I realise this is the kind of question that will elicit completely different answers depending on each person personal situation, but anyway, I am curious to hear about other people’s stories.
I have been living in the UK for nearly eight years and I can’t say I have one really close friend who is British, and this is despite being very well integrated here (my partner is English).
I’ve heard endless experiences from other expats that are similar to mine, where most if not all their closest friends are other expats. This could be just a London thing, simply because of the amount of foreigners here. Also I am in my mid fourties, so establishing meaningful relationships is simply harder (no offense, but I am not that interested about hearing how you, a 20 something, has plenty of British friends).
I am not asking how to make friends, thank you, I can figure out that joining a club or volunteering or whatever is a great way. I am mostly curious to hear from others if this is a common experience.
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.
Lol “ neurodivergent”, the latest buzzword.
Neurodivergent: diverging from the average when talking about the diversity of brain wiring. better that people choose their own labels than being labelled by others. I label you neuro-average .
Amazing. Now I can put that label on all my social media profiles. People will think I’m very unique and special. Maybe I’ll add polyamorous and vegan on there aswell for extra clout.