The Friendship Challenge When Living Abroad

Are expats better at making friends than locals, forced by their migrant circumstance?

Friends on a hill in Granada, Spain. Photo by Victoriano Izquierdo on Unsplash

Some days I feel utterly lonely in the world.

A current goes through me and the wild fear of dying alone wakes up inside like a raging wolf. To combat the feeling, I start making a mental list of friends who, for whatever reason, are not currently available to make me feel less lonely. 

Some other days, I’m filled with gratitude for the communities I’ve built in all the cities I’ve lived in. 

When we uproot ourselves and become permanent foreigners, the moments when we feel disconnected from the local social fabric abound. We start to believe the stereotype that if you’re a migrant, you’re bound to roam the world alone without any chance of forming long-lasting friendships. 

And yet, the more I look back to all the places I lived in, the more friends I add to my roster. Friends I made in past locations of residence and left there, friends I took on with me even if distance separated us, friends so old that they wouldn’t recognize who I grew into today. On the days when I feel lonely, I ponder on all of the friendships I have forged throughout the years, the homes, the countries and the continents. 

Are expats better at making friends?

Lately, there is a lot of talk of loneliness, social isolation and The Friendship Dip in people as young as in their 20s. The linked essay, however fascinating, focuses on the US-American social landscape and doesn’t mention much about migrants. 

What about when you move countries or States and leave your home community behind? Are migrants better at making friends, forced by the circumstances? Perhaps we sharpen our friendship-forging tools and connect more than locals do. 

Multi-country expats know what I mean.

With every goodbye party and packing of the moving boxes, a part of us stays back where we’re leaving from, hopeful those friendships will stand the test of distance. Another part moves ahead to the new place where we start to build yet another community. 

When we emigrate we leave behind family, circles of friends, university colleagues or childhood neighbors. The excitement of arriving on new lands is slightly dampened by the lingering sadness of dear people left behind. 

The circle of support, the people who know us and can vouch for us are not there with us. We are alone, like an outcast from a community, but out of our own will. A self-outcasting decision, taken with the confidence that we can rebuild a new community. 

The first weeks after moving to Frankfurt, Germany all by myself were fun. I got to learn about the city and explore a new neighborhood every weekend. But soon enough, even for a (mostly) introvert like me, I craved some people around. I craved people to love and care for. 

Because the word ‘friend’ comes from the Old English word frēond, which meant to love or favor. In Italian (amico), Spanish (amigo) and other Latin languages, the word for friend is also derived from the verb to love (amar/e). Friends are people we choose to love freely; friends are the love we need to make our lives more meaningful, besides romantic love. 

Friendships with other expats: united by the circumstances 

After getting the logistics sorted, community is the first thing we look for in a new place. And without fault, expats search for expats to connect with first. The unique circumstance of being a foreigner in a foreign place unites us more than our cultural habits. The challenges we all face when adapting to a new place represent the foundation of the friendship.

Communities are shaped by common circumstances, and being a foreigner in a new place means an instant common ground to grow together on. 

Local people already have their social fabric woven, their circles old and tight. So at first, there doesn’t seem to be much opportunity to join a locals-only circle, unless you start dating one of them. There is not enough common ground. 

In Catalonia, the region where I currently live, many expats believe that locals are unwelcoming to foreigners. I’ve seen this confusion in several other places around the world too. But I think it’s more a matter of locals already having their social circles formed, time-tested and settled, rather than being purposely unwelcoming. And people love their comfort zone. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it type of mentality. Locals have slim motivations to make an effort — both linguistic and cultural — to integrate foreigners when their social circles already function. But foreigners don’t have a social fabric woven yet, so it’s easier for them to pull together to weave it. 

At my first expat meeting after moving to Frankfurt, the organizer looked at me and said oh, you’re Monica who just arrived from Miami. Here, sit next to this guy, he’s also from Miami. Pairing people up according to the slightest common ground — that was the beginning of a new expat community. 

We are like spiders without webs. Floating around, some fall and get crushed, others cling to the web of a veteran spider, while other spiders come together and form their own intricate, multi-national network. The individual loneliness of feeling foreign fades away to give space to the new collective social fabric. 

And when we expats make friends with other expats, we get to know more cultures at once. Our notions of normal and that’s how we do it are thrown out the window, the eyes and mind open towards how do you do this, what was your experience moving here, how were you subtly discriminated, if so, or how do you adapt to a Southern culture coming from the North, or vice versa?

The test of distance and time

Many friendships end when one friend moves away. We blame it on the distance, but it’s more about the ways in which we evolve rather than the actual miles that separate us.

Elephant foot tree

Some friendships are like the elephant foot tree (see above how it looks), which only needs water every three weeks or so. In these friendships, phone calls are rare, but when they happen the connection is intact, sometimes better than you thought. The trunk of the elephant foot tree seems dried out on the outside, but it’s actually a container of water and nutrients on the inside. Such friendships might seem like they were left in the past, but with every new encounter the outside dry trunk is misleading. There are plenty of nutrients on the inside that make the connection remain magically alive. 

Distance and time have a way of clarifying if there is still common ground between two friends. People might grow apart, or change political views to ones that make the hair on your arms stand. Some friends adopt certain moral values that make you cringe when listening to their latest actions. Sometimes subtly, other times not so much, but something inside always tells me whether I can still find common values with an old friend or not. 

And I love to (re)discover elephant-foot-tree friends. 

Old friendships from the motherland: a challenge

I left post-communist Romania and landed in the American South at the impressionable age of 23 years old. 

Only three months later, returning home for Christmas, I was dumbstruck by how people spoke and behaved back in my home country. At first, I noticed people’s faces, frowned and annoyed by default. The sarcastic answers from random store clerks shocked me. The constant complaining and negative attitude, even when holding a 6.5€ Starbucks latte. I felt like a complete outsider, but ashamed to say anything. The change had happened in me objectively too fast, after only three months on the other side of the planet, and I didn’t feel entitled to criticize my motherland. 

For the next few years, I didn’t return to Romania more often than once a year. I didn’t meet any Romanian person in all the years I lived in the US either. The immersion into the American culture was total, which weighed heavier than the nationality on my passport. This accelerated the erasure of my home culture and made maintaining childhood friendships tricky. 

The changes are intangible most of the time. Old friends think you are the same because you look unchanged, and don’t get why the connection feels off. Why you don’t laugh at the same jokes and don’t eat the same food anymore. Why the length of your nails or the height of your heels is different now — apparently a superficial difference, but which comes from deeper convictions. 

What if our physical appearance changed to match our internal changes? Not looking older, but looking different. Just like our values and behavior change, so could our face. And I wonder, then, who from the old friends would recognize me on the street? 

Similar to the idea that ‘what is beautiful is good’, if someone is physically beautiful, we give them better moral characteristics. In contrast, we give poor moral qualities to physically unattractive people. But of course, there is no correlation between the two, although most people make one. When we meet old friends, we use the same flawed logic and assume that if we see the same face as years before, then it means we speak with the same person as in the past. 

In the face of profound change, a once-close friendship becomes a distant memory. Sometimes it’s best to keep the past in the past. It’s that moment when you look at an old friend and you sadly have to let go of the illusion that you can beat distance and time. It’s that moment when you listen to them talking and you feel like you don’t belong in that conversation. The lack of connection makes you feel even more of a foreigner, even if you’re back on the streets of your childhood.

How about you?

If you’ve ever been an expat, have you made friends differently than back home? How well do you still resonate with childhood friends?