Nowhere is home

[Flamingoose]

I've been an expat all my life. Moved on every four years as a kid. Didn't intend to do the same as an adult, but dh lost his job when the recession hit 10 years ago and it was an easy choice to follow the money and make a new life somewhere warm and fun. We didn't really plan ahead. We just reacted. We didn't intend to be away forever, but time rolled on. We've had a lot of fun and had some amazing experiences with wonderful people.

So now we're in our 40s with three children and nowhere is home. We were paying that 'what if' game about winning millions and it really startled me to realise that if I won millions there is no 'home' that I could move to. I don't have family anywhere. My friends are scattered.

We decided a couple of years ago that we needed to make a 'home' for the children. We chose a sensible country - good education, we speak the language, it's safe, politically stable, both our jobs are needed here. We moved here last year and here I am, trying to make a home.

I'm so unhappy. I have not made a single friend. I'm lonely and sad and I hate it here. But if I leave and move on, I'll never make a home, so I'm not giving up. I'm just existing every day, thinking about how completely shit I am to have not managed to make a single friend in a year. I used to do fun things. Now I mostly do laundry.

I'm going through the motions. I have a job, joined the PTA, am taking lessons in a sport and have volunteered to help on the social side, I try to chat at work and at the school gate, I have invited people to things. I try so fucking hard to be positive.

Don't know what I want from this thread really. Someone who can relate?

I think I can relate and I'm sorry it is such a hard slog. For me it took somewhere between 5 and 10years for the new country to feel like home (but language barrier came into it initially, so might be shorter for you). At 5 years it still felt like I hadn't made any lasting friendships but by 10 it was definitely "home." Don't know at which point it transitioned. I didn't really have a choice to leave either. People are slow to truly warm up where I am but once they do it's for life. It's probably true for humans in general, with slight geographical variations. Someone else I know gave up in the first five years and went back to their previous country, accepting that while they didn't like a lot of things about it, they could relate to the people easier. No real advice, sorry. Except maybe, is the city big enough to find your niche/ "your" people? Knowing what I know now, I don't think I could persevere in a small town for example - need at least 1million people around me

See the GP OP. it sounds more like depression than anything else. I am an expat and do know what it feels like to be rootless.

But you shouldn't be feeling this hopeless. Even living somewhere you don't much like shouldn't be completely joyless if you have a family.

Don't delay! Make an appointment!

We have moved countries twice now and each time it has taken a full two years, even three, to find my place in the new country. The first year is the hardest. This time round I have found that getting a job has really helped me - is that something you could do? But otherwise you are doing all the right things, good friends will fall into place, these things do take time.

Thank you for the replies.

I don't think I'm depressed. I think I'm sad and lonely and exhausted and overwhelmed. I also think, being brutally honest, I'm perhaps not the most likable person so I'm blaming my inadequacies for my lack of friends.

Funnily enough it helps to hear the 3 - 10 year thing. That means we'll get there in the end I guess.

Are you in Oz OP?

I also think, being brutally honest, I'm perhaps not the most likable person so I'm blaming my inadequacies for my lack of friends

That is frankly silly, OP. It takes me a long time to find someone I click with when I have to start off from scratch and I am absolutely adorable . While some perfectly appalling people have no shortage of friends.

Sorry, no advice but you just have to keep on grinning and bearing it until you meet your type of people.

Not Oz, no.

Heh, Coyo, see, that's exactly the sort of thing a good friend would say, if I had any damn friends!

Ex expat here. What happens when you invite people? How does that go? Are the rest of your family settled and making friends?

Invite 1: People we used to know in a different country. Went okay. Have been invited back. We chug along seeing each other every 3 months or so out of duty.

Invite 2: Invited 4 families we knew from another (different) country (all know each other). All the women turned up late because they'd been out to brunch prior to coming. Think it went well. Haven't heard from anyone since.

Invite 3: No one came.

Invite 4: Very lovely family who invited us first. We had a nice bbq. They are extremely religious. It's just not going to work.

Invite 5: Invited local people we know through school mostly. It was awkward.

Rest of family... ehhhh, dh unhappy too and hates work but sticking it out for the sake of the long term goal. Kids happy enough. Not as happy as they were in our last place. They'll be okay. If we told them we were leaving tomorrow they would whoop and holler with joy. They miss their friends.

