Expat Friendships: Making Connections When You're Far From Home

The Quiet Struggle Nobody Warns You About

You have done the hard part. You have navigated the visa paperwork, shipped your life across borders, and found somewhere to live. You have set up a bank account, registered with a GP, and figured out that "you alright?" is a greeting, not a genuine enquiry about your wellbeing. But when Saturday evening arrives and you are sitting alone in your flat, the distance between you and everyone you love feels immeasurable.

Moving abroad is one of the most exhilarating and isolating things a person can do. The excitement of a new country carries you for the first few weeks, but once the novelty fades, the social reality sets in. Your closest friends are in a different time zone. Your family celebrations happen on a video call. And the people around you, however pleasant, are strangers.

You are far from alone in feeling this way. Cigna Healthcare's 2025 International Health Study found that 48% of globally mobile workers say they lack companionship, against 40% of people living in their home country. More strikingly, only 43% of UK-based expats rated their overall wellbeing positively, against a 57% global average. There is a telling disconnect between how expats describe their move — 78% still called it a success — and how they actually feel day to day.

Why British Social Culture Catches Expats Off Guard

If you have moved to the UK from a culture where friendships form quickly — where people invite you for dinner after a second meeting, where warmth is expressed openly — British social norms can feel like running into an invisible wall.

The truth is that British people are not unfriendly. They are reserved. And there is a meaningful difference between the two. Friendships in the UK tend to develop slowly, built on shared experiences over months rather than intense early bonding. Inviting someone to your home is considered quite an intimate gesture here, one that often comes much later in a friendship than it might in Southern Europe, Latin America, or many parts of Asia and Africa.

This cultural gap creates real confusion for expats. You might have a lovely chat with a colleague, assume you are becoming friends, and then feel bewildered when weeks pass without any social invitation. You are not being rejected. You are simply encountering a different pace of relationship building.

There are other nuances worth understanding. British humour is often dry, sarcastic, and heavy on self-deprecation — if someone takes the mickey out of you, it is usually a sign of affection rather than hostility. Conversation topics like religion, politics, income, and deeply personal matters are generally avoided until you know someone well. And the phrase "we should do this again sometime" does not always carry the commitment it might in other cultures. Learning to read these signals takes time, and giving yourself that time is not a failure — it is adaptation.

The Expat Loneliness Cycle

Loneliness among expats follows a fairly predictable pattern. The World Health Organisation's Commission on Social Connection, reporting in June 2025, found that loneliness affects one in six people worldwide and is linked to more than 871,000 deaths a year.

The cycle typically looks like this: you arrive full of optimism, spend the first few weeks exploring, then hit a wall around month two or three when the novelty wears off and the absence of close relationships becomes acute. You start comparing your social life here to the one you left behind. You retreat into phone calls with friends back home, which are comforting but can paradoxically make you feel more isolated from your current surroundings.

This is the critical moment. The temptation is to withdraw — to tell yourself you will make an effort next month, to stick to expat forums and online communities rather than engaging with the world outside your door. But as we explored in our piece on building a social life from scratch, the antidote to isolation is consistent, small steps — even when they feel uncomfortable.

What Actually Works: Practical Strategies for Expat Friendships

Find Your Third Places

The concept of the "third place" — somewhere that is neither home nor work where you can be part of a community — is especially important for expats. In Devon and Exeter, this might be a regular coffee shop, a community centre, a pub quiz, or a farmers' market you visit weekly.

The key is consistency. Sociologists have long held that three conditions are needed for close friendships to form: proximity, repeated and unplanned interactions, and a setting where people can let their guard down — a point the sociologist Rebecca G. Adams has made about why so many people meet their closest friends at university. You create all three by becoming a regular somewhere.

Lean Into Local Community Groups

Devon has a surprisingly diverse international community. Exeter is home to the Italian Cultural Association Exeter, the Polish British Community Group Exeter, the Nigerian Community in Exeter (NCIE), and others besides — several of which run mainly through Facebook rather than a fixed venue, so that is where to look for them. The International English Café at St Leonard's Church meets on Sunday afternoons in term time, offering a space where people can practise English with native speakers and other internationals.

These groups serve a dual purpose. They give you a connection to people who understand the specific challenges of expat life, and they introduce you to the broader local community. Many cultural associations run events that are open to everyone, creating natural opportunities for cross-cultural friendships.

Try Structured Social Events

One of the biggest barriers for expats is the unstructured nature of British socialising. When friendships develop slowly and invitations come infrequently, weeks can pass without meaningful social contact. This is where structured social events — dinner clubs, supper clubs, activity groups — become invaluable.

Structured events remove the two biggest obstacles expats face: the need to initiate and the uncertainty of social norms. When you book a seat at a dinner, you do not need to navigate the complexities of British invitation culture. You simply show up, and the social framework is already in place.

