You’re six months in. People seem friendly enough, but nothing seems to progress beyond simple surface-level contact. How do you meet genuine people? How do you find the connection you’re actually craving? There are plenty of groups and meetups out there, but they rarely go deeper than small talk, and somewhere in the back of your mind a quiet little voice starts to ask is it just me?
No, it isn’t. The vast majority of expats struggle with friendship in their first couple of years abroad, they just don’t tend to say it out loud. There are real reasons why this happens, and more importantly, there are things that can genuinely help.
5 Reasons Expats Struggle to Make Friends Abroad
Reason 1: The Friendship Gap
When I first moved abroad, a few people learned my name and knew me as an acquaintance, but truly getting to know me, my life and my journey? That’s an entirely different experience and honestly one that is still a work in progress. Life gets handed to you sometimes, situations shift and shake and you have to prioritise what is truly important. The answer isn’t always clear cut and it isn’t the same for every individual.
No one knew my family, my upbringing or what shaped me into who I am. My jokes were constantly misunderstood or the humour just didn’t land the way it would if I were a native speaker. All those funny and embarrassing stories, the ones about growing up and growing into yourself, the things that make me genuinely laugh those parts of me are very real and very present but for some reason they couldn’t always be shared, and when they were they weren’t truly understood. They just got lost in translation.
It’s like being a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit into the picture you’re trying to put together, and that can feel very lonely at first. That’s why knowing yourself is so important during this time, because when the world around you doesn’t quite reflect you back yet, you have to hold onto who you are.
Deep friendships also simply take time. It can take over 200 hours of genuine connection before real closeness develops. For those navigating this in a second language that challenge is doubled, because when every conversation takes extra energy the connection naturally takes a little longer too.
Reason 2: Everyone’s Temporarily Busy
You can meet twenty people in a week abroad and still not truly connect with a single one of them. I’ve seen this pattern play out over ten years the networking events, the expat happy hours, the WhatsApp groups that start with enthusiasm and quietly go silent. Everyone is friendly and then suddenly everyone is just busy.
There’s also something about the expat lifestyle that makes deep friendship harder than it looks. People move, jobs change, and life shifts constantly. Contacts get collected like souvenirs but real friendships need roots and stability to grow. If you’re more introverted by nature, saying yes to every event and every social occasion doesn’t fill you up, it empties you completely.
So you end up with surface level connections everywhere and something that feels like genuine friendship nowhere. Not many people talk about it honestly or enough.
Reason 3: Cultural Conversation Mismatch
I am sure you have heard this more than once on your expat journey “Where are you from? How long have you been here?” It loops endlessly and if you are anything like me and lean more towards the introverted side, we have all had more than enough of small talk.
Humour doesn’t always translate well either. Sarcasm? O no! British humour for example lands very differently abroad. What feels like easy casual banter at home can come across as too sharp or too dry somewhere else. For those navigating this in a second language, you might hear every word and still completely miss the rhythm and feeling behind it.
When you are introverted, small talk drains you faster than most. The endless getting to know you phase never seems to move forward because somewhere underneath it all cultural differences make it harder to be truly open and vulnerable. When every conversation feels a little bit like a job interview you start to wonder when the real conversation actually begins. It is tiring, it is exhausting and it can feel never ending.
That cycle unfortunately doesn’t build friendship it just builds friendship fatigue and after awhile drains your energy.
Reason 4: Locals vs. Expats Dilemma
There is an interesting tension that comes up a lot in expat life and it sits somewhere between locals and other expats. Locals already have full lives, established friend groups, family commitments and a shared history with the people around them. There is nothing wrong with that at all, it is just the reality. Expats on the other hand can offer that instant connection and familiarity but the honest truth is that most move on within a couple of years. So where does that leave you?
Having navigated both worlds over a decade abroad I’ve come to realise that the answer isn’t to keep collecting more people. It’s to find your one or two. The ones who actually want depth and real conversation rather than just someone to chit chat with. English speaking expats especially can find themselves caught in this in between space, feeling too foreign for the locals and yet not settled enough to hold onto other expats either.
Quality over quantity has always mattered to me, long before I moved abroad. A handful of genuine relationships will always carry more weight than a full contact list of people who barely know your surname. That has never changed and if anything living abroad has only confirmed it.
Reason 5: You’re Still Grieving
What you have to remember is that you didn’t just move countries. You left your old life and your entire social safety net behind.
What I have come to understand, both through my studies and through living it, is that grief doesn’t only come from loss in the obvious sense. Sometimes it comes from the choices you made to protect yourself, the relationships you stepped away from, the years you spent building something quietly and alone. That takes something from you even when it was the right thing to do. And learning to acknowledge that without judgement is where resilience actually begins.
You miss the people who knew you without explanation. The ones you never had to give context to. It’s a knowing of your soul, that intuitive understanding between people that needs no words and no second guessing. When that is gone, you feel the absence of it and it can weigh heavy sometimes.
Sometimes it can show up as perfectionism that feeling like you should have made friends by now. Other times it comes as comparison wondering why everyone else seems to have found their people already and have things almostly perfectly placed. Or it can appear as withdrawal, because staying home just feels easier than trying again.
So if you are in your first year abroad, please give yourself some grace. That first year is survival mode and there is no shame in that. Belonging takes time, sometimes years, and the journey looks different for everyone.
What matters most is that you keep on moving forward on your journey. The past is what it is, the present is where you focus and make your moves, and the future will catch up to you in no time. Remember, whatever is meant for you will come at the right time.
You just need to show up, do your best and try to find the good in every experience.
How Conversations Help
Sometimes just sixty minutes of honest conversation can shift something that has been sitting with you for a long time.
There is something freeing about being able to say what you mean out loud without feeling ashamed of it. Naming what you are actually going through is always the starting point and its more important than you realise.
It also helps you to notice your own patterns. Are you naturally drawn to people who move on quickly, or is this simply what the first year abroad looks and feels like for most people? Sometimes just having that reflected back to you brings a quiet kind of relief.
It also helps to have a realistic sense of time. The first year is largely about acquaintances and finding your footing. Belonging tends to come later, often around the third year or beyond, and knowing that can take some of the pressure off.
For those of you who are navigating expat life in English as a second language there is an added layer of value here. You are not just processing your experience, you are doing it in English, which means the conversation itself becomes a space to practise and feel more confident at the same time.
British native speaker, introvert and expat of over ten years, with a background in philosophy and psychological studies. These are peer style support conversations, not therapy.
When you are ready to talk, I am here. If you are not quite ready yet, that is okay too. Whenever you are the door is open.