I can count on one hand the number of expats I’ve met who speak fondly of their home country. More often, they are eager to explain why theirs is the worst of them all.

Bureaucracy becomes a competitive sport.

“You think the tax office is bad where you’re from? Listen to this…”

The conversation usually escalates until someone wins by describing a particularly absurd encounter with paperwork, healthcare, or public transport. The tone is half-joking, half-sincere. But beneath it sits something deeper.

I have done it myself. I remember sitting in a pub in Prague, complaining about how endlessly grey and depressing British weather is, only to realise I had just endured three straight weeks of Czech winter without mentioning it once. Apparently gloom is unbearable, unless it belongs to the country you chose.

Some expats genuinely dislike their homeland. That is often why they left. But I suspect unconscious biases also shape how we remember where we are from.

One of them is the need to justify a decision. Much like someone who buys an expensive gadget and insists it is excellent to avoid feeling foolish, expats reassure themselves that moving abroad was the right call. Psychologists call this choice-supportive bias. We highlight the positives of the path we chose and amplify the flaws of the one we abandoned.

Moving countries is rarely a neutral act. It is disruptive, expensive, occasionally lonely. It helps to believe it was necessary.

Then there is familiarity. We know our home country intimately. We understand its unwritten rules, its small irritations, its systemic failures. Its flaws feel obvious because we have lived inside them.

By contrast, even well-integrated expats remain partially outside their adopted culture. We might speak the language fluently, understand the jokes, navigate the systems. But we lack the lifelong accumulation of small grievances that natives carry. We judge home with a magnifying glass and our new country with softer focus.

A friend of mine offers a more cynical explanation. If expats spent their time praising their homeland, locals would simply ask, “So why don’t you go back there?” Criticism becomes social camouflage.

I realised he might be right when I once said something complimentary about the UK in a group of Czechs. The room went quiet for a moment. Someone smiled and said, “You can always return.” It was not hostile, just matter-of-fact. I remember quickly pivoting back to a joke about British weather.

Over time, performance turns into belief.

There is also a story we like to tell about ourselves. The romantic narrative of leaving everything behind for a better life elsewhere runs deep in books, films, and the collective imagination. “I stayed put and it was fine” is not a particularly gripping plot. To keep the story compelling, home must be dull, frustrating, limited. The contrast needs to be stark.

When I criticise the UK, I sometimes pause and wonder what I am actually reacting to. Is it policy? Culture? Weather? Or is it the quieter need to reassure myself that I made the right choice?

I do not have a definitive answer. But I suspect expat negativity is often less about objective reality and more about narrative maintenance. We edit our past to stabilise our present.

And once you repeat a story often enough, it can become difficult to tell which parts were true and which parts were simply useful.