Year one abroad runs on adrenaline. Every piece of paperwork is a first: the first residence permit application, the first tax return filed from somewhere new, the first time you find a doctor who speaks your language. Your second year abroad brings a version of the same admin load, sometimes a heavier one, with none of that adrenaline left to carry it.
The popular story, and what the research actually says
The idea that culture shock bottoms out around year two is called the culture shock U-curve: a 1955 model built on an initial honeymoon phase, a crisis, then recovery into full adjustment. It got extended in 1963 into a “W-curve” that adds a second dip when you eventually move home. It is the model nearly every expat listicle borrows, usually without saying so.
More rigorous, later research complicates it. Longitudinal studies that actually tracked the same people over time have found something less dramatic: adjustment difficulties tend to ease earliest, within the first several months, then largely plateau, rather than following a clean two-year dip and recovery. The honest position is that the emotional research is genuinely mixed, not that year two is a scientifically confirmed low point.
What does reliably change in year two, whatever the emotional research says
Set the psychology aside and one thing holds up regardless: the paperwork itself is often different in year two, not just repeated. Two concrete reasons follow.
If you are a US citizen who moved partway through a calendar year, you may not have qualified for the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion on your first return, since it typically requires meeting a 330-day physical-presence test you had not yet reached. Many people in that position file an extension for year one and end up filing their first genuinely full, clean calendar-year return in year two: a new process, not a repeat of anything they have filed before.
Separately, first residence permits in many countries run shorter than the ones that follow. Portugal’s D7 visa issues an initial two-year permit before the renewal shifts to three-year cycles; we have covered this one concrete example elsewhere on this site. A short first permit followed by a longer one is a pattern that recurs widely. In year two, a renewal window can arrive as a surprise after a comparatively quiet first-permit period if you were not tracking the date.
If you are heading toward a permit renewal or a first full tax year abroad and are not sure what it actually involves, it is worth asking someone who has been through it.
Why it can feel heavier even when nothing has technically gone wrong
Insurance, lease terms and vehicle paperwork felt novel and drew close attention in year one. They become routine by your second year abroad, which is exactly when they are easiest to let slip. None of this is a sign the move was a mistake. It is closer to what happens with any large decision once the initial vigilance fades and the task becomes background noise rather than a project: the same load, minus the attention that used to be paid to it automatically. Knowing that in advance neutralises most of it. That load also is not distributed evenly within a household. If you moved primarily to accompany a partner’s career rather than your own, the adjustment tends to run on a different track entirely. A clear-eyed look at what a month actually costs you is one of the more useful resets available at this stage, redone once you are past the first-year guesswork.
Admin fatigue and a bad decision are not the same problem
The two things get tangled together, and they are not the same question. Admin fatigue is a response to a workload: a tax filing, a permit renewal, a lease you now have to think about again after a year of not needing to. It responds to the workload being handled, and it fades once the specific task is done. Whether the move itself was right is a separate, slower question, one that does not resolve by filing a form.
Here is a practical way to tell them apart: put the recurring admin (permit renewal windows, tax deadlines, insurance and lease renewal dates) on a calendar with real dates attached, rather than letting each one arrive as a surprise. Once the concrete items have known dates and are handled on schedule, the actual question of how the move feels remains, unclouded by a backlog of paperwork you were tracking by memory. Most of what gets described as “the second year is harder” turns out to be the first kind of problem, not the second, and it responds to a calendar far more reliably than it responds to time passing. A second year abroad rewards the same fix: dates on a calendar, not more time.
Related reading: More on expat life
Frequently asked questions
Is culture shock really worse in the second year abroad?
The research is genuinely mixed. A popular older model suggests a dip around this point, but more rigorous longitudinal studies have found adjustment difficulties tend to ease earliest, within the first several months, and largely plateau rather than dip sharply in year two specifically.
Why does the expat Foreign Earned Income Exclusion second year filing feel different?
For US citizens who moved partway through a calendar year, the first return often cannot use the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion, since it typically requires meeting a physical-presence test they had not yet reached. Your second year abroad is frequently when you file the first full, clean calendar-year return, which is a genuinely new process, not a repeat of year one’s.
Why would my residence permit renewal timeline catch me by surprise in year two?
Many countries issue a shorter first residence permit before switching to longer renewal cycles, so a renewal window can open in year two after a comparatively quiet first-permit period. Check your specific permit’s dates directly rather than assuming the renewal timeline mirrors the initial application.
A residence-permit renewal is one concrete shape this admin takes. Canada’s Express Entry process runs on its own multi-stage timeline that catches people the same way, at a different stage: the stage most applicants underestimate.
Sources
- Bruce La Brack, “Cultural Adaptations, Culture Shock and the ‘Curves of Adjustment’”, NAFSA: Association of International Educators, on Lysgaard’s (1955) U-curve and the Gullahorns’ (1963) W-curve extension
- Colleen Ward, Yuko Okura, Antony Kennedy and Takahiro Kojima, “The U-Curve on Trial: A Longitudinal Study of Psychological and Sociocultural Adjustment During Cross-Cultural Transition”, International Journal of Intercultural Relations (1998)
- IRS, Foreign Earned Income Exclusion
- IRS, Foreign Earned Income Exclusion: Physical Presence Test
All sources accessed 1 September 2026. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances; take advice from a cross-border tax professional for your own filing.
