I'm Leaving The U.S.
how my kink practice helped me make a huge life choice
I’m obsessed with people who have a five-year plan. I think of them as uniquely virtuous, organized, and sage. My husband and I are friends with a couple who routinely sits down for ‘life-planning’ sessions, and then they execute on the decisions they make in those sessions. We know people who plan vacations in advance, know what they’ll be doing in 2027, and actually budget in a meaningful way. I think these people probably save a lot of money and time. But as we are fellow air sign dreamers, we move more in a 3 month cycle than a five year one. And the same was true of this massive decision.
It was an exceptionally hot day in late August in LA. We were inching through traffic, breathing exhaust and the aggravation of our fellow Angelenos, and in the space of a blink, we realized we were taking the first steps toward a totally life-altering decision. We were leaving our beloved city and taking a chance on our changing needs and desires. Really, we were using our kink rubric to assess what wasn’t working and to imagine something better suited to who we were now. We were moving to England as soon as we could.
We’re in the lucky position of being able to make this change because my husband has U.K. citizenship, and we were able to scrape together enough of our savings to apply for their exorbitantly expensive spouse visa. In evaluating our lives we realized we needed a slower pace, to rely less on driving, and the option of living outside a major city without feeling completely stranded in Republican-ville. There are probably options in the U.S. that would fit this bill, but not that had the dozen other reasons1 we were attracted to living in one of London’s home counties, near my husband’s extended family. And you can’t beat having regular access to the Full English.2
I feel guilty announcing this online because leaving the U.S. is an incredibly fraught issue right now. After the election, as celebrities and elites began to feverishly announce their decision to flee, the hardcore left that comprises my personal echo chamber demonized the choice to leave, and mostly rightly, as pessimistic and irresponsible. It will never get better here unless we stay and fight. I agree. Despite everything, there is an America to be proud of and to fight for. They don’t get to define it. Just as the ICE agents have a vision of what this messy experiment is meant to be, so too did Renee Nicole Good.
But at the same time, I’m taking an escape hatch because I’ve reached a point where I personally am not in a position to keep paying the bill of everything that’s going on. And not just politically, but financially. I live in a rent-controlled building that is still jacking my rent annually to a completely unreasonable level. We used to taste our way through our city by eating out as often as we could, and inflation has made it nearly impossible to justify. Our friends are permanently busy and stressed as they cope with these pressures in their lives as well. As as we look down the road towards having kids, I know becoming a mother will place me at the intersection of every single broken system the U.S. has left to the individual to solve. At a certain point, what am I hanging in for? What is my personal stress and burnout doing to support the collective? Right now? Not much.
My anxiety reached an all-time peak right after we made the decision to move. People’s road rage was affecting me worse than ever, and driving 30 minutes to get anywhere I needed to go would leave me depleted and freaked out. I complained about this to my eternally-wise acupuncturist who said, “well yes, you’ve gotten used to living in a bag of knives. And now that you know you’re getting out, you’re looking around at the knives and are like, ‘ow, this really hurts.’”
Back in September, in the early days of processing this decision, I took my anxious brain on a meditation retreat at a monastery in the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition of buddhism. I spent every day with Vietnamese nuns working in the garden, scrubbing the toilets, eating huge bowls of noodles with fresh vegetables, and talking about suffering. It changed me in ways that still remain ineffable to witness their peace firsthand. Universally, when I told them I was leaving the U.S., they’d shake their heads gently and say “very good you’re leaving here.” Something I discovered in the daily practice of buddhism in a community is that individual peace really does radiate out to affect others. It’s hard to balance fears about being selfish with this irrefutable truth, but I have to go towards what feels right.
In my research about the decision to leave one’s homeland, I came across an important point about how you have to balance “push reasons” with “pull reasons.” That is to say, why are you leaving (push), but why are you going to where you’re going (pull)? I read an article in the New Yorker called ‘How To Leave The USA’ about Americans who left almost exclusively due to push reasons, and found themselves in the Netherlands (it’s relatively easy to immigrate there) without a lot of pull. The article teemed with cringe ‘I’m With Her’/ ‘orange man bad’ energy regarding leaving the U.S., but then when emigrants found themselves in Amsterdam, they realized they now had to navigate an unfamiliar, cold Northern European culture and foreign language that weren’t exactly a utopian dream. They sat around their French fries with mayonnaise and wondered what home meant now, if it was a no-place all along.