Build a Mixed Social Network

One mistake expats commonly make is socialising exclusively with other expats from their home country. While these friendships are valuable — nobody understands your specific experience quite like someone who shares it — they can also create a bubble that slows your integration into local life.

The healthiest approach is a mixed network: some friends from home or your home culture, some fellow expats from other countries, and some British friends. Each group meets different needs. Your compatriots provide cultural comfort and shared references. International friends understand the universal challenges of expat life. And local friends help you feel genuinely rooted in your new community.

The Language Factor

Even if you speak English fluently, language can be a surprisingly persistent barrier to deep friendship. Humour, wordplay, cultural references, and the subtle emotional register of conversation all operate differently in a second language. You might find yourself exhausted after social events in a way that goes beyond introversion — the cognitive effort of operating in another language is genuinely draining.

This is normal and it improves with time. But it is worth being honest with yourself about it. If you find yourself declining social invitations because you are tired, consider whether language fatigue is playing a role. If it is, mix your social activities between English-language settings and spaces where you can relax into your mother tongue.

For those whose English is still developing, language exchange meetups offer a brilliant two-for-one: you improve your English while meeting people in a structured, low-pressure environment. The University of Exeter Language Centre runs a free Languages Café every Wednesday in term time that is open to members of the public as well as students and staff, and the Exeter Spanish Conversation Group on Meetup has over 400 members and meets on Tuesday evenings.

Maintaining Friendships Across Borders

One of the most painful aspects of expat life is the slow drift of friendships back home. Time zones make spontaneous calls difficult. Shared daily context disappears. You stop understanding the references, and they stop asking about your new life because they cannot quite picture it.

This drift is not inevitable, but preventing it requires intentional effort. As we discuss in our article on how to support friends going through tough times, maintaining relationships through difficult periods depends on consistency rather than grand gestures.

Set up regular calls rather than waiting for the "right moment" — a fortnightly video chat with your best friend, a voice note tradition with your family group. Be honest about your experience, including the hard parts. And crucially, plan visits. Nothing reinforces a long-distance friendship like actually spending time together, whether that means flying home or inviting friends to visit you in Devon.

The Identity Question

Living abroad changes you in ways that can complicate friendships on both sides. You develop new perspectives, new habits, new references. When you visit home, you might feel like you no longer quite fit. When you are in the UK, you might feel you do not quite belong either. This sense of being between two worlds is one of the most commonly reported expat experiences.

Rather than seeing this as a problem, try to recognise it as an expansion. You are not losing your identity — you are adding to it. The friends you make in the UK will know a version of you that your friends back home never will, and vice versa. Both versions are real.

If you are struggling with this in-between feeling, our article on building a support network, not just a social circle explores how to create connections that sustain you through periods of uncertainty and transition.

Devon as an Expat Destination

Devon might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of expat communities, but it has more to offer than you might expect. Exeter is a university city: the University of Exeter's 29,700 students come from 150 countries and its 7,360 staff from 100, which creates a more international atmosphere than many towns of its size. The food scene is diverse and growing. And the county's natural beauty — the coastline, Dartmoor, the rolling countryside — provides a quality of life that many expats find genuinely restorative.

The challenge in Devon, as in many parts of rural and semi-rural England, is that social infrastructure can be thinner than in major cities. There are fewer international meetup groups, fewer cultural events, fewer spaces designed for people who are new. This makes it even more important to seek out structured social opportunities and to be proactive about building your network.

The Timeline Nobody Tells You About

Research from the University of Kansas suggests it takes roughly 50 hours of shared leisure time to move from acquaintance to casual friend, around 90 hours to become proper friends, and more than 200 hours before someone counts as a close friend. For expats, these hours accumulate more slowly because you are simultaneously navigating cultural differences, language barriers, and the emotional weight of being far from home.

So give yourself a realistic timeline — one measured in seasons rather than weeks. However long it takes, it is not a reflection of your likability or your social skills. It is simply the arithmetic of building relationships across cultural lines.

In the meantime, be kind to yourself. Acknowledge that what you are doing is genuinely difficult. Celebrate the small wins — a coffee with a new acquaintance, an invitation to a colleague's barbecue, a conversation with a neighbour that goes beyond pleasantries. These moments accumulate, and one day you will realise that this place has started to feel like home.

You Belong Here

England's Community Life Survey tracks both how much people take part in social activities and how strongly they feel they belong to their neighbourhood, and the two tend to move together — regardless of where anyone was born. Your nationality does not determine your capacity to belong. What matters is showing up, staying open, and giving relationships the time they need to grow.

You moved across the world for a reason. You have already proven you are brave enough to start over. Now it is about being patient enough to let the connections follow.

Your people are out there. Some of them moved here from the other side of the world too. Some of them have lived here all their lives and are quietly hoping someone new will walk into their local and say hello. You just have not found each other yet.