Trouble making friends
 

Hi there!

I'm currently in Calgary, Canada and I have noticed on the Canadian forum site that a number of BE'rs complain that it is very difficult to make friends with the local population (terms like stand-offish and boring are being bandied-about). So just out of curiosity, do British expats in Aus. have the same problems, or is it just that Canadians are really not that friendly?

Re: Trouble making friends
 

British Expats in Australia make hundreds of fantastic, lifelong friends the moment they land in the country...

Stand offish and boring is a term bandied about here, but its usually applied to the poms...

Hope that helps
Eds

Re: Trouble making friends
 

All us Canadians are a bunch of boring, unfriendly tossers. All 30 million of us.

All Australians are friendly, outgoing and welcoming. As Ed says, the moment you step off the plane you're besties.

Re: Trouble making friends
 

Plenty of comments on the Australian Forum would suggest to you that it is very similar here in Australia.

Can be rather hard to engage here and rather cliquey as well.

Re: Trouble making friends
 

During my 4 years in Canada and my 6 years here I have made some good friends and some people I have met I haven't bothered trying to meet again. This is the same the world over. If I had moved within the UK to a different area I would have found exactly the same thing. People are a weird bunch and making friends is down to individual personalities, not the nationality IMO.

Re: Trouble making friends
 

Mostly beg to differ though of course being human makes as only so much difference.Example moving from France,(where i lived a few years) to Australia,quickly noticed have much discomfort folk felt here when i invaded their personal space.
In France,one tends to shake hands every first meeting of the day and for opposite genders kiss on the cheek.This involves closeness and regarded as strange here.
Of course the Anglo Saxon countries are going to have marked similarities being culturally much the same.
Hence the comments on Canada and Australia appear not to express too dissimilar critique.
An out going personality profits more in a receptive enviroment than in a reserved more inward focusing one i feel.

Re: Trouble making friends
 

Most people have a large circle of friends they've built up over several decades. This is usually achieved through an extended network of social connections with other friends and family.

You can't expect to replace all of this within a couple of short years in a foreign country. You're literally starting from scratch, without the advantage of the extended family and social connections you enjoyed back home. Naturally it will take longer, and people will seem more distant.

I found it easy to make friends in the UK, but only because I already had friends and family there before I arrived. I noticed it was much harder to make friends with people from scratch.

Re: Trouble making friends
 

I think having children really helps - you make friends (or not) with the parents of their friends - you are coerced almost but it can work brilliantly. I have a few very close friends from this method and a few more distant, but certainly more than if I had been part of a couple or single.

Re: Trouble making friends
 

Yep, it makes a huge difference if you have kids.

Re: Trouble making friends
 

Yeah, I found that, at least when my daughter was very young. However, when she moved on to junior high, the old friendships tended to whither away and new friends were made. Being teenagers, they do not want their parents too involved in their social life, so the opportunity to meet the parents of the new kids does not arise as much, and because they not mixing with their old elementary school friends as much, you do tend to lose contact with the people you met through those contacts.

Re: Trouble making friends
 

I have found friendships here to be very situation specific - kids' schools, hobby activities, work etc and not that difficult to establish but not very persistent once the situation changes. I have very few long term friends here even after more than 3 decades - part of this is probably due to the itinerant nature of ACT, people tend to come and go quite a lot.

I dont much encounter the general "friendliness" of the community that I came from where you can have a chat with the person standing next to you in the queue for the supermarket and people rarely look you in the eye and say "good morning" when you walk past them in the street - not even in suburbia.

Re: Trouble making friends
 

To experience friendliness you have to display friendliness inviting behaviour, smile as you approach, people reflect that back to you, say goodmorning first...most people can't help but mumble some greeting in response... As you cross paths more often they learn to expect some kind of interaction with you, that develops and eventually you'll notice more friendly people... You get back what you put in.... Talk to the person in the queue behind you, its REALLLLY hard not to respond

Re: Trouble making friends
 

Learn from the dog whisperer... No look, no talk, no touch makes dogs respond in a certain way... People are the same

Re: Trouble making friends
 

Sounds like an entertaining experiment :lol:

Re: Trouble making friends
 

Like...

"I can't believe the price of lettuce these days!"