Loneliness when you're abroad

Hello Anabel

can you send me private Message?

Love20 friends is good to have, but if you are a expat and new in a country you may not have friends yet. How do you make new friends?

Yes I was quite lonely when i arrived in 1999 long way back. After 8 months thing changed.

All takes time and networking

i am not..i stay with my faimly,friends and all my world all time

As you get older it's harder to make lasting friendships, as most people have already established the necessary ties to sustain their lives.  It gets more difficult to find people who's lives aren't already full.  Being an expat can make you feel cut off from the world...especially now when contact is instantaneous...if you don't hear from your family & friends daily you start worrying that they're forgetting you.  This can create a sense of loneliness, too.  You have to put yourself out their, with real live people, and hope that something sticks.  The internet is great for killing time and chatting, but there's no real human contact there.  Be brave and go out!  Talk to anyone who seems willing.  Take a risk and it will be alright.

Dadi31 wrote:

Language... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone.
Paul Tillich

Hello Dadi,
Great kudo! ... 

When I feel lonely I come to http://www.Expat-Blog.com to find other people who are alone and who come here to find other expats who are alone ... 

Keepitburnin wrote:

When I used to live in Paris I was always playing online games when i felt alone. i wasted so many hours in front of my screen killing monsters haha. going to pubs is the best way to meet people.

Hi there,

Going to pubs is one way of meeting (alcoholic???) people. 
Paris is a great city and one can meet people with similar interests if he goes to clubs belonging to different lines of work.
If one is in a small town, then he has the option of joining online clubs and associations for his profession, or start one himself. 

Killing monsters in cyber-games online is no guarantee that they will not come back in your bedroom ...   

When I firstly arrived in Dubai now more than 5 years ago, it was so awful at the beginning. The thing I decided was going out and walk, discovering the place, with time I knew there were many nice things ti do and good (and bad) people to meet. I kept doing the activities where I can feel ok and continuously meet others. Went to the movies, did sport with other groups , attended entertainment events, gym, beach, hiking, safari, etc. .. . It depends on you not to let yourself indulge into loneliness.
I wanna add something, all of us feel homesick, this nostalgic feeling can become a motive for us to do anything to make the most while being away from home, just for the sake of not feeling lonely anymore.
For more outdoor activities in dubai-UAE, try this site
Www.meetup.com
And this site for the events along the year
Www.dubaicalendar.com
I hope to see you all happy all the time. 
Khalifa

The first time I moved to Bangalore, I knew it was a great city to step into. That said, I didn't quite know how to integrate. I was at a loss not knowing the local language, Kannada. As the months passed, I picked up the language enough to do my daily tasks in Kannada.
I dance Salsa and Tango, sing at the Karaoke nightclubs in Bangalore, joined the Bangalore Conservatory to pursue an education in music which I had put off for several years. My landlady(she's South Indian) is married to an Italian, helps me hone my Italian.
I met so many interesting people and characters till now that life doesn't seem so boring after all. Where's the time to be lonely?
The best part about it is I love my profession as an aeronautical engineer, working on cutting-edge technology day in, day out.
Loneliness is light years from me now!

weekdays are so mechanical too ……

hi Julien, I live in the hills out of Perth, so when i feel lonely I take a drive to the shops. always manage to see some one i know or just check the net . i try not to expect too much from people i know, been disappointed a few times so just keep it minimal ,,,,self reliance

mark stutley wrote:

.... so just keep it minimal ,,,,self reliance

Hi Mark, 
What you are saying is 'less is more', right? 

ga07 wrote:

weekdays are so mechanical too ……

So this means that with things being mechanical you get no enjoyment out of anything ??
This makes for long boring days. You need to absorb yourself in a hobby or join a club where you can interact with others.

An opportunity came along while i was looking for something to do with the extra time on my hands and now I run a part time business after work:  I get to meet new people, make great friends and make money; all three in one

not really .. staying abroad is an opportunity to meet othe people ..

it is true, as they all say, there is no place like home

Hi. I dont think you can feel lonely. Try to find some friends. There are always nice people waiting to do something nice. Maybe u feel lonely as u miss ur home. Treat the place where u are as ur home and u feel comfortable. Good luck

I have been trying to make friends... but hard when i have not found anyone who speaks English here....easier said than done!...That is why i posted on here!

You are dear,It could be very lonely...you just have to keep your head up till you finally settle down in the new country.Cheers!

Thank God I found this thread! For so long I thought I was the only one feeling this way, and I thought there was something wrong with me. It's quite a relief to see that it's quite normal and that it happens to a lot of other people as well.. --> that is not to say that I'm happy others are unhappy..

I came to UK to study for my master's - during which time I had such a blast because my housemates became my best friends and there were always something happening at the university. I didn't have time to get bored. After a year we all finished and everyone went back to their home country, with only myself staying as I found a job in London. So I was "left" here alone. I dated someone briefly, who introduced me to his friends. But that stopped when we broke up, and those I got to know soon left the country for jobs elsewhere, too.

I befriend people very easily, but as a few people have pointed out, we need "real" ones who we connect with in order to not feel lonely. That's very difficult, I think. Especially when we're no longer teenagers and naive, we've been burnt, we have trust issues, and we can read people - well, more or less. On top of that, at this age, most other people already have their own group of close friends and it's very hard to enter.

London's very cold these days. It rains a lot. And being recently broken hearted with no friends to confide in, no family around... it's disheartening and it's very difficult to not feel lonely. It feels like you have no safe place to go.

