I met Antien on December 31, 1989 at a New Year's Eve party in Brooklyn, New York. Our hosts invited the assembled guests to express themselves on the occasion of the demise of the 1980s. Cast your mind back – we'd just been through eight years of ketchup as a vegetable. It was a decade when image triumphed over substance again and again, and most of us were relieved to bid it adieu. Antien's contribution was a modern dance improvisation. She had recently graduated from the Rotterdam Dance Academy and was in New York to study in the Merce Cunningham studio. She moved that evening with a dramatic, theatrical intensity that riveted me to my seat. I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was so "out there" that it almost hurt to watch. I was a complete dance novice then, and I wasn't sure what she intended to say about the 1980s, but whatever it was, it got my attention!

I think I loved her from the moment I laid eyes on her, but we were friends for a period of years before I acknowledged to myself – and to her – that I was in love. I bared my heart to her in 1993, and we have never looked back.

By that time, of course, Antien had returned to her native Holland. I knew I was in love, but could I actually uproot myself to move to a new land in mid-life? Could I leave my friends, my community, my professional life? I wasn't sure, and so Antien and I conducted a long-distance relationship between New York and Amsterdam for five years. [No one has ever called me impulsive.] Fortunately, her work as a dance teacher gave her the summers off, and my employers in a small consulting firm in New York were sensitive to my situation. Still, for five years, we never spent more than two consecutive months together, and probably saw each other for no more than four months out of every year. Missing her was one of the keenest, sharpest pains I have ever felt.

When we were together, we fantasized about what it would be like to share a daily life, to wake up in the same bed, to tell each other our stories at the end of the day. Just being together – what so many couples take for granted – seemed almost unimaginable. When we parted at Schiphol or JFK, we cried our eyes out. When we were reunited, it was sweeter than sweet. We had a spirited, old-fashioned pen and paper correspondence. We spent a fortune on plane tickets and phone calls.

After five years of travelling back and forth, I decided I was ready to move to Amsterdam, a city I had grown to love. I had lived in New York for 11 years, and I felt ready to trade in that crazy human carnival for a city on a more human scale. I was certainly ready to be with Antien, but being ready didn't make it any less wrenching to leave my home and my friends. I sorted, packed and divested. I gave up my apartment and all of my furniture. I gave away my appliances, my television, even my desk. I gave away hundreds of books, and put hundreds more into storage. I found homes for my two cats. I arranged to work freelance via the Internet for my company in New York. I borrowed a friend's car and made a ten-day road trip to Boston and western Massachusetts, my two other previous homes in adulthood, to say those good-byes.

The opportunity to start "anew" in mid-life was a gift for me. I arrived in Amsterdam when I was nearly 40, and I felt that I was starting fresh: free, unburdened, eyes wide open. Like the first day of school.

My life in Amsterdam is rich and growing, and I am grateful for it. I love riding a bicycle everywhere. I love living in a city that is just so damned cute. Getting acquainted with a new culture is endlessly fascinating (and occasionally vexing). Making new friends reminds me that everyday of our lives is a new act of creation. The language…now that has been a struggle. Learning Dutch has been completely humbling, particularly for a perfectionistic verbal person like me. I don't know if I'll ever achieve my goal of speaking with effortless mastery, but I now speak with reasonable competence. And I'm learning to let that be good enough, for now. Making a second language my own has been, in many ways, like all good process projects, its own reward.

But I also gave up much to be here. When people ask me what I miss most, I joke and say half-and-half in my coffee. I do miss half-and-half, but of course I miss people the most. Sometimes I ache for the friends who have known me 15, 20, even 25 years. That kind of intimacy, that kind of deep knowing, is irreplaceable. I see family in California at most once a year, my nieces and nephews are growing half a world away, and that is also a loss. I spend considerable time and resources every year travelling back to the US to maintain my relationships and connections there.

I don't know if Antien and I would choose to live in the United States now if we could – Dubya is making this a particularly easy time for me, personally, to be an expatriate – but the point is, we don't have the choice. The Netherlands recognizes our relationship and welcomes me as her partner, and in the United States our commitment to each other has no standing.

Even my closest friends and family regard my decision to move here as a choice, which in a way, of course, it was. I think of it as a choice, too. No one held a gun to my head. But it was not an entirely free choice. I think of it as a compelled choice. If I wanted to have a daily life with Antien, it was the only choice I had. Does one option constitute a choice? The longer I am here, the more it sinks in: I may call Amsterdam home for the rest of my life because my own country doesn't, can't, won't see me.

- Susan

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