Your fluency is potent, and will be enough to carry your husband if he gets himself to high beginner level the language of your domicile: civilities, numerals, simple question answer (where is the Y, do you have X, how much is Z, and very powerfully "I am very sorry I do not understand, but I will ask my wife to come and talk to you about this…).
The crux is to live so it is obvious to your hosts-neighbors that you know it is up to you to learn and communicate. And then, wow, some of them will suddenly show they know a little English and can help out. Absurdly, when husband and I go to visit friends in Quebec we never speak a word of English but only Spanish and scatterings of polite French, especially in nice shops and local restaurants. We almost instantly get a particularly warm welcome and careful attentive care…and then delighted laughter when we confess that we are USAians and can speak English but prefer not to…
Our home of 8 years, San Miguel de Allende in the state Guanajuato, besides being of modest size, beautiful, and historically interesting, is one of the largest USAian ex-pat communities in the world. Think about it as a candidate for one of your “dipping a toe in” experiments as a significant part of the population is bilingual, and many expats are around on streets and in shops who can help out.
One thing for certain, and that is that Europe is safer and easier to cope with for us gringos than any other place I have been. Picking a place to live there is an art – you want to be close enough to a big city to enjoy big culture, but life in a small community is extremely rewarding and usually much cheaper. Southern Italy, rural Catalonia, Extremadura in Spain, central France, Slovenia, all still have amazingly beautiful villages that can make great places to retire.
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