It's a really good place and people jump through hoops to live here. We ought to be having a lovely time.

Where was the last place? Could you just go back there? Were YOU happier there? We know the kids were....

Why did you choose this place as the one to settle in, when you clealry had roots elsewhere, or at least the children did?

Have you tried meet up? It's a website for meeting friends with similar interests (nothing to do with dating or anything) so you can look for meet ups in your area for people who like walking or theatre or cookery and eating out etc. When I worked as a relocation consultant I used to recommend it to people who'd just moved to the country I was living in with great success. Also on facebook there are lots of groups like "expats in Paris" or "expats in Madrid" where you can meet other expats in your area. Good luck - I know how hard expat life can be at first. Whenever we moved to a new area I used to host a barbecue and invite everyone in the road plus school parents and loads used to turn up - everyone likes free food and drink! www.meetup.com/

No one is the most likeable person. Certainly not me! It takes forever to make old friends. If you'd asked me even four years ago I would have said the same as you. But now I do feel 'home' here. It's taken a decade.

Keep slogging with the hobbies and PTA and all that stuff. And seek out the other weirdos. I found my people in the school playground. All the ones who didn't fit. We're all friends now, largely thanks to me finding one loner and us finding another.

One year in was spectacularly shit for me. As in I was looking up jobs for DH and telling him to apply.
Things will happen, things will settle.
Are you in a "traditional" expat place? I think it's easier when everyone is transient, because everyone knows what it's like to know no-one (and possibly one a few words of the language), and, ime, everyone will just pitch in and embrace you. Places where people have lived for donkeys, with great aunt Mabel down the road, and their furthest relation having move, shock, to the other side of town, don't need you in the way you need them, and are slower to embrace and bring you into their inner circle.
And btw, its not that nowhere is home, its everywhere that is home

X-posted. Why aren't you in the last lance then?

I do understand. I did the expat thing with dh. But not as a kid. We lived in several different countries. Then came back to the U.K. in an area I’m not from. Dh isn’t from U.K. I got used to living by forests abroad. I don’t here. I miss living by forests. I don’t feel at home. Dd does as this is all she has ever known. Given the choice, I’d move to a more rural location but that wouldn’t be good for dd. I’m chronically ill so have very few friends. Life for me is all about going through the motions.

*last

I can relate, 7 months into repatriating after being gone about 15 years. Feels like starting from scratch. Have a lunch invite for the 1st time with someone I am starting to make friends with. It has taken 7 months and the 1st social invitiation I feel is from somebody I am starting to call a friend. She is originally from Japan and we are in Australia so I feel attracted to another 'outsider'.

I think at our age (I am 40) people are busy with work, kids, elderly parents and if you are not in an expat community, people don't seem to have time for new friends.

At the school gate I feel other mums have avoided talking to me. My interpretation is women over think, jump 5 steps ahead and don't want to end up having to feel obligated to speak to me a second time or involve me in a social event, so avoid even having the 1st conversation. Dads have been much easier to get along with at the school gate because a casual chat is just that, to be taken at face value.

I started work a few weeks ago. It is making me feel myself again. People talk to me because we are working together.

I am not a huge extrovert but you don't realise how important social interaction is until you don't have any.

I believe this "my friends are scattered" is a typical thing more related with being in your forties and having small children, rather than being abroad and an expat. And even if you stay in the same place where you grew up it might have changed to the point you don't really feel it's home anymore, even though of course the feeling of being "homeless" is of course more difficult if you're in another country.

You're probably just as likeable as anyone else, but you know too few people where you are, so it seems to you perhaps that people are avoiding you, but they're not. What about neighbours? Any nice neighbours around?

We can't go back to the last place. It's a gulf country that was bloody good fun (and home to the kids) but was never a realistic long-term option.

Sandland, namechange, - yep, this is a 'real' place where people have aunties and cousins and old school friends, and barely have time for their own life. They have no idea what it's like to be new. They don't need me in the same way expat communities need new people.

Cats - we don't have roots anywhere.

It took me 10 years, a divorce and being prohibited to take my children back home with me for me to start loving my new country.

Home is where your heart is, if you are really unhappy, move. You don’t need to ruin your life to make it work.

My child, not my children. I only have one.

It’s hard and the older I get the harder it gets. A year isn’t enough for me anymore to settle in.
Hang in there and keep trying !