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I'm from NYC, and we moved to SC for work, lower cost of living. Discovered I hate the oppressive heat and humidity, and really being surrounded by a large percentage of people who are conservative Christians. Hard to make friends when the first thing people ask you, other than your name, is "What church do you go to?" I'm an agnostic liberal, so it's pretty frustrating for me to be judged ten seconds into a conversation, which promptly ends.
Right now, I deal. My husband has a great job, I get to stay home with the kids, and we have a lovely house. I stay in touch with friends from up north. However, if a great work opportunity were to present itself in a blue state, we'd consider it.
For years and years, all I wanted to do was leave Kentucky. Boring culture, hickish people, monocultural (which ties back into boring), crappy winter weather, yada yada... Yet, the more I travel, the more I realize in some ways how good I had it in Kentucky, as it is very beautiful and the people are friendly (if even often just superficially), but the more I also realize that there is a whole world (and healthier mindset) beyond the state's borders to take advantage of.
Went to college in the state's largest city, Louisville. Moved back home to my rural hometown after nine months because I didn't like it. I wouldn't move back to Louisville. Very difficult city to break into socially as some people from Louisville even look down upon people from suburbs within Jefferson County, no less the rest of Kentucky.
Spent two years in Cincinnati. Upgrade from Louisville, a lot of nice attributes, but it is the ultimate Midwestern/Applachian "locals" city. Hard to break in if you aren't from there. While many locals were very nice and engaging, many were also just plain rude, almost a "schizophrenic" culture. Nice scenery, parks, and nightlife is fine as long as you know where to go, but two years was enough.
Now living in the SF Bay Area. I was glad to move here to experience a new (to me) West Coast culture. Very beautiful, cosmopolitan, diverse, clean, modern, entrepreneurial, dynamic, then there are SF, Oakland, Berkeley, Stanford, Marin, Silicon Valley, multiple wine countries, quaint beach towns, Oakland is a city coming back to life... However, socially it is just as hard here as it was in the preceding two cities because the people are reserved, even snobby and arrogant in some cases. I find myself increasingly unhappy here.
There's a reason that 75-80% of my job applications sent to California were TO SOUTHERN California, not Northern California. I always felt like I would fit in with/like SoCal better than NorCal, but the NorCal job offer came first so I took it. Once the honeymoon/extended vacation period was over, I saw NorCal for being a great place to live with a high quality of life...that also happens to be a sort of self-congratulatory boutique shop. It is also monocultural in a political sense--and they take their politics extremely seriously here--whereas SoCal always seems to have more of a balance of libs, cons, libertarians, apathetics, etc. So, I'm moving to the L.A. area in a few months and we'll just see how well I like it, and I'm taking action instead of just bi*chin' about it.
With all this said, do I regret any of my moves? No, for they've all been learning experiences in some way.
When I was married to my now-ex, I made the egregious mistake of agreeing to "follow the money" (he worked in Big Oil). We ended up in Anchorage, Alaska. I had my doubts from the very beginning. Now, don't get me wrong; Alaska is a gorgeous place to visit as a tourist. But making a life there? Um, not for me. Ice on the ground at least eight months out of the year. So *&$%ing cold I couldn't believe it; really, if you've never lived in -40 degrees, you cannot comprehend what that feels like. Spent a lot of time indoors. Small things, like the time difference between where my family lived and where I lived, were also a problem. It was too late to phone during the week, and I rarely got to speak with them. This was particularly problematic, because my dad was very ill at the time. When he got really sick, I couldn't just jump on a plane and be there for in a few hours. It was literally like traveling from the U.K. to the U.S.
But like most people, I learned a really valuable lesson. I ended up getting divorced, because it was evident that my ex, who was more concerned with dollar chasing than he was quality of living, wasn't going to let me have any input on the really important decisions, such as where we lived. (I have a career too, so it wasn't like I relied on him for my livelihood.) I'll never take my quality of living for granted again.
I still miss Anchorage at times, because like I said, it's a really great place to be a tourist. Lots to do in the state. But I wasn't on vacation; it was real life.
It's not the place,it's the person is BS, totally. It's the only thing they can say about places that suck so much! Where I live now, my husband & I call it the pits of America. We actually laugh that people like it here or think it's okay. Only those who've never visited any other place maybe? People actually walk around with scowls and long-faces. First thing I noticed. I mean it' s something that hits you like a ton of bricks. I call it "the faces," and we joke about it. Luckily, I have always been able to find humor in the most terrible of situations.
