How did you and your S.O. decide on how to close the distance?

[TMarie89]

Hello,

This is my first post! After nearly two years of being in a long distance relationship with my boyfriend who lives in Germany, it took me this long to discover this forum. I'm happy I did.

A little about me, my BF and I met and started dating in Dec. 2016, while he was working at an internship for a German company in my area. We lived a normal couple life for six months until his internship ended and he had to move back to Germany to finish his masters degree. Flash forward to today and 4 visits later to see each other later, we are trying to figure out how to close the distance. I'm visiting him for 2 1/2 weeks around the holidays and our goal is to take steps to figure out our plan of action. We are very much in love and want to find solution, but we both are nervous about moving.

From my perspective I am nervous about leaving everything behind that I've worked so hard to get, I own a condo, have a cat, a professional job for 6+ years, my family lives 10 or so minutes away and we're really close and I am in the very beginning stages of learning German. My BF lives in a shared apartment, just started his professional job, and his family lives 2.5 hours away, and speaks fluent English. I understand from stating the above that I am biased to him moving to the U.S., but I'm also trying to be realistic.

My question to all of you is how did you actually determine who is moving where? Did you use any methods or was it literally one person stepping up and saying they will be the one to move for the other person?

Looking forward to being apart of this community.

Any advice would be very much appreciated!

[Caro1]

Hello and welcome to the forum,

I've been somewhat in the same situation as you.
I'm German, started dating my now spouse during my semester abroad in college. We lived together for 6 months before I had to go back to Germany. I finished my Bachelors, got a Masters in Germany (tuition in the US is just too expensive), and we are now in the process of closing the distance.

I'm fluent in English, my spouse does not speak any German.
I have the ability to get a job over there, my spouse does not have a college degree or any other degree that would be recognized in Germany. Thus making it very difficult to get any job in Germany that required any sort of training.
In Germany, we have a dual-trainee system. Most jobs require some sort of that German trainee degree. Even if you want to be a baker or a handyman or whatever other job that does not require a college education. Unless your job experience proves you have that knowledge, you might have a harder time getting a job in Germany that you're satisfied with.
But that really all depends on what your background is.

Learning a new language is obviously not easy, but I don't think it should be the sole deciding factor. I spoke barely any English when I came over to the US for the first time (for my then High School Exchange Year) and within a year, I became pretty fluent. German might be a little harder to learn than English, but not impossible either. We had an American Exchange student staying at my house that knew no German at all prior to coming, and she learned pretty well too. She was not perfectly fluent within a year, but sure got along fine in the daily world.

Another thing is visas.
Obtaining a work visa for the US is only possible in certain fields and not easy.
I don't know much about work visas in Germany, but I believe if you have a job offer, it's not that difficult to get.
Another option is marriage/finance visas. In the US, there are relatively easy to get, just require A LOT of paperwork and fees and a very lengthy process (around one year). And you got to be able to prove that you make enough money to sponsor your BF (125% of the poverty line).
Getting a marriage visa for Germany is super easy. There is literally no paperwork for US citizens before you come into Germany at all. You just fly over here and start the process then, thus being able be together instead of waiting apart for the US visa.

Then there is to think about security and quality of life.
In Germany, I have never had to worry about the cost of Healthcare or social security or anything like that. If I'm sick, I go to the doctor without worrying about a co-pay (I might have to pay 5 bucks for a prescription, and 10 bucks per hospital night stay, but that's basically it. No fee because I went to the ER.). If I lose my job for some reason, I'll get unemployment and if that runs out, I could get other government help. I will never lose healthcare. They will literally pay your rent and utilities and give you extra money to live on. It might not be much where you can go on an amazing vacation every year, but it sure will get you by.
Generally, it's also harder to lose your job in the first place here in Germany. And if you do, they usually have to give you a lot longer notice. If I was let go for example, my employer would have to give me 3 months notice before the end of the quarter to be able to let me go.
In the US, as you probably know, things work a little differently. There is much less security. You can be fired much quicker, healthcare is more expensive, and you probably know more details about it than me.

One of you has to give up being close(r) to friends and family either way you move. It's going to be hard for anyone leaving their home country and everything they know behind to move across the world. So that's a real personal preference, you would just have to talk about.

These are the things we talked about when making a decision.
Living in Germany sounds safer to me. Not only because of Germany's social system, but also because I've never worried about being gunned down in school or being shot when pulled over for a traffic violation.
But yet, we are probably going to live in the US. Because staying around family mattered to my spouse and I'm not super close to mine. I feel confident that with my education background and in my job field (I'm in IT), I'll find a job that will cover even the higher healthcare cost and so on.
And if worse came to worst, we could always move to Germany and take advantage of the social security, if things in the US didn't work out for us.
I would just recommend, to never give up your BFs German citizenship, simply because it gives you more options on where to live in case you ever change your mind.

[2Rocky]

in our first getting to know each other conversations she said she would love to move back to California. She has spent two summers working here and has a full time job offer from that employer. Was kind of a slam dunk actually. I think that is why I decided to go through the LDR for a little over 3 years. There is a future.