19 Expat Friendships
One of the greatest benefits of being an expat is the set of opportunities to begin a totally new life, complete with new possessions, new routines, new job - and new friends. (Another huge benefit, a bicultural worldview, comes later). Old projects, old routines, old possessions, and old relationships must be abandoned when we start a new life as an expat. A word of warning: If you become an expat, beware of the hazard known as the “foreign ghetto”, a phenomenon where a group of foreigners choose to eat, live, shop, work, talk, seek entertainment, and generally spend all their time together. By all means, you want to blend some of the comfortable parts of your old life into your new life, and that comfort can come from being around people with a similar background, language, and experiences. But beware of that insidious foreign ghetto. You cannot explore and adopt the best of your new life if you spend all your time surrounded by only expats.
As you find close friends among the local residents or from the local expat community, remember the saying by Jim Rohn, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Choose your closest companions carefully. Invariably, they draw you into their orbits of behaviors, attitudes, and expectations. This does not always mean the people you consider your role models, Jim Rohn said “the five people you spend the most time with”.
As an expat, you must choose your new friends carefully indeed, lest you begin a slow and comfortable downward spiral in performance and self-image. Visualize playing basketball against a bunch of bumbling, fumbling first-graders. Not much of a contest. Visualize doing it repeatedly. Instead of developing your basketball skills and strength, you would decline because of the lack of any challengers.
I recall a dryly bitter comment by an expat teacher many years ago. “We’re all misfits or missionaries.” My friend Tom was definitely far from the missionary end of the spectrum. While his “all” label is debatable, there is no question that an expat typically finds the number of people available to be close friends will be considerably smaller than the large numbers of acquaintances he had in his old life.
So, how are we to find suitable, uplifting companions? One happy solution is to develop a local network of fellow expats with largely similar experiences and outlooks. Currently, my own group of expat friends meets weekly for our Friday luncheons of Western food, accompanied by acidic observations about local conditions, fashions, customs, caustic anecdotes about the skills of local drivers, and recalling old movies and music from our past days of glory. We call these weekly outbursts of companionship and nostalgia “burgers and bitching”. Roughly categorized as outcasts, unemployables, misfits, reprobates, and English teachers, we democratically accept new members regardless of national background, assets, past experiences, or health issues. Not every expat should expect to be so lucky as me. Finding your Rohn 5 circle of friends depends on many factors, including pure luck.
Now the good news. In modern times, when an expat is searching for friends, the pool of candidates also includes the billions of people available online. Assuming that you have internet access, you can assemble your circle of five Rohn companions to include digital friends. With the internet universe open to you, it is possible to find others with the same interests, foibles, and worldview as you – no matter how weird you are. Remember though, that Jim Rohn said the greatest influences will be the five people you spend the most time with. A few minutes interacting with a person online will not have the same impact on your behaviors as someone you spend several hours with. Find people on your own level or, if they will accept you, people on a slightly higher level than you. It is best to search for friends on your level, not mentors or role models or some form of hero.
But this matter of online companions raises yet another issue: Will the quality of such friendships be the same as face-to-face relationships? From personal experience, I believe this is so but only when the cumulative amount of time spent together is great enough to truly know and feel comfortable with someone. I asked Marc Reclau, a German who has been a successful expat author for many years. His response (digitally) was, “I don't know if online relationships are as powerful as the good old personal relationships from the good old days. Probably not. But I prefer an uplifting online relationship to a toxic personal relationship. I had a couple of online masterminds and they lifted every single member of the group up. And I did a lot of online coaching that worked. Still, nothing substitutes personal offline relationships.”
Regardless of where you stand on this online vs. face-to-face issue, it is good to have online friends as an option. Jim Rohn was right, we do become like the people we surround ourselves with. And Marc Reclau was right also. A toxic personal relationship is to be avoided at all costs.