business is out to get you in capitalism mindset and tipping like how it was in NYC.
You’ve only been there 2 months. Just wait.
My disposable income increased by $5k/month. I lost all the weight I gained in the US in the 2 months here (without trying). I get to travel in Europe for fun without breaking the bank. I get to travel for free in Europe for work. I get to go home to Asia for cheaper / faster flight times. The food/produce is not poisonous here. Wine is so much cheaper here. No tipping culture. Etc etc.
So far my quality of life has improved by a lot.
Sure there are some things I miss in NYC and Singapore—two other cities I previously lived in and loved—but London is my home now and, like always, I build a life around what I have and where I am.
One of my biggest frustrations with reddit is how poorly people read posts. Sometimes I feel like no one reads past the first paragraph, they just run to the comments.
Well it you don’t think you fit, it’s understandable that you’d look for a place where you’d feel better.
btw I don’t know anyone who puts down people for their “American-ness”, so maybe you’re not surrounded by very welcoming people.
she says she lives in a district with muslim and african immigrants and not the french, so that could explain why she is not feeling welcome as those immigrants tend to hate westerners.
You know there are many French people in the muslim / African roots community + in those suburbs? With the expensive rates, many “Westerners” as you call them move there because it’s hard to find / afford something in Paris or the “première couronne” in 92 for exemple.
I’ve heard other parts of France are more welcoming, do you think that’s true?
Really depends honestly. I come from Annecy, a place I love, but I wouldn’t call the people from Haute-Savoie department welcoming. Many people from outside Paris likes to bash the capital (same in England), but the Parisian area have one of the most mixed population in the country. Whereras there are places where one be publicly rejected for being an “outsider”.
I’m from the south West and not necessarily. Like in many places, if you’re not from there, people will treat you like a stranger. My father has lived there for 50 years and he is still treated like a foreigner.
I’m from Europe and also got some French people putting me down for things in my culture that they made up whenever they felt like feeling superior.
It’s something that happens more than you think in France, and so yes not all French people but many foreigners will have experienced this attitude of superiority.
Your education system is over-corrective and hyper-critical and that produces people who over-correct and are hyper-critical of others. Bienvenue en France.
The worst part is that these people go around being like “no is not possible” instead of trying to help their society be better about these things. Then they get offended when we criticize them for being this way. It is a never ending circle
Cerenity1000 can fuck all the way off, that person doesn’t know anything about me, and i am speaking about the institutional xenophobia, a concept that i think they are not capable of understanding from their corner of hate
I am latin american and felt the same as OP. So did my other latin american friends and spanish friends. The french do love putting other cultures down, specially americans.
“The French”. Glad you met all the people in the country, julieg0593. I haven’t been successful doing so :)
Not everyone is like that. I am married to a french man and love his family. But when you are at la sorbonne doing a master’s and a professor out of nowhere saying Americans are stupid during class, leaves a good impression of the “french”. This would get someone fired in USA.
Mind, we, french do not have the monopoly of this kind of useless stereotype and stupid comments. I stopped counting the one I got in UK and Australia. The third universal things after death and tax is meeting idiots.
+1 compa
Because you aren’t American. Hell, I’m American and French, grew up in France, don’t have a French sounding name, and people in France made fun of my “non-French name” and my “American-ness”. My french is better than my english, grew up in Paris, but to a lot of people here, I’m “l’amerloque”.
Can you try out somewhere else in the EU that isn’t France? I’ve lived in a few places, including Paris, and Paris was by far the most difficult.
I can’t tell you what to do but I’ll just say I’m also an American woman in France and have felt many of the same things you’re talking about. As much as I enjoy certain things I don’t intend to stay either.
