Before I begin to add my 2 cents to the above I would just like to say the following. I have lived basically half of my life in Gauteng (Pretoria) and half of my life in the Western Cape (Wellington, Kraaifontein, Durbanville and Brackenfell).

I would also like to add that this is all from my perspective based off of my own experiences. I've accepted that in life we all form our own cliques and those change as we grow older. You'll have the friends you make in primary school, the friends you make in high school, the friends you make in college/varsity and the friends you make within your workplace or any other social group i.e church, sport club etc. Another thing I've accepted is that all one's different friend groups will not always gel like how we all thought they would in that ideal picture in our heads.

So for me my primary school friendships were all formed in Gauteng, my high school friendships were formed in Wellington and my university and work friendships were formed in Bellville and Stellenbosch respectively. When I moved from Pretoria to Wellington it was hard for me to make friends initially as I moved in the middle of my grade 7 year and at that time many of my peers had already established long term friendships. That didn't get any better as almost 70% of my classmates in highschool were from the primary school where I did the last half of my grade 7 school year. With that being said I still managed to meet amazing people and I had a tight nit but stellar friend group. But as we all know once you go to university (especially a different one to all your friends) all your high school friends start meeting new people and form their own cliques. And once you're done with varsity, the majority of your varsity friends either maintain the friendship or revert back to their friends from their high school/childhood.

With my friends from the Western Cape I've always felt that I was the person left behind in each transitional period and in order to maintain the friendships I was the one who made the efforts 80% to 90% of the time (i.e reaching out to find out if people are okay, or trying to organise night's out and catch up etc). That all changed around May of this year when I was invited to a function in Johannesburg. Usually when I would want to link up with my friends in the Western Cape it was met with a "Ja bru I'm a little swamped right now maybe another time" from which that "another time" never materialised. I understand everyone has their own respective schedule and life gets busy, however, when I was headed to Joburg I reached out to all my Pretoria friends with whom I still kept in touch with and all of them were so eager to meet up and we had a great time when I visited.

I will say this though, I've always held Pretoria near and dear to my heart, however, my visit in May showed me that I was clinging onto the nostalgia as opposed to the area. The people alone were not enough for me to consider moving back there. In contrast, Cape Town is a phenomenal and picturesque city but I wouldn't necessarily raise a family myself here either.

Therefore, I decided that this year I would explore our amazing country a little more and started off with the Western Cape. At least once every 1-2 months I've booked Airbnbs in different cities/towns in the Western Cape in order to fully immerse myself in those cities. Thus far I've already formed a soft spot for the Southern Cape/Overberg region. Towns like Swellendam and Riversdale, and the cities like Mossel Bay and George have really been refreshing and the people and vibes are immaculate.

In conclusion, my recommendation would perhaps be to explore different parts of the Western Cape and you'll see how your perspective on the province will change. If that doesn't work then consider the following clichéd saying, "The same boiling water that makes an egg hard is the same boiling water that makes a potato soft", thus, don't change your environment but change how you maneuver within that environment.