There’s a particular kind of exhale you only know if you’ve spent years holding your breath.
I let that breath out on the night of November 3rd.
Like a lot of you, I watched the US midterm results come in from here in Playas del Coco, a long way from the polling places we used to stand in line at. And for the first time in a long time, the news coming out of the United States made me smile instead of making my stomach drop.
This one is personal. Most of what I write here is about the practical side of building a life in Guanacaste. This post is about why we built it in the first place.
The short version: We’re thrilled with the midterms. We’re also not moving back. Both of those things are true at once, and I want to explain why.
Why we left
I’ll be honest about something a lot of expats dance around: we left the United States for political reasons.
Not one election. Not one politician. It was the temperature. The constant negativity. The confrontation at every family dinner, every grocery line, every comment section. The feeling that our rights were permanently up for debate, and that every year we were losing a few more of them, one ruling and one statehouse at a time.
After a while, that weighs on you. You start to realize your sense of safety rises and falls with whichever way the wind blows in a given November. We didn’t want our peace of mind to run on a two-year cycle.
So we came here. We built a business, a team, and a home. And we have never once regretted it.
What happened on November 3rd
If you missed it: it was a wave.
Analysts at Brookings called it a historic victory for Democrats and a sweeping referendum on the President and his party. Their read was interesting: it wasn’t mainly that voters switched sides. Motivated Democrats showed up, and a lot of unhappy Republicans simply stayed home.
The numbers: as of November 15, the Associated Press count showed Democrats with 256 House seats won to Republicans’ 169, and in the Senate, 55 seats for Democrats (including two independents who caucus with them) to 44 for Republicans. A handful of seats were still uncounted as I write this, so those numbers may shift a little.
The practical result, as UBS put it, is that Republicans’ one-party control of Washington is broken. Democrats also picked up governor’s races in places they hadn’t won in years, including Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, Nevada and Texas.
For the people we love back home, that means a check on power. It means some breathing room. It means the next two years will involve more negotiation and less steamrolling. I’m genuinely happy about that, and if you’re celebrating too, celebrate. You’ve earned it.
Hope looks good on America. I just don’t want to live my life on a pendulum.
And here’s the part that keeps me in Costa Rica
The pendulum swung. And honestly? The pendulum is the problem.
Two years ago, voters threw Democrats out of power in Washington. This month, they did the reverse. Every cycle, tens of millions of people wake up the morning after an election feeling either rescued or doomed. That’s not a healthy way for a country to live, and it’s not a healthy way for anyone to live.
And some things don’t swing back at all.
The Supreme Court has had a 6 to 3 conservative majority since 2020. That’s the Court that overturned abortion rights, and the justices serve for life. Some analysts expect this majority to hold well into the 2050s, no matter who wins the next few elections. Yes, there’s a silver lining: Bloomberg Law’s read the morning after the midterms was that the President has probably appointed his last justice, because a vacancy now has to get through a Senate that looks very different. But “probably won’t get worse” is not the same as “safe.” Rights that took decades to win can now be decided by a single vote on a single morning in June.
So yes, the midterms gave me hope. But hope that depends on turnout every two years is not the same thing as stability. Stability is when you don’t need to hold your breath.
The Costa Rica difference: slow is safe
Here’s what living in Costa Rica has taught me: radical change just isn’t part of the culture here.
This is a country that abolished its army on December 1, 1948 and wrote that decision into its constitution. It’s often described as the oldest continuous democracy in Latin America. Every December, Ticos celebrate the day they chose schools and clinics over soldiers.
And change here happens slowly. Sometimes maddeningly slowly. If you’ve ever waited on a permit, a residency appointment, or a utility hookup in Guanacaste, you know exactly what I mean. Ahorita can mean five minutes or five weeks.
But that same slowness is what makes this place feel so safe.
The best example I know: same-sex marriage. In 2018, Costa Rica’s Supreme Court ruled the ban unconstitutional. It didn’t flip a switch overnight. It gave the legislature 18 months to act, and when lawmakers didn’t, the ruling simply took effect. On May 26, 2020, Costa Rica became the first country in Central America to recognize marriage equality. The president at the time acknowledged that a big part of the country disagreed, and said, essentially, we are still one nation and we walk forward together. (I’ve written about what marriage equality actually changes day to day here.)
That’s the Tico way. Debate. Deliberate. Decide. And then, crucially, the decision sticks. Nobody spends the next five years trying to tear it back out by the roots.
It’s frustrating when you want something done by Friday. It’s deeply comforting when you’re building a life.
Is Costa Rica perfect? Of course not.
I’d be doing you a disservice if I painted this as a postcard, and I’ve written before about the real reasons to reconsider moving here.
Costa Rica had its own big election this year. In February, Laura Fernández won the presidency outright in the first round, and her party now holds 31 of the 57 seats in the Legislative Assembly. That’s the first time since 1990 that a single party has held both the presidency and a legislative majority. She has promised deep reforms, a hard line on crime, and changes to the judiciary, and plenty of Costa Ricans are watching closely, some hopefully and some nervously.
We’re watching too. That’s what responsible residents do.
But even here, what strikes me is the tone. The transfer of power happened in a packed National Stadium with delegations from dozens of countries. Debates go through the courts, the Assembly, and an independent elections body, the Supreme Elections Tribunal. Big changes still have to grind through institutions built specifically to slow them down. And everyday life? It goes on. Neighbors still wave. The bakery still opens. Nobody at the soccer field asks who you voted for.
That’s the thing I can’t fully explain to friends back home until they visit: the political noise here is quieter, and it doesn’t follow you into the grocery store.
What this means if you’re an American expat (or thinking about becoming one)
- You’re allowed to celebrate and still be happy where you are. Loving the place you came from and choosing the place you live are not opposites.
- Keep voting. Living abroad doesn’t take your voice away. The Federal Voting Assistance Program walks you through absentee voting from Costa Rica, and the US Embassy in Costa Rica is there for everything else you need from your own government while you’re here. These midterms are proof that turnout matters.
- Don’t move for one election, and don’t stay for one either. If you’re thinking about Costa Rica, think about the daily temperature of life you want, not who won in November. What to know before moving to Costa Rica is a good place to start.
- Come see it slowly. Spend real time here, in the rainy season and the dry season, before you decide. Slow is kind of the point.
Pura vida, with clear eyes
I’m hopeful for the country we came from. I’m grateful for the one we chose.
The midterms reminded me that Americans can still pull their country back toward the middle when it matters. I’m proud of everyone who showed up. But I’ve also learned that peace of mind isn’t something you should have to win back every two years.
Here, the change is slow, the sunsets are on time, and nobody’s rights are on the ballot this Tuesday.
That’s why we’re staying.
If you’re quietly wondering whether this life could work for you too, ask me. No pitch, just a conversation from one expat to another.