Mah, Xenophobic fascism in France ? Are you serious ? In Paris out of anywhere else ? Where are the xenophobic fascists in Paris ? there’s not more left wing shit hole than Paris, unless you’re in like the 93 or smth …
Same feeling as a U.K. expat living in Portugal. Many locals give me a dirty look when they hear my accent (my husband is Portuguese and I studied to b2 level so not perfect but pretty good) rather than the attitude of oh I wonder where this person who has taken the time to learn my language from. When I visited the US for 3 weeks I was asked about my home town way more than I have been asked in 4 years living in Lisbon. It’s honestly sad!
I wonder where this person who has taken the time to learn my language from
Hm, not sure it’s something worthy of interest honestly. That’s the bare minimum when one lives abroad. I just go there on holidays, but I wouldn’t expect someone in the UK being supportive that I learnt English.
Sure, but I was comparing to the us, where they hear a different accent they are immediately interested. Here it’s seen as a negative thing that’s all I meant.
There is something to be said. About The Grass is always greener. I am German who live in the Netherlands “along many other countries so “. I tend to romanticize about places I’ve lived prior whichever current country I finally live in. I can easily integrate and language has never been a barrier. Even now people just assume I’m local. But I always stick out as a sore thumb and wonder if I should just move to Germany “or elsewhere” Even my work is based in another EU country that I visit a few times a year. A few years ago I tried to settle there but decided it’s not for me and came back. Now that I visit it a few times and the weather is usually better and I am out of my daily routine. It’s cheaper than where I live. I thought, maybe I should just move here. Even though the big issues I hated back then not only still exist but probably have gotten worse.
I have a friend of mine also from a European country who has migrated to the US and honestly he’s more American now than he is European.
This past summer after he visited his home country which he does annually, told me that it was so nice that he’s considering moving back.
You’re not alone in feeling the way you do. I believe its the Holiday goggles or the short term memory that makes it always seem better at that other place. Rather than being faced by the same daily routine and reminded day in and day out about the things that we don’t really like and enjoy.
Whenever I or I believe anyone go back to their home country for a visit they always feel very welcome by friends and family where they all make time to see you, greet you and make you feel special. Given that you’d be visiting for only a period of time. But it might not be the case once one is back for good.
However, if you’re mostly unhappy where you are and you have the option to move back, then do. Sometimes it’s better to make a choice than not at all.
Whatever you decide to do, I hope you can find your place and feel content wherever you end up.
thanks for this reply, this is part of why i’m not gone yet, i don’t want to leave with my rose-colored glasses, regret it, and have to start back from square one (visa-wise) if i want to come back
I think you can apply for the citizenship!
Rosé goggles 🍷 happens to me a bit…
I want to contribute the opposite experience. I moved back home and loved it. I ended up with all the things that I didn’t think I wanted. It made me a lot happier. I don’t think you can really predict what will make you happier.
can you apply for citizenship by now? If you do that you can move back to the US knowing you could go back whenever you wanted. Or to any other EU country.
I might get dual citizenship.
You’ve been there 5 years, ask for permanent residency.
I was going to say, I wouldn’t leave until I had secured permanent residency or citizenship, personally.
I have also lived in a few different countries and periodically got the feeling “oh maybe I should just move back home, I miss the culture/friends/family”
Until I actually did it and moved back home.
I lasted about 6 months, then moved abroad again.
Family and friends make a bit extra effort when you are there on holiday as there’s just for a short time; when I moved back home after the first few weeks everyone went back to their normal life, including me with work and suddenly I started feeling again like I was out of place and noticing all the small things that made me not want to live there in the first place.
I still miss home and randomly have the urge to go back but it mainly happens in moments when something else is going on in my life that annoys me, as soon as that is sorted I realize I am actually good where I am and a holiday home is enough of a fix.
OP, it might not be the case for you but weigh the pros and cons of moving back. It sounds like you have a family and a life in France, moving will not be easy even if it is the right thing for you to do. Best of luck!!
“And France’s descent into xenophobic fascism is not helping”.
As opposed to decades of very unpopular mass immigration policies? How dare they complain.
