I wouldn't exactly say that I lived in the city before. So, obviously, I was pretty damned shocked when my wife informed me that we had not been living in the country the first three years we were in Bend, Oregon. The solution was to find a place in the country and secure her agreement that it was, in fact, in the middle of nowhere.
So now I live in the wilderness. Am I happy with it? I don't know. I'm probably happier than I was in Bend but that's more a function of being in a nicer house with a little more privacy than I had in "the big city" and less a function of living in the middle of the desert.
The drive sucks but all the tolerance I built up for long commutes came rushing back as soon as I moved out here. Even with the long drive, it's still incalculably better than living in a real city with a commute that takes the same amount of time. In Seattle, a half-hour commute would have carried me about three or four miles at best. Here, at least, my long drive covers a lot of ground and I'm not constantly slamming on the breaks.
None of those things compare to the affect this new house has on my wife and our cats. All seven of whom love the place. It's a little rough on the cats to be tempted by such untouched landscape and not be able to go play in it but it's better than just looking at our neighbors' bathroom window when they look outside. There's a lot more "romping" room inside the house. My wife, of course, loves this place because it is big enough for all our crap, it's private, and her commute didn't change at all.
All told, I'm still not sold on this being any better than living in a city - especially when compared to the suburb of a real city like Los Angeles or San Diego - but I'm no less happy than I was in Bend and my wife is much happier with it so it's an improvement.
