We signed the lease for our new home in Bentonville, Arkansas on a damp April afternoon.

The house had an oak tree out front with a big lawn, three bedrooms, and a sunroom. Perhaps best of all, though, was that the rent was nearly $1,000 less than our DC apartment.

After four years of paying sky-high rent for DC apartments that cost as much as a mortgage, my fiancé and I were ready for a change.

We dreamed of a kitchen where two people could cook without sidestepping each other, and a dining table. More than anything, I yearned to lie in the grass in my own backyard. To hear real birds, not the Spotify ones I used to drown out the ambulances below my apartment.

I never imagined that change would come in the form of Arkansas, but my fiancé had a job lead in Bentonville, I had remote work, and we figured our money would go further there.

Bentonville wasn’t the money-saving haven I thought

We arrived at our new home, sight unseen, in May 2024. The illusion cracked quickly.

My fiancé’s job never came through, leaving us with my decent corporate salary and his hourly gig work.

Moving from urban to suburban always requires compromise, but I found that Bentonville is priced like a boutique bubble.

Our rent was cheaper, yes, but I found that a lot of other things weren’t.

For example, a latte at the award-winning coffee shop, Onyx, costs $7. Of course, there were cheaper options, like Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, but in general, I found that a decent cup of coffee cost me as much as it did in DC. Finding new friends also wasn’t cheap.

My fiancé had some friends in Bentonville already, but I wanted to try to build my own community. I went to a local women’s networking event, sipped more $7 lattes at a local book club, and befriended the cashier at the Kaleidoscope, a women-owned creative collective.

Eventually, though, I found myself eyeing Blake Street, a social club that offers a gym, pool, yoga classes, music, comedy shows, and local excursions. At $255 a month, the cost felt a little absurd, but I joined anyway. It felt, increasingly, like a necessity.

I also bought a car, paid for the insurance, and the additional annual property tax that comes with owning a vehicle in Arkansas. On top of that, maintenance costs piled up fast.

Within the first few months, I got a flat tire on a back road and had to replace it. Then came the routine upkeep: oil changes, tire rotations, a cracked windshield from flying debris during tornado season. For some, these might be the expected rhythms of car ownership, but after years of living in walkable cities, it felt like an entirely new category of expense. Suddenly, nearly 20% of my income was going toward car payments, repairs, inspections, and insurance.

Even groceries, which we assumed would be cheaper at Walmart, cost about the same as our beloved Trader Joe’s in DC. A carton of eggs that cost $2.79 at Trader Joe’s was $3.12 at Walmart. A bag of frozen mango chunks? $3.49 in both places. And organic milk — nearly identical in price, hovering around $5.50. The sticker shock wasn’t dramatic, but it added up.

In DC, my monthly “lifestyle” spending hovered around $500: coffee shops, fitness classes, the occasional rooftop drink. In Arkansas, it easily crept toward $800, even though I was doing more or less the same things.

I missed the city

After furnishing our oversized sunroom, buying a lawn mower, and stocking up on tornado-season essentials — flashlights, backup batteries, and yard tarps — I started to wonder if this “affordable” life was actually saving us anything.

I told myself I was being adventurous, flexible, and supportive. However, the voice in my head kept whispering: You didn’t really want this. I just wanted a plot of grass to call my own, but I realized I would settle for public parks if it meant living in a big city, again.

I missed the city’s convenience, but more than that, I missed the version of myself who lived there. In Arkansas, I began to disappear. I tried to cling to the things that made me feel like myself.

However, I wasn’t walking to my favorite café or running into friends on the street. My days revolved around errands, driving, and trying to settle in.

For my fiancé, the compromise made sense — he was content with a slower, simpler life. He didn’t mind living on an hourly wage or staying in most nights. He didn’t need the things I craved, and I began to feel like a supporting character in someone else’s life.

For me, the move to Arkansas didn’t just mark a change in geography; it exposed how far apart we’d grown in what we each wanted from our lives.

I left my life in Arkansas 5 months after moving there

Five months after moving to Arkansas, I left the state and my relationship, with a $10,000 personal loan to cover the cost of the detour.

I owed more on my car loan than the car was worth when I sold it back to the dealership. I had to pay the difference. My now-ex-fiancé wouldn’t be able to afford the house on his own after I left, so we had to break the lease. I paid for moving costs, and had to begin again — financially bruised, but finally honest with myself.

I wasn’t sure where I would go next, but when a dear friend offered me her spare bedroom in London, I didn’t hesitate. I booked a one-way flight almost immediately.

Since then, I have stayed with friends, joined an international housesitting website, visited seven new countries on a whim, and successfully managed to go nine months without paying rent.

What I really needed

Turns out, the reset I needed wasn’t a house with a backyard, a husband, or a booming bank account. It was a passport, carry-on, half-formed plan, and the nerve that shows up when you let everything else fall apart.

Bentonville is a beautiful, art-filled town surrounded by nature. I met plenty of people who genuinely loved it there. They biked the trails, raised their families, hosted supper clubs, and meant it when they said they couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. In hindsight, I can see why.

For me, the problem wasn’t Bentonville. It was everything I’d brought with me: the wrong relationship and an inauthentic version of myself. For them, it’s home. For me, it was a detour, so I took the nearest exit.