Well the U.S. is also on the road to xenophobic fascism in our own way, unfortunately!
gonna shut this down already bc i stupidly left in one sentence of a political opinion that was too inviting to all the right wing assholes on here, it is truly my bad. although your hatefulness to the very idea that france could be xenophobic and immediately calling me gaucho trash and talking about the 93 … proves my point :)
I’m not on the right at all, but I fail to see the point when both the countries you’re talking about have somewhat similar issues with xenophobia and growing fascism. Just move to Florida, I guess. Problem solved, I guess.
Ultimately, plenty of other people from wherever you came from are perfectly happy where you are. So maybe, and don’t take this the wrong way, but maybe it’s you. Maybe you need to find inner contentment or something to be happy wherever you are. But, I don’t know, it’s just an idea. Best of luck figuring it out.
for some reason i can’t express it well, but i just am from the us - living there is “easy” in the sense that i have no visa, work constraints, language barrier, etc, whereas in france i am literally asking to be here, working to be here, accepting the trials that come with immigrating in order to be here, so it feels more like “choosing” a country with growing fascism than if i were to be in the united states, my home country with many things that make my (me, personally) life easier… i hope it makes sense
anyway i answered someone else who made the point about me being “the problem,” don’t really agree with the way you put it because just because x works for someone doesn’t mean it works for someone else, different strokes and all that, but i am also seeking therapy to help me work through these things before making any rash decisions
Unfortunately right !
-talks crazy shit
-gets roasted for it
-point proven
Look. Paris is not for everybody. I like it there but I have the advantages of being male and fitting French prejudices about a certain kind of upper middle class yankee,!which makes life easy for me. Having been around the French my whole life, I think it’s ten or twenty times harder to be an American woman in France than an American man. I am pretty sure the US is a lot closer to fascism than France is. But I am also certain that it’s way easier to be an American woman in the US than an American woman in France. For what it’s worth I have two grown French daughters. One has embraced her Frenchness and has moved there. The other far prefers New York because of French attitudes towards women. Everybody gets to choose.
I’m thinking you don’t really know what fascism is the way you throw it around. You seem to equate it to “people who have political views I don’t like”.
A more honest view would be France’s far right not only has a very sorted history with actual fascism but the current far right party in France not only pushes some very questionable policies but also has a very significant group of support in France.
Excuse me? Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? If you haven’t researched Speaker Mike Johnson then it’s clear you really don’t. If you have done any research, then the most charitable assumption is that you’re being disingenuous. The Speaker has a documented history of one-sided pro-theocratic Christian positions going back decades. His closest allies are revisionists, liars, and toxic theocrats. Johns lies about the US Constitution. He believes Adam and Eve palled around with dinosaurs in the garden of eden on our “six-thousand year-old earth.” He wants to ban abortion and end gay rights, gay marriage, and even gay intimacy. His positions on southern history are revisionist in the extreme. He’s the GOP’s choice to lead the fascist break-out. What part of the GOP hard-right is not fascist? Its leader, Donald Trump? Give me a break. He’s called for “suspending the Constitution,” using the DOJ to go after his enemies, and ending the apolitical civil service. He wants to pardon the J6 insurrectionists. He worked with Vladimir Putin to get elected in 2016. You can dispute all these facts with your Fox News-fueled feelings but they’re still facts, and those who dispute them are liars.
The French far right divides into fascists and monarchists. Last I checked neither one of these were in senior government positions in France nor were any of their representatives the overwhelming favorite to win the next presidential election. So, what, exactly, are your feelings telling you when you say I “seem” to “throw” my facts “around”? Give me a break.
lol. Fascist. Haha. Is everyone you disagree with a fascist?! You sound like a teenager.
Well you sound like you haven’t been following America’s degradation since 2016. This is classic gaslighting on your part, by the way. Just saying “LOL” as the GOP burns the country to the ground is what’s really teenagerish here.
