Thanks but I'll sit this one out!

If you are a serial expat one thing that you may need to consider is friendship fatigue. Hardly anything has been written about this – I don’t even know if this is the right term to use. I only know that it is an apt one. As a veteran of many expat postings, sometimes the continual need to make friends, establish relationships and create social networks becomes too much. It just feels like it is all too much of an effort. No where did this hit home to me more recently than when talking to a woman that I met during our current posting.

I talk to her perhaps once or twice day at school when I am doing the school run. We hang around in the car park together waiting for the bell to ring; two of our children are in the same classes. Say we speak for five minutes a day, twice a day: about eight conversations a week and I have been here for eight months. Say around 250 conversations to date. We chat on the phone once or twice a week and our children get together once or twice a month for sleepovers or play-dates. So a fairly regular contact has been established beyond initial cordiality.

If I were in a country associating with expats, we would probably consider each other as friends, perhaps even good friends. As expats we would approach the relationship in a different manner, if we have clicked on a basic personal level, then the details don’t matter so much. The fact that I am not sure whether her sister is younger or older, that I didn’t attend her wedding, that I have known her for a short period of time, is simply not as important. What is important is that, on some very basic level, we clicked. I liked her sense of humour, her approach to life, the way she dealt with her children, even the way her eyes twinkled and the way she laughed. There was something worth retaining – a connection.

I thought we had a friendship going on that we could take further and then she said to me “Actually, I hardly know you at all”.

I felt like I had been smacked in the face!

The thing is, as an expat I don’t have the luxury of time that she, as a local, does. To her I can be only a passing acquaintance, until I stand beside her over the years, until I do the time. The friends that she gathers around her will be around her all of her life, they will come to her children’s weddings and they will celebrate the birth of her grandchildren. I don’t have this luxury. I will leave this posting in two years. I will take some friends with me from this posting, in my heart and some will stay part of my life forever – by email, by letter and by phone. But I may not always be there in person.

The thing is I can’t wait for friends. I need them now. I can’t jump through long time periods of emotional testing to see if I am the sort of person worth of being a friend. You will either like me or not and, in the scheme of things, does it really matter if I can’t remember your sister’s name, or you know if I even have a sister? What is relevant is whether you like my approach to life, whether you can share a meal with me, laugh with me and spend time together.

I still see this woman but now I feel a bit wary. I understand the difference that we have towards friendships and I can appreciate that we are approaching the same issue from totally different perspectives but the thing is I need friends now.

And yesterday another woman from the school came over to me and, in a terribly friendly manner with her hand on my shoulder, said “I just thought I’d let you know that I am not being rude or anything, but I don’t want my children to associate with your children because I understand you will be leaving here in two years time. I don’t want my children to become close to your children because they will only be upset when you leave.”

God help me!

Two years to go… I think I’ll sit this one out.