Nobody wants to talk about this early. It feels presumptuous, like you're planning a wedding on the second call. But the question of who moves is not a wedding conversation. It is a third-visit conversation at the latest - and ideally earlier.
Here is why: if you wait until you are emotionally deep in before you discuss it, you will find that both of you have been quietly assuming the answer without saying it out loud. And when those assumptions surface, they create conflict at exactly the wrong moment - when the relationship is at its most vulnerable and the stakes feel highest.
Talk about it before you are there.
There is no rule about who should move. There are, however, practical realities: visa pathways, career flexibility, family obligations, financial anchors. One person's situation is almost always more movable than the other's - and that is fine, as long as the decision is made explicitly rather than arrived at by default.
The person who moves needs to be chosen, not defaulted to. This distinction matters more than it sounds. If one person moves simply because it was always assumed they would - because of gender expectations, because they earn less, because they said early on that they were flexible - that assumption will resurface in the marriage. Resentment does not announce itself. It accumulates quietly and then arrives at full volume.
Make the decision together. Name it explicitly. Make sure the person who is relocating is genuinely choosing to do so and is not simply going along with what seemed inevitable.
And plan the practical side seriously: visa processing times, legal recognition of marriage certificates, the emotional reality of leaving community and family. These are not obstacles to love. They are the project that love becomes when it is real.
