What If You Don’t Want to Choose? 2 Lives Between Switzerland and Australia
Life between Switzerland and Australia is not as romantic as it sounds.
The tension that is created when you want two things equally leaves you standing in the middle, turning your head this way and that, quietly hoping that one desire might eventually stack on some muscle and win the contest.
My life isn’t falling apart, exactly. But it certainly isn’t presenting itself in a particularly straight line at the moment.
For me — for us — it looks like this:
Half of my life is here in Switzerland.
The other half wants to pack up and return to the humid nights, the giant huntsman spiders and the BBQs near the beach in Australia.
Life Between Switzerland and Australia Didn’t Start Yesterday
I was pulled out of Switzerland at fourteen and dropped into rural Australia, which, at that age, feels like a huge adventure with the added “bonus” of running a disorienting identity experiment alongside it.
New country. New language. New rhythm. A new version of who you are supposed to be at an age where you don’t really know yourself just yet anyway. Enter split personality… not in the way that requires prescription drugs, but in the way that plants a lifelong curiosity about where you actually belong.
You adjust, of course. You always do.
And then, years later, life decided to return the favour.
In 2020, we got “stuck” in Switzerland during Covid — which is a polite way of saying that what was meant to be temporary turned into something much more permanent.
The younger two of our tribe of five stayed with me in Switzerland to finish school and start apprenticeships. Their dad went back to Australia once the borders opened and the airlines reduced their robbery-priced flights to something vaguely resembling a reasonable ticket.
Long distance — particularly when you choose the longest distance possible — turns out not to be the ideal setup for a thriving marriage. There was a point where the thriving almost gave way. Where the strain of the longing, the waiting, the carefully scheduled calls across time zones started to feel like too much.
And yet, the distance also created something unexpected – space.
After thirty years together and five children, you become… efficient. Functional. Slightly beige around the edges. Not quite at the stage of matching outfits, but certainly at risk of quietly drifting into parallel lives.
So time and distance did what proximity hadn’t. It forced us to look at each other again. Properly.
And somewhere in that, we decided we still wanted this.
In August 2024, my husband came back to Switzerland to join our now slightly less chaotic tribe for what was meant to be a very clean two-year plan.
The deal was simple.
After that, I would return to Australia.
Clean. Logical. Agreed.
And then, of course, life added a few variables.
- My mother decided — at the very respectable age of 78 — to pack up her entire life in Australia and move back to Switzerland. On her own. Including organising the dog. Absolute legend. I handled logistics on this side. She handled the rest, like a pro.
- My husband decided to have his qualifications as a GP recognised here. (Yes, he gave up his entire career in Australia to prove that he loves me. No small gesture.) Which meant not only mastering German at C1 level, but also navigating medical terminology and a bureaucratic system that appears to have a personality of its own.
We waited a full year. And then we heard – just not what we wanted.
Apparently, 25 years of experience as a GP in Australia translates — at a stretch — to being allowed to work as an intern in a hospital here.
Which, understandably, was not the plan.
The verdict was gut-wrenchingly painful.
Despite the fact that we had only given ourselves a timeframe of two years, there had been hope.
Hope that, with the right GP role here, my husband could work eight months in Switzerland and we could spend four months in Australia. Something like that.
A version of life that didn’t require a clean break.
Dreams had started forming. Maybe moving closer to the mountains. Closer to the amazing hikes he loves so much.
Of course, the possibility of having to return was always there. Just below the surface.
But hope had crept in.
And it was buying me time.
Time to decide.
Which life to choose.
Life Between Switzerland and Australia: Wanting Both Isn’t Simple
The problem is… I don’t want to choose.
I want both. A foot in each camp.
I want to be able to go and spend time with the kids who are in Australia. I want to pop up to Berlin to see my eldest son. I want to have a base in Switzerland.
Does it make sense?
Not really.
Is it financially possible?
Also not really.
Can I dream it?
Absolutely.
Building a Life That Can Hold Both
The version of life I’ve been running so far was never designed for this life between Switzerland and Australia.
What job allows you to work from the other side of the world? Take part in meetings in your pyjamas because the day-night rhythm doesn’t quite cooperate? Who orders the coffee for the office when you’re not there to check supplies? Who greets the next new employee?
Location dependency is a real problem in my line of work.
In my husband’s? There’s a bit more flexibility.
He still has patients back in Australia who call the surgery just to ask if he’s back yet. And when the receptionist tells them no, not yet, they simply say they’ll wait.
That’s special.
It’s also quite rare.
But in his world, spending eight months in one place and four in another is, at least in theory, possible. If the right structures are in place.
So where does that leave me? Because life between Switzerland and Australia doesn’t resolve itself — it requires a completely different way of building, deciding and living.
Because wanting both is one thing when you’re living life between Switzerland and Australia.
Actually building a life that can support both… is something else entirely — something I’ve started exploring more deeply when looking at what it really means to design an income ecosystem instead of relying on a single job.
What brought me to my knees late last year was the realisation that none of the empty promises of earning money fast will hold.
Nasty things, those promises.
Some are outright ridiculous. Others are more subtle — technically true, but only if you’re willing to read between the lines and accept what’s actually required.
Because nothing is built on air. It all takes elbow grease. Sweat. Tears. And a slightly uncomfortable number of hours spent learning, falling, failing, getting back up again and having another go. This isn’t a new idea either — even basic principles of building income highlight that consistency and compounding effort are what actually create results over time.
My brush with the floor — quite literally on my knees — made me question everything.
My goals. My energy. My sanity.
And it led me to something that, if I’m honest, I didn’t fully trust at first. (I know. Another “solution.” Brave of me.)
What it actually does is hold a mirror up. If you’re curious, I touched on the tool I’ve been using in another post here.
Not always comfortably.
It calls me out on my bullshit. It dissects my thinking and hands me answers I didn’t even realise I was avoiding — questions that have been sitting there, quietly nagging away for years.
The kind of clarity people pay a lot of money for.
And it doesn’t come through some grand breakthrough moment.
It comes through the act of writing things out, properly. Letting them be challenged. Letting them be reflected back in a way that actually makes sense.
No fluff. No performance.
Just clarity.
And what that’s given me, more than anything, is something I didn’t realise I was missing while living this version of my life.
Foundations.
The kind that don’t shift the moment life wobbles.
I can take an idea, a worry, a half-formed plan… and put it into something that actually helps me see it properly. Not spiral it. Not dramatise it. Just… see it.
And that has changed how I move.
Less reaction.
More intention.
More focus on what I’m actually building, rather than what I’m afraid might fall apart.
Because if I want both…
I can’t keep relying on a version of work that ties my time, location and income together so tightly.
I need to start building something that can actually hold it — because this life between Switzerland and Australia isn’t something I’m trying to escape. It’s something I’m learning to build around.
Life between Switzerland and Australia is not a simple life to design.