The U.K. isn’t a European utopia either. First of all, they totally biffed being European. They have their own far-right party and growing anti-immigrant sentiment. They’re behind other first-world countries in terms of support for parents and other social safety nets. Salaries are stagnant as cost of living increases. But they’re leagues ahead of the U.S. in terms of what they can offer my specific family unit. They’ve got reasonable gun control, they have universal healthcare. I’m not going there to find something perfect, I’m going for something different.
How much of the big ideological stuff comes into play on a daily basis? All of it? None of it? A slow gas-leak all the time? Regardless, I’m moving because I need to slow the fuck down. Here’s where the kink comes back in. My kink journey has taught me life is an ongoing negotiation between who I am now, what I need, and letting go of what I may have expected for myself even six months ago. My nervous system is demanding something different. My capacity has downshifted whether I like it or not. In kink negotiation, when it’s time to change, you have to answer the call without shame. Because of this, my husband and I are used to exploring our changing capacity, which made looking at this decision from all angles very natural for us. Routine, even. When you can talk easily about your desire for CNC, your desire for living farther away from a freeway is kind of small potatoes.
I don’t think this is going to be perfect. For one, not being able to access quality Mexican food or Flamin’ Hot Cheetos may completely break me down. Maybe my intermittent consumption of Red Dye #40 is somehow keeping a vital organ functioning. Perhaps I’ll go mental from being asked where I’m visiting from every time I open my mouth. The area we’re moving to may be too posh, too Tory, un-cosmopolitan, too quiet. Maybe having an hourlong journey to get into a major city will make dating thirds weird and impossible. Maybe you all will have an uproar against my guaranteed Madonna-syndrome3, which I contract whenever I’m there for over three days.
Or maybe this summer I’ll be lying on the grass in a tiny garden I can now afford, cuddling with some lovely English girl who likes to come out to the country to live out a cottagecore fantasy in white cotton nightgowns while my husband turns the compost. Maybe I’ll be more comfortable having loud sex in a semi-detached home with thick stone walls. Maybe the quiet will open my brain up to deeper thinking that will support all of you even better, lead me to write a second novel (the first one is still in submissions limbo 😵💫), and turn up to the podcast with fresh perspective. I think this is a likely outcome. I think in my thirties success will look like long walks in the fields in gentle rain, regular tea times, wild swimming in cold rivers, and savoring sunny days as jewels rather than nuisances. Won’t you come along?
My office hours are now open for the next 4 weeks! Coaching, support, kiki-ing, whatever you need. Come talk to me here.
If you’re in the U.S. and want a convenient time for you please take advantage before I’m on the other side of the globe!
None of this free content would be possible without the kind support of the sexy, smart folks who have chosen to subscribe to the paid side of this substack or to Patreon.
If you’d like to receive special content such as monthly hour-long Deep Dive interviews with experts across the kink and alternative sexuality worlds, as well as monthly premium written posts, upgrade your membership here. For a preview of everything you’ll get instant access to, go here.
To get free access to the paid content, get into referring your friends! More info here.
Check out my online courses:
Kink Tasting Menu - Start from scratch and taste your way through the buffet of kink!
Conscious Kink - Build Your Own D/s Dynamic
Sub Survival Guide - Learn How To Make Your Submissive Fantasies A Reality
Got a question for me? Submit it to the Ask A Sub podcast at memo.fm/askasub
A lot of these are too specific to reveal while protecting my anonymity and faint privacy screen I maintain around certain personal bits and pieces but suffice it to say the ‘pro’ column is long.
Sorry to my fellow Americans but I am an apologist when it comes to beans for breakfast. Fiber! Protein! It’s weird but not that weird!
If you’re too young to know about this, Madonna suddenly had a British accent after living in the U.K. for a while. I plan to listen to American podcasts every day I have to record to make sure I’m not a lost cause but no promises. I’m an empath so if you hear me saying ‘boot’ instead of trunk you’ll know it’s for moral reasons.
Mexican food, difficult but not impossible! Also, when in London go to Bake St, co owner and head baker is from LA has Mexican heritage and has treats you’ll enjoy - she also wrote this for Mexican London food context https://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/mexican-food-beyond-the-tortilla
as someone who’s neither white nor American - i think so many Americans, including on the left, don’t realise just how Amerocentric their biases and worldviews are. i think anything that opens minds has to be a net positive! wishing you all the best for your move 🙏🏼