There is a tiny bit of truth to "It's not the place but the person." Places that totally suck can be turned into good experiences by the people you know there. I am finding Oklahoma City to be that kind of place. Considering most people who really like it here grew up here, you can say they aren't well traveled. However, would you blame them for not wanting to leave everyone and everything they know for somewhere better?
I am an easily adaptable person but for some reason I just can't mesh with the Great Plains. Some places fit some people like a glove and others like a baseball mitten.
If the saying holds true that " Misery loves company", then I certainly don't feel so alone about our situation we went through before ending up where we are at, now. We were born and raised in Texas. I retired in 2006, and upon the urging of my daughter in Utah to move there, we thought we would entertain that idea. We had been visiting her for about the last 8 years or so, in Utah and thought it was one of the most breath-taking places we had seen, and the fact we had family there, we thought, why not? Well, we had a Travel trailer we had planned to live in until our house had been built, but with winter temps of 5 degrees, and heavy snow, we almost froze in there. So my daughter told us to move into the house with her, and the family. A week into it, my wife and I realized we had made a terrible mistake. My daughter would cook meals for her family (when she wasn't going to the hamburger joint for supper), and only twice in 4 months there did she invite us to eat with them. She never sat with us to socialize, or never asked my wife to go anywhere with her, even though my wife would have been thrilled to get out with my daughter. My daughter just hid in her bedroom upstairs. Even though we helped with the bills since we were using electricity, water, etc. she never said a word of thanks about it, and I never brought it up. The second month there we began to be treated like baggage, and were seldom asked to go anywhere with them, or participate in things they did. We were miserable, and couldn't wait to move into our house. On top of all this, my wife began to suffer from headaches, and we were beginning to not like the snow, having not ever lived here, and not knowing how much it snowed. We finally got in our house, and hoped that things would improve. They didn't. My wife's headaches continued, and even after seeing doctor after doctor, and her taking all kinds of medicines, the doctors concluded that the altitude, and the extreme dryness was causing her headaches. Well, the family relationship with my daughter had deteriorated to the point where there was practically none. We could never reach them, and they never called, or came over, and after we moved out of their house, it was as if we weren't welcome there anymore, and my wife and I were really miserable with the whole affair. We wanted to leave, and go somewhere that had the hospitable feeling that we remembered from Texas. We could have gone back to Texas, but I guess since we made one move, we got a taste of wanderlust, and besides, we were retired, and could go anywhere we wanted to. We looked online, researching states, and found that Tennessee looked promising. We finally had enough of Utah, and in June of 2012 we drove out here, and decided this is it. We went back, put the house in Utah on the market, sold at a loss, but found us a great place, in our new, adopted state, and plan on staying here and enjoying our retirement. So, I suppose one could say we had a happy ending.
I made the mistake of moving from TX to NC...I was forced to stay for 2 years before I could get the he$@ out of there. Find a hobby/interest that keeps you busy. We started with martial arts and that kept us busy 3-4h every day...so basically school/work, gym, sleep...repeat for 2 years.
Ditto! I did the same thing. Moved from TX to NC. Talk about a huge mistake. Tryin to focus on the positives, but the negatives prevail. Counting the days when I can leave...
Don't you think drastic moves are the riskiest? East to West, West to East, South to Northwest, etc. Drastic change can be hardest to adapt to. When you move to some states it's like moving to a new country--people, weather, group-think, etc.
I think for moves like that you have to give them more time to see if they fit, but sometimes there are places that are just right.
All my life I think we've only ever done are drastic moves - Mid to West to East to West to Mid to Not Even In the Country. Within those moves there were places that instantly suited and others that no amount of being positive and reaching out to people could change (even after several years of living there). But I totally agree that moving inter-regionally really is like moving to another country and you have to adapt to new norms. Sometimes those norms fit and sometimes they don't.
Oh my, yes. Long Island has got to be one of the oddest places I have lived or visited, but the locals think it's the bee's knees. The Hubs and I have been plotting our escape for a while now and are open to going pretty much anywhere, but it needs to be a carefully-orchestrated move because there's no going back once we leave here.
Grew up in Milwaukee, moved to South Florida for 18 years.
It just got too crazy over populated there, so a few weeks ago.. back to Milwaukee I moved.
The people here are great, don't get me wrong.. but I'm already plotting/planning on getting out this fall/end of summer...
I think my situation is a classic, "you can't go home".
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Where I live now, my husband & I call it the pits of America. We actually laugh that people like it here or think it's okay. Only those who've never visited any other place maybe? People actually walk around with scowls and long-faces. First thing I noticed. I mean it' s something that hits you like a ton of bricks. I call it "the faces," 
and we joke about it. Luckily, I have always been able to find humor in the most terrible of situations.