When relocating overseas you say goodbye to friends and family at home. You are most probably excited and anxious to experience those overseas adventures. A few months later you are settled, and have some extra time to start building friendship with others in your new country.
What are your options?
1. If you are an expat who is working abroad, then you can find some colleagues from work to hangout with, and maybe a good friendship will evolve at the end.
2. If you have school-age kids, then you might get to know other parents from school and establish a friendship with them.
3. You can always be friendly to your neighbors. Some might become your friends.
4. If you are observing (Christian, Jewish. Muslim etc'), then you can meet friends at church, synagogue, mosque, etc'.
5. If you participate in gym, language or dance classes, you can always meet nice people there.
As you can see, there are lots of ways to meet friends while you are abroad.
But sometimes you really get homesick. You want to speak your own language with people who understand you completely, and is familiar with your culture and with your country back home.
This is where something really strange happens. Someone has named it - forced friendships.
What does it mean?
Back home you could choose with whom you want to be friend, but in your new country there aren't many expats from your native country, so you are "forced" to make friends with people you do not have a lot in common (beside same language, and same native country), and with whom you would never hangout back home. You hate yourself for being friends with them, but you still stick together. And the irony is that your "so called" friends are feeling the same about you.
So, you go shopping together, hangout at bars, restaurants. Have family gathering, even celebrate the holidays and go on trips together.
Do you see the pattern? Expats from your native country are becoming your extended family. Now, let's be honest, not all of us like hanging out with our real families back home. So why on earth are we reconstructing a similar pattern of relationships with people that we don't really like, and aren't our family?
How many of you stayed friends with expats from your own country after repatriating? And how many of you didn't have a serious argument with your "forced friends" during your posting?
Anyone would like to share his/her experience?
Sharon
3 comments:
I've done that... early in my expat experience I was anxious for anyone who 'knew' what home was like... and I've realised that befriending someone based on nationality is pointless. I began to resent them... now I look to people with common interests more than common citizenship. My closest friends are not from my home country; in fact, I have very, very few Canadian friends at all. I think of that particular urge as symptomatic of the early years... and I've gotten well past it now.
Great post!
I think this is one of the hardest parts of relocating. Here in Cancun, there is a big problem with trust, many Americans run here when in trouble with the law up north. I have been taken in by charm and smooth manners before, only to discover the snake underneath. I am very careful who I share information with now, especially with newcomers to town who offer a less than believable answer for why they are here. I don't become friends with someone just because they are a foreigner, it's far more about common interests and attitudes.
I do have to say that almost 100% of my "real life" friends here came about as the result of an online forum for ex-pats. An online personality is not necessarily a good reflection of the real person, but I can weed out the people that quite obviously have different attitudes and behaviours than I and have found some people with whom I share a great deal. I was here for almost two years without a computer and it was much more difficult making friends in that time.
This is an interesting perspective. See, here in Salta, there are very few expats. Or at least, expat often means someone from somewhere else in Argentina. I don't think I've met a single person here who's native language is English.
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