I wanted to pick up on Randy’s point about the economics of moving as a single person, particularly the fact that we generally move into apartments, not houses. There’s something of generational divide I see in my own experience, wherein the seasoned members of my department, whose salaries once supported home purchases in what is now an outlandishly priced area, can and do continue to host graduate students and even the occasional undergraduate event in their homes. And, in turn, they are responsible for the lion’s share of the work associated with such events. Not to groan too much (I happily leave my apartment and show up at such soirees with a salad) but I remember these events quite fondly from the time I was a graduate student. I wonder if the economic realities for professors are in turn, changing the roles that we serve with respect to our students? Is the faculty/student house party a ritual that will soon be obsolete? Should it be?

The isolation that comes with relocating solo to a small place with no other single people can also be really exacerbated by a big time difference (in my case this is 11-13 hours depending on the time of year) that makes it harder to stay meaningfully connected to people from your old life. That “eerie, haunting and depressing” feeling when you step into your empty place can’t be assuaged by a quick Skype conversation with a friendly face as it will be five, six, seven hours before anyone you know is even awake, and even then breakfast time is not traditionally the most conducive to a leisurely catch-up.

Also, your point about the invisibility to others of ties that are not manifest on your finger or framed on your desk is very well made. I find it difficult to bite my lip as I am dismissively referred to as having “no family” as if I were a Dickensian orphan, or a misanthrope. I have a family. I love them and I miss them, and living and working on the other side of the world from them is challenging.

Creating a support system from scratch is not only arduous, but can be a very slow and very gradual process and in the early stages it can be difficult to read people’s signals as, obviously, you don’t yet know anyone well enough. So, when early attempts to connect with colleagues (“Do you want to go for a quick coffee/drink?”) are rebuffed (“Oh no, I can’t – I’m busy with [insert one of several things that you as the “only single person in the village” would never be doing]”) it is all too easy not to try again. When people are up front with you about their time constraints and personal life commitments, you don’t want to push it, as you think they might be trying to convey that they don’t have space in their lives for any new friends from their pool of colleagues. So it is tempting to give in to that, and just stop asking, in the hope that when they have the time, they will ask you. Sometimes they do. But often they don’t. The reality is that incumbents with well established networks of their own have a lot less at stake in pursuing a connection with you than you do in pursuing a connection with them. As a new arrival with nobody around you, the onus is on you to take the initial steps if the people you meet in your new place, for whatever reason, are not forthcoming with friendly gestures. And that’s not easy.

I’d add that from the perspective of teaching at a small, rural college, there’s a general worry when hiring single faculty that they’ll want to leave if they can’t find a local partner, a concern based on the flawed assumption that partnering is everybody’s goal (balanced by the concern that partnered faculty will face problems finding employment for their “trailing spouse”). I know many single faculty who choose a long commute to nearby cities rather than being the “single in the [literal] village,” which further isolates them from the campus community (although that can have its advantages, of course!) and adds additional stresses and costs to daily life.

And as a side note, I hope Antenna’s got someone on tap to write about the long-distance relationship situation that many faculty & grad students find themselves in. (If not, let me know as I know somebody who might be interested in writing about that…)