When I first imagined my life in rural France, it looked a bit like a movie montage. There was a French man, the brother of my mum’s neighbour, and we had a whirlwind week of romance before I moved. He had a farmhouse, big plans for renovation, and a vision of a future that I was supposed to simply step into. It was poetic and promising. It was, as it turned out, the first of many lessons in the difference between the French Dream and the French reality.
The peak of that reality hit on our second Valentine’s Day. There were no roses and no candlelit dinners in a hidden bistro.
Instead, he bought me 500 litres of heating oil.
Nothing says “Je t’aime” quite like a delivery truck pumping industrial-grade warmth into your basement so you don’t freeze in February. At the time, it felt like the most unromantic gesture on earth. Looking back, it was perhaps the most honest introduction to life here. In the countryside, survival often comes before sentiment.
The House That Wasn’t Home
My journey with French houses has been just as tangled as my dating life. I rented twice, then finally bought my own sanctuary. But then came another man and another plan. We decided to buy a house together, a place to be together all the time and close to his work. I moved out of my own house and rented it out, thinking I was heading toward a settled, shared future.
But 18 months later, the universe and my partner had other ideas.
He took a job in Switzerland. He didn’t break up with me, not at first, but the distance did the talking. Slowly, the life we’d built together began to fray at the edges until I had to be the one to cut the thread.
I found myself in that upside-down season I’ve written about before. I was stuck in a joint-owned house that felt like a mistake, while my original house was being occupied by very bad tenants who were slowly destroying it.
Reclaiming the Sanctuary
I fought to get my house back and I finally moved back in at the end of 2023. I can look back at that time and see how much has changed. I have spent the last few years scrubbing away the traces of those tenants, fixing what was broken, and painting over the stress of that period. It hasn’t been fast and it hasn’t always been easy, but it has been mine.
The beginning of this year felt like a final test of that resilience. My car broke down, and in rural France, a dead car is a dead end. You can’t pop anywhere. You can’t take the dogs for a run in the woods or grab a lemon from the shop without a 20-minute drive. I had to rely on the grace of friends and family, navigating the world in a language that still sometimes escapes me when I’m stressed.
But there is a silver lining to things falling apart. You get to choose how to put them back together.
Today, this house is a sanctuary. It’s no longer just a building I bought or a place I left behind for a man. It’s the place that caught me when I fell. It’s peaceful, it’s warm, and for the first time in a long time, the plans I’m making for these stone walls are entirely my own.