The past four years under Biden haven’t been stellar bub…
Last I checked when Trump left inflation wasn’t wild, there wasn’t a cost of living crisis, interest rates weren’t prohibitive, we we weren’t in a proxy war with Russia. The ME was a much more peaceful place as well. But yah, orange man bad, mean tweets, Jan 6th (have you watched the newly released videos? LOL, don’t it’ll smash your perception of the so-called insurrection), etc etc.
“It is blood which moves the wheels of history” -Donald Trump…I mean Benito Mussolini (actual fascist).
I fully agree with you. I think that the people disagreeing with your thoughts either 1) lack perspective or 2) are too arrogant to believe that America’s right-wing elements have and continue to hurt and disenfranchise fellow Americans. Classic lack of empathy and critical thinking skills.
You see the same among the French in Quebec. Shit that wouldn’t fly in the rest of Canada seems to get a lot of support in Quebec.
How can you say that, French Canadian have always be the left-ish workers while anglophones were the ruling class. The things that you think “wouldn’t fly in the rest of Canada” is because internet culture does not permeate through society as much because of the language barrier and media “isolation”.
Dude, check out the levels of anti-semitism in Quebec versus the rest of Canada. I remember seeing a survey years ago that asked “do jews secretly control financial and political systems?”. The rest of Canada was low single digit while Quebec was in the high teens.
Quebec is left-wing but there is a strong quasi-fascist/nationalist bent to their politics.
Québec is nationalist because it has its own culture that faces assimilation constantly. It has nothing to do with fascism, it’s just a different way to build a society. Your view is very anglo-centric.
I don’t know about the survey you saw a couple years ago.
Fascist views are fascist. It doesn’t matter why you hold them, they’re still fascist.
I think it’s ten or twenty times harder to be an American woman in France than it is to be an American man.
But I am also certain that it’s way easier to be an American woman in the US than an American woman in France.
of French attitudes towards women.
I’m curious, can you tell me more about this? I’m an American woman who loves France… but I’m not really sure what French attitudes towards women are.
At least in the television shows I see, the French attitude towards women seems progressive.
There are very strict gender norms in France. The type of woman who is celebrated in France is one who is a certain narrow (and not very achievable) stereotype of womanhood: beautiful, capable, cool; in general, expectations that there is a certain “image” of an acceptable woman. Of course there is no such equivalent for men to be accepted in society.
North American-style feminism is not seen positively and even the word “feminism” is used as a pejorative and progressive French women avoid using it. There’s a cultural issue with men not respecting women’s personal space or assuming it’s okay to touch them or not believing the woman who says they’re not interested. It’s very clear in North America that bosses shouldn’t make a move on their subordinates, but France is reluctant to see that as an issue.
Also the french women who try to draw attention to this inequality in the workplace and society are publicly derided by both men and women. There’s a cultural attachment to the stereotypical ideal French woman and not everyone is convinced that she is bad for society.
If you want to learn more about French gender issues, this webcomic is a famous one (translated here into English but originally in France): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic
This song is by a Belgian singer but it sparked a LOT of conversation in France. The title is a play on “balance ton porc”, which was the French hashtag version of #MeToo.
I also highly recommend the documentary “Room 2806: The Accusation” for Americans who aren’t familiar with French culture around gender. It’s about a French man who was accused of sexually assaulting a hotel worker in NYC, but it spends a lot of time explaining the complicated and conflicting relationship that French society has with feminism, and directly contrasts that with American culture of gender norms. We have a society that strives for gender equality whereas France’s does not.
This is very specific and exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
I agree with all of this and also, I find it funny that Bidens age gets talked about a lot when Trump is… 77 years old. The difference isn’t that big, especially as Trump looks like he aged a decade in the last year or so.
What ate French attitudes towards women?
I want to just say that I understand where you’re coming from and I felt very similar to you while living in France (regarding the personality differences). My husband and I moved to Quebec and are really happy here.
Quebec is lovely. Easily the best place in Canada in my opinion. Still, a rough country to live. 6 months of winter and inaccessible healthcare were things that forced me to move back home (Southerner).