I've been told many times that that is because I don't have a boyfriend and such. And I really thought that was it. And it bothered me a lot because that suggested that I needed a man to be completely happy (I'm not a feminist, just saying)

atticcat wrote:

Thank God I found this thread! For so long I thought I was the only one feeling this way, and I thought there was something wrong with me. It's quite a relief to see that it's quite normal and that it happens to a lot of other people as well.. --> that is not to say that I'm happy others are unhappy..

I came to UK to study for my master's - during which time I had such a blast because my housemates became my best friends and there were always something happening at the university. I didn't have time to get bored. After a year we all finished and everyone went back to their home country, with only myself staying as I found a job in London. So I was "left" here alone. I dated someone briefly, who introduced me to his friends. But that stopped when we broke up, and those I got to know soon left the country for jobs elsewhere, too.

I befriend people very easily, but as a few people have pointed out, we need "real" ones who we connect with in order to not feel lonely. That's very difficult, I think. Especially when we're no longer teenagers and naive, we've been burnt, we have trust issues, and we can read people - well, more or less. On top of that, at this age, most other people already have their own group of close friends and it's very hard to enter.

London's very cold these days. It rains a lot. And being recently broken hearted with no friends to confide in, no family around... it's disheartening and it's very difficult to not feel lonely. It feels like you have no safe place to go.

I've been told many times that that is because I don't have a boyfriend and such. And I really thought that was it. And it bothered me a lot because that suggested that I needed a man to be completely happy (I'm not a feminist, just saying)

Hello atticcat,

1). People (what kind are they?) have no trust because first and foremost they do not trust themselves.
Fools do not trust when they see something they do not like, and they trust when they come across something of no value.  This is how lives are wastefully spent.
Do not worry about people's trust; worry about you, whether you can grow and change or not.

2). Ohhh, yes, everybody cries on my shoulder how they have been burnt as if I don't have enough crying in my life to need their cries, but I have not met anybody yet who complained how he / she burnt other people ...

3). Fog and cold in London, and you depressed?  That's YOUR fault.  You should be in London only 2 weeks / year when the weather is too nice for you to stay indoors.

4). No, you need no man for YOU to be happy.  Find something useful to do so you can make other people happy and then happiness will return to you.
Happiness never goes to everybody automatically unless the person is locked in an asylum ...
When YOU make people happy, happiness will start thinking about coming to you ... 

Loneliness is a matter of real life. But has a solution ,if you go overseas for work then involve deeply in your work,there you get friends. and after your working timimngs ,if you live alone dont go outside for taking your food from resturants,better you make your food for yourself,and get involved within your daily activity. and forget your loneliness. Whenever you remind your family over your country,talking with them and becomes free . thus you gradually forget your loneliness

Man, by nature is a gregarious creature, and craves interaction with others.
This is very hard to do when you are alone in another country where no one speaks your language.

I my many overseas assignments over 40+ years I have struck the same thing so I do the following.

Immerse myself in my work
Interact with my work colleagues
Learn the language
Get out and about after work
Socialize with work colleagues. 

Has worked for me and have made long term friends in different countries whom I keep in touch with.

Never

Moh'd Sam wrote:

Never

Could you please elaborate this one word post with a little more information and input on the subject matter.

when i feel lonely i like to watch movies, listening to music...net surfing...going fr a walk....But i dnt knw im always accompained by my Allah........

Answer is simple. Go register your self at dating direct -problem solve

Get few date in a week.

yup sometimes but loneliness is no more bothering me because i blv that better to be alone rather than being surrounded by erong peoples...so i love my selfie time........

yes thats true.really boring when you outside your country.

hina khan wrote:

yup sometimes but loneliness is no more bothering me because i blv that better to be alone rather than being surrounded by erong peoples...so i love my selfie time........

Loneliness because of avoiding wrong people is double trouble.  The wrong people won and can walk freely now that you are out of traffic.
Why not look for the good people? 

yes, really lonely especially if you don't have special someone here....but you can adjust as long as your good friends are around.....

Sometimes I am so lonely that I have to send e-mails to myself and then 30 seconds later when I check to see if I have any news, I wonder how fast messages travel through the Internet when the network is not bottlenecked ... 

I joined a Meetup group, you can find them on the Internet.

I  immerse myself in self development and finding other means of earning money part time

Thats why i will always following my husband when he moved. Because i love him so much, and i have no idea how to let him lonely and living alone. Sometimes that the biggest problem being expat. As we knew, not only loneliness, but also sex, and psychologic matters can't be solved when live separately. I'd ever tried before, when he was moved to japan, thats so hard, he was give up after three days. No one to talk with, stress, high pressure, and the worst thing is feel ignored..

Hi everybody,

well I have to admit it, yes sometime it not easy especially on week days evening and sunday
i am living in Jakarta now since few months, and i have seen mainly all my friends going back to their country
I also stay alone here. In fact i learn little by little to live isolated (different culture, habits, langguage, references ...)
today to compensate that situation (job and family stress, lonely feeling, lake of freindship and combine with this raining season make me depressed)  i try to do a lot of sport to volontary point my mind in another direction, but, it is not enought ....
i plan now to travel 1 time per month in indo or abroad ....i expect to have in the next few weeks a more colorfull life and hope to be able to redevelop my network soon 

Lou

i felt really lonely when i first moved to DK. I remember it was quiet sad, because i only had contact with the people at work and that's just not the same as having friends. Took me a while to get settled here and learned that i am not as outgoing as i used to think. Getting to know people in another country can be much more difficult than in your own. But i think reflecting on that and just taking a little more time to get comfortable in the new surrounding helped me a lot!

What should i say

when you are lonely abroad i think best option is to read alot of books and go to church activities if you are religious