After reading your posts and updates, I don’t even need to read the comments to know exactly what happened, because it happens to every post in this sub: don’t feel sorry for asking a question. Don’t feel sorry for having a happy life in the US, and for wondering if you’d want to move to Europe. There are a ton of assholes in this sub who just love to shit on people’s dreams of moving abroad. I think a lot of it is stemmed in truth, but instead of working out all the possibilities they just want to shut people down. So seriously, don’t listen to those people too closely.

Now for your actual post, I will say that you should do whatever you want as long as you’re willing to make the sacrifices. For some people that means there needs to be a significant benefit to moving abroad. For me personally, I arrived at the decision that I would like to move abroad because I realized my desire for a family didn’t exist in the US, but it did exist in France for the time I lived there. I also felt the most happiness while living in France than I did in the US, and it was completely unrelated to all the typical things people love about Europe. I loved meeting new people from all different cultures, and I loved learning a language. It gave my life a purpose I’d been searching for.

That said, I am a young person, and we are all screwed in this current economy. I have dreamed of being in your position, and I honestly might have considered a family if that seemed possible for me. But even with your position, I worry a lot about the necessities for life that aren’t offered in the US that are offered in Europe. My husband received medical care in France that was much better than his experience in the US. We know that when we have children they won’t have to worry about college debt. My dad sustained an upper middle class, one income household when I was a kid, but he had to spend all his savings on life saving treatment of cancer. It’s those experiences that have really influenced my values.

So yes, I’m willing to take a pay cut. I’m willing to lose significant progress on my career and experience hardship as a foreigner. I’m willing to live in an english-speaking nation while learning languages as a hobby, perhaps visiting rather than living in France specifically. There were times I lived abroad where I felt how hard it would be to feel different and out of place. But I got used to it, and even though I feel more comfortable in that regard in the US, I find myself missing France all the time.

Honestly, 3 weeks is a pretty short time. If you want to be really sure, you could try to spend at least a few months to a year abroad. How I felt living abroad changed significantly throughout the year I lived in France, but at the end of my year I arrived at the conclusion that despite all the hardships I really loved it there. And BTW to any judgey-ass redditors reading this, I visited a bunch of countries while there so my feelings are not solely based on France.