The big problem I've run into being remote is that while I can live anywhere and would totally fine living farther away from the bigish city I live near, my partner works in a field that determines that we live close to a major university and I'd feel like an ass for having 0 commute while she has to drive 45 minutes just because we could get more house/land/whatever farther away from the city.
Wouldn’t this problem be even harder to deal with if you didn’t work remotely? You only need to plan for the radius of one person’s commute rather than limiting your housing options to a balance of two locations.
Totally, not saying it isn't a problem in that case either, but rather that remote is hailed as this "you can live anywhere, move to the cheapest city you can!" solution when it's not (for most people).
It's a choice to work a non-remote job though. My partner could work, but it wouldn't be remote, so she's a stay at home parent while I work remote, enabling us to live somewhere rural (which also happens to be cheaper; one income easily supports a family of four).
Both people in a relationship could work remote jobs to enable geospatial freedom, also a choice! When someone says that working remote isn't a solution though, that's not accurate. They're saying, "I've chosen a work arrangement that is incompatible with remote work".
That's something we've been looking at recently, actually -- moving somewhere cheaper, but the problem we've found is that there just really aren't any jobs that she's interested in in the area we've been looking at (even outside of her current field, which she wants to leave anyway) -- we're looking at one spot in particular because of my mountain biking hobby and because I've lived there and have a lot of family there --, and we don't have kids, so it's hard to determine "okay, is it fine for us to just move and for you to have no idea on what job you want to do there?" even though my income is more than enough to sustain us (4x hers).
For her, the idea of doing that -- moving with no job or even an idea of what job to do there -- doesn't sit well. She doesn't like the implied dependence on me and that others may see her as a failure because she doesn't have a job for X time or an idea of what she wants to do. I can do all I can to convince her that that isn't the case and that not everyone has their sights set on something when they're in high school/college (I did, which doesn't help). Ultimately I think the change would be good since I think her job/boss in our current city is toxic and mentally rough, such that moving to an entirely new area with totally different prospects could create a positive.
