mistakes expats make in the uk

When I first moved to the UK, I wanted to make friends. I was lonely, and I wasn’t someone who could strike up a friendship in the queue at the post office. Going online to connect with fellow expats seemed like an easier place to start. I met lots of wonderful people, but looking back after six years here, I thought I’d made a mistake by focusing only on other foreigners.

Finding people in the same boat

Making friends was difficult enough without moving to another country. I felt that living abroad added another layer, and the loneliness wasn’t something people talked about enough. Other expats understood that. We’d all moved away from home, we were looking for friends, and we had something in common before we’d even met. I found that much easier than trying to join an established group.

A lot of the people I connected with lived in London. I didn’t, so getting to them was inconvenient, but I was lonely enough that I was willing to try. They were lovely people. The problem was making that my only way of finding people.

By the time I looked back on those first years, all the foreign friends I’d made during that period had left the UK. They’d returned to their respective countries, and I was still here. That was one difficulty I hadn’t avoided by finding people who understood the experience of moving abroad.

I also wanted friends who knew life here

I thought there was another drawback to only spending time with other foreigners. A group of Canadians and Americans could understand one another’s experiences of moving, but that didn’t necessarily help us understand what living within British culture meant. I thought it was worth trying to make friends with British people too. I still thought expat friendships were worthwhile; I just didn’t think they should be the only friendships I tried to make.

That could be harder. Someone already living here might not be actively looking for new friends. They might be busy with work, children and family, or have friends from university and a group they’d known for years. Trying to find a place in an established circle was difficult. I wasn’t going to pretend otherwise, especially when making friends was something I still struggled with myself.

I thought about Facebook groups, meetups, sports teams and book clubs as possible ways to meet people. There were also colleagues: having lunch, dinner or a drink together could be a chance to get to know them, and they might introduce me to other people. I found it hard to make spare time for those activities, even though I thought I should.

Accepting an invitation could feel daunting

Part of settling in, for me, was trying not to close myself off to new experiences. At the beginning, everything could feel overwhelming. When I was still trying to find my footing, saying no could seem easier than taking on one more unfamiliar thing. I understood that feeling, but I thought it could make life harder.

A pub invitation from a new colleague was the sort of example I had in mind. It was easy to wonder whether someone was only inviting me to be polite, or whether accepting would make me a bother. I felt that hesitation myself. My view was that, if someone offered to include me, I should give it a try rather than talk myself out of it before I’d gone.

Trying new places, food and experiences was part of getting comfortable with life here. After six years, there were things that had felt strange and overwhelming at the beginning but now felt normal. I’d put time into experiencing them and getting used to them. That didn’t make making friends effortless, but I knew that unfamiliar didn’t have to stay unfamiliar forever.

Keeping Canada in the conversation

I also thought about how often I compared life here with home. About a month after arriving in England, I’d started an administrative job at a college. My colleagues and bosses were curious about Canada and often asked how things worked there. I thought answering those questions was completely fine.

Constantly introducing the comparison myself was different. Moving countries gave me plenty of differences to notice, and sharing them could be exciting, but I thought it could become tiresome if every conversation returned to how we did something back home. I thought giving life here a chance meant trying the way people socialised, without measuring everything against Canada.

I still found friendship difficult, and I hadn’t suddenly become the person making friends in the post office queue. I’d made plenty of mistakes living abroad and expected to make more. My advice came from that experience: keep the expat friendships, try to meet local people too, and give an invitation a chance.

Watch my reflections on mistakes I made settling into UK life.