Yeah, life moves on while your gone, and the place you had in their lives before you left is filled with other things or people. It’s just the nature of things. It can be painful for sure, but that’s where your relationships in your new home come in. It’s healthy to have relationships with new people–people who didn’t know you when you were someone else in a different place.

You know what they say–you can’t go home again.

I wouldn’t go that far. What I would say is that expats in general have a tendency to build their enclaves that set themselves apart and that can often be if not unfriendly, certainly uncomfortable for local folks to spend time in.

Yeah, I live in Mexico and I don’t really mix with the British expat community here. I understand from friends that the US-American and Polish expat communities here are much the same too.