I lived in London for a while a decade ago, in my 20s, and even then I found it difficult to make actual friends. My only “real” friend was someone I had known before I moved there. I had a handful of superficial acquaintances but it was like pulling teeth to arrange hangouts with them. I was told this is totally par for the course in London.

So, never lived in London, but I grew up in England and now live in Scotland and I have found it easier in some ways being neurodivergent in the UK when it comes to making friends, because that tends to supercede cultural communication styles (not always, but certainly much more often), which makes it easier to open up more quickly which, in turn, leads to closer relationships developing.

Obviously this is very much NOT a thing in British culture (generally speaking), as we like to keep things close to the vest and we tend to look down on things like oversharing/directness, in general. So I have found that I have struggled more here when trying to communicate neurotypically to people than I have when just speaking naturally to me (neurodivergently), and “uncovering” other ND Brits that way.

I have been in the UK for almost 6 years (I’m 34) and 2023 was the year I really started making friends . I would say I’m friendly with lots of people but only have 2ish close friends. I am from the States and none of my friends are expats, which I am fine with.

I have a small business along side my day job so that has put me in spaces to meet lots of different people. I am not too bothered about having really close friends but understand why it’s important. I feel like even if I’m not super close with lots of people, the casual friendships are still meaningful in their own way.

I’ve been very fortunate to have been adopted by a group of locals AND have found a handful of other one-off friends by aggressively joining hobby groups and trying to identify people who seem fun and interesting. Many are English, but some are not. I’ve found that people who have lived abroad previously are particularly welcoming, as are ND folks and people who are sort of quirky in general. I’ve only been here a couple of years, so I haven’t made the equivalent of my super-special-bestest-friends-from-childhood, but I’m really happy with my social circle right now.

London isn’t the UK …culturally it operates as a city state but happens to also be the capital. it’s absolutely not representative of the UK more generally. So if you live in London, your experiences are about living in London, not the UK - which, these days, is effectively a different country

I relate to you. I live in Australia 🌏🦘 Early 40F. Here it is even hard to make friends with other expats because the distances are ridiculous large. Can’t wait to hear your experience and advice.

It’s the eternal expat / immigrant conundrum.

What your experience isn’t unique to London or the UK.

Especially when you edge closer to your later 20s and the likelihood of people settling down and having families increases, they aren’t going to be as motivated to socialise. Meeting and greeting new people no longer becomes their priority.

At 40+, it’s bound to be a challenge so i definitely wouldn’t be too hard on yourself.

I think all capital cities have such a high amount of people who moved there that it’s hard to meet any locals. I befriended more locals staying in small places in New Zealand than I did in capital cities like Amsterdam or Bangkok. I did know some locals in both capitals, but I had a much higher amount of expat friends. If you stayed in a smaller place, you’d be more likely to integrate with the locals. I’m 40 and stay in Inverness, North Scotland. I have a few expats as friends and I’ve been told it’s friendlier here compared to larger cities.

Absolutely typical.

Friends of mine moved to Bristol for University, and despite promises of ‘university life’ and so on, managed to finish their degrees, get jobs, move to Brighton, and I’m pretty sure they live in a house made up exclusively of European expats who have essentially not managed to make any great British friends over the course of 6 years of living there.

As an Expat (Specifically, a Brit who moved to their country and made friends with them before they moved to ‘my’ country, I don’t think it’s their fault - personal experience shows me they have no issue making friends with Brits. It’s more that as an expat, you tend to gravitate towards others who have similar lifestyles/experiences, and those tend to be expats.

​

Wherever I’ve lived in the past, my circle has typically been made up of ‘internationals’ - all of us are just foreigners trying to make it in a strange land, and it is comforting being able to instantly click over shared experiences such as how fucking mental visa paperwork is, or how difficult it is to buy (product X) outside of your home country.

I’ve had this same experience in the Netherlands when I lived there, and I’m now having it in Japan. I don’t think this is unique to the UK. I think to an extent it’s just a part of the expat experience. Of course living in a big city makes it worse, whether London or Tokyo - people live far apart, commutes are long, even if you do meet someone you hit it off with at work or at a bar or online, chances are they live 2 hours away from you. And then part of it is just getting older. I’m in my late 30s, and I realize that a lot of people my age aren’t actively looking for friends anymore - they have families, and the friend group they’ve always had, they’re not out looking to socialize and meet new people. So as an expat over 35 in a huge city, everything is kind of stacked against you. Which is to say yeah, I’m having the same experience… I think it’s pretty common. Probably also part of the reason why expats tend to form these expat communities.