A remote worker in Bali who keeps New York hours starts the workday at 9 p.m. local time. The same person usually leaves the city within 2 months, and most of the people met there know it from the first conversation. Dating for a person who works for a company on another continent has to fit around both constraints, an inverted schedule and a short stay.
Population Figures for Traveling Remote Workers
MBO Partners, a firm that tracks independent work, estimated that 18.5 million American workers were working remotely while traveling in 2025. That figure was about 12% of the US workforce and 153% higher than in 2019. Of the 18.5 million, 11.2 million held traditional jobs with an employer.
The same report found that 54% of these workers were married or living with a partner, so close to half were not. The group was young, with 35% from Generation Z and 40% Millennials, although 11% were 55 or older. On average, they visited 6.2 locations a year and stayed about 6.4 weeks in each one. Most were new to the life, as 73% had been doing it for 3 years or less.
Loneliness Among Remote Workers
Gallup surveyed 19,846 working adults in the United States in February 2024 and found that 25% of fully remote employees reported feeling lonely. The figure was 16% for those who worked only on-site and 21% for hybrid workers. In the MBO data, 19% of traveling remote workers named loneliness as a difficulty, and 26% named distance from family and friends.
Remote work also removes one of the older routes into a relationship. A 2019 study by the Stanford sociologist Michael Rosenfeld and colleagues found that the share of American couples who met through work or as coworkers fell between 2009 and 2017. A person working from a rented apartment in Mexico City has no colleagues in the building at all, so every social contact has to be arranged on purpose.
Working Hours Across Time Zones
A remote worker is free when the employer’s office is closed. Bali is 12 hours ahead of New York during US daylight saving time, so a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern workday runs from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. in Bali. Lisbon is 5 hours ahead of New York, which moves the same workday to 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. local time. Bali does not observe daylight saving time, so the gap with New York grows to 13 hours in the northern winter.
Both workdays fall in the evening. The worker in Lisbon is free for lunch and for a late dinner after 10 p.m., and the worker in Bali has the whole day free and no evenings at all. Daytime is the only reliable time for a date in either case, which limits the people available to meet to those with flexible hours of their own. The time difference is part of the choice of city, before a lease is signed.
Partner Preferences Among Remote Professionals
A person who works alone for a distant employer has free hours that few locals share. A developer on New York time in Lisbon has more free hours in common with a night nurse than with a local office worker.
Preferences also vary with age and circumstance. Some remote workers want company from peers on the same kind of trip, and some older professionals hope to find a sugar baby or a partner closer to their own age. Naming which one before a first date saves both people an evening.
Ease of Settling In by Destination
The 2026 Expat Insider survey drew on about 8,000 expats of 162 nationalities to rank the best countries for expats among 31 destinations. Panama placed first for the third year in a row, followed by Mexico and Thailand. Norway placed last overall and had the lowest score of any country for ease of settling in.
In the 2025 edition, which covered 46 destinations, Norway was third from bottom for finding friends and Sweden was last. Only 17% of expats in Norway found it easy to make local friends, against 38% worldwide, which puts it among the hardest countries to make friends in the survey. A remote worker comparing Mexico City with Oslo is also comparing how quickly strangers become friends, and friends are a common route to meeting a partner in a city where a person has no colleagues.
Visa Length and Relationship Timelines
Visitors from the United States can spend up to 90 days in any 180-day period in the Schengen Area without a visa. The EU’s Entry/Exit System, which began operating on October 12, 2025, records each crossing, and sanctions for overstaying range from fines to deportation and bans from the whole bloc. A relationship that begins in Paris in May has to end or relocate by August unless one partner finds a legal basis to stay.
Remote work visas extend that window. Counts vary by source, and published lists put the number of countries with such visas at somewhere between about 50 and 72. Spain’s visa for remote workers required proof of at least €2,849 a month in gross income in 2026, which is 200% of the Spanish minimum wage, and it is issued for 1 year, renewable up to 5. Portugal’s D8 visa required at least €3,680 a month, 4 times the national minimum wage, and leads to a 2-year residence permit.
These visas were designed for work, and they give a couple a realistic timeline. A 1-year Spanish permit removes the 90-day limit from the visitor’s side of a relationship in Madrid.
Tax Residency and Longer Stays
A longer stay has tax consequences. Many countries treat a person who spends more than 183 days a year within their borders as a tax resident, and the exact test differs by country and by tax treaty. Extending a stay for a partner can create an income tax liability in the host country as well as at home.
Couples who decide to live together abroad face the same rules from a different direction, since a joint lease usually means both people spend most of the year in one country. Tax advice in both countries is best taken before the move, while every option is still open.
The Question at the End of a Lease
Every short stay ends with a lease that expires on a known date, and the MBO figures suggest the next city is usually 6 weeks away. For anyone who has met someone worth staying for, one question needs an answer before that date. Which of the 2 lives, the one on the move or the one in the new city, has a legal and financial path to last another year, and has either person checked?
