UkWinds5353

I have read on this site how some British have not always had an easy time connecting with Americans in America.Some Brits have said they just feel more comfortable with the British sense of humor or the shared history that is British. I'm curious to know if many of you have experienced not fitting in to the American culture? And do you think this has more to do with being raised in a particular culture and feeling like a fish out of water, and nothing to do with the new place or people?

Ethelred_the_Unready

As someone who has lived here long enough to not attribute being unable to make friends, it is very much a case of being a fish out of water, or a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.

I have narrowed it down to several factors (and note, these aren't meant as criticisms, but observations):

1) Americans seem to tend to socialise less with co-workers outside of work. This could be partly due to the greater distances that people generally commute. There seems to be more of a general reluctance to acquire new friends as many people are content with their existing circles / cliques. Having to work longer hours would also hinder any time to spend with friends.

2) The US is a much more materialistic society, so you stand a greater chance of being judged based on your house, car, physical appearance or how much you earn.

3) Aside from the west coast where many people seem more open to deviations from the norm, many more people here seem to follow the plan, doing X by Y age (graduate high school > go to college > graduate > marry college / high school sweetheart > buy house in suburbs > breed). Any deviations seem to be frowned upon by many people who deem such people who didn't follow the plan as "losers".

4) Americans seem to be more achievement / goal oriented. To a Brit who is also that way, the US would seem better, but not all of us are wired to be competitive. Many Americans also discuss their college days a lot.

5) American humour is very different. I don't think they find our self-deprecating, more dry humour as funny, though some do, hence the popularity of some British comedy shows over here that have a cult following. I only really find the black comedians funny here + the late George Carlin. I miss the banter that British people engage in, not being afraid to take the piss, even out of themselves. That doesn't seem to fly well here.

6) Sports. Any hardcore British football fan may have a hard time here. The MLS has grown and does have a huge following, but it's not quite the same crowd that you'd get at a Wolves or Stoke City Saturday afternoon match. To talk sports, you've really got to be prepared to get into an American sport. I just find the whole sport thing to be very different.

7) Politics. The right-wing here are very alien to me and seem far more nutty and extreme than the average British Tory voter, who I could still have a sensible discussion with, even if we disagreed on many issues. The right wing here seem so brainwashed, loud mouthed, nutty and obsessed with issues such as abortion and same sex marriage.

8) Obsession with physical appearance. Lots of teeth whitening, Botox, breast enhancements, magic pills for weight loss, plastic / cosmetic surgery, general obsession with wanting to not age. It's as if many people want to be "perfect" and never age. I find the whole thing very alien.

9) I do not agree with many attitudes towards the poor, those who are weak in any way, blaming them for their problems to the extreme. We know some people are poor because they ****ed up, but you cannot apply that to all. I am very much at odds with the whole "individualist" "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mindset.

10) A very different attitude towards the role of government.

11) Lastly, I have always been uncomfortable with people's tendencies to pry here by asking about your job, where you went to school and even your salary. As a British person, I find many of the questions to be "off limits".

In summary, I just feel like it's harder to be different here. People are usually nice and polite enough on the surface, they're not as reserved, but there's just something missing, at least for me.

I hope that explains it.

Karrie72

I have lived here for twenty years and for some reason have found it tricky to connect in a sincere way with women friends. I get to a point where we're exchanging personal things and it feels like a friendship but then it all stops and you're just on nodding terms at the supermarket.

I find that friendships here are very focused around your kids and if your child is not on the same soccer team or whatever as your kid then people can't be bothered.

On the up side I've got a small group of ex-pat friends from Europe and we are so on the same wave length. We have kids of all different ages and so are not bound by our kids relationships. Thankfully our conversation doesn't revolve around our kids as it seems to with American women. I get invited to go for a walk and then have a cup tea around the kitchen table which is much more my thing than going to say a Tupperware party or a bunco night which is all the rage in my town.

Ethelred_the_Unready

I've noticed that about many American women too. They talk about their kids a lot and I've read posts and heard from women here who feel ostracised because they don't have children or didn't have them by a certain age. It's the conformism.

HumphreyC

http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Making_Friends_in_America

SEL_boy

>Many Americans also discuss their college days a lot

This is one that (depending on the day) irritates and/or baffles me.

So many people I know or work with seem to base their identity on where they went to college - wearing the sweatshirt well into their thirties and beyond, bringing it up in conversation all the time, banging on about college sports ad nauseam, and so on.

Back home, I have next to no idea where anyone went to college, unless we were friends at the time and I went to visit or something, and it never comes up unless there is a shocking event in the news or the like. And even then it's only of intellectual interest.
I work with several VA Tech grads, and when that awful shooting took place they behaved like they had PTSD. It was tragic, but come on...

Bink

I think this is very true and will add that I think in the UK it's so common to socialize with your colleagues that it is a shock to the system when you come over here.

I'm fortunate in that I have made some really good friends here but I do also agree with a lot of the 'conformist' comments. I made friends through my hobbies (footy) and through my wife but I do have a good job, live in the 'burbs and fit in general to the 'expected life plan'.

I would disagree slightly with Ethelred_the_Unready on the sports but maybe that's because I'm in Houston with a large expat community. There are places here where you can go and watch the footy at the weekend and have a great atmosphere with a mixture of expats and Americans (we're talking in a pub here rather than watching the games live though). I watch almost no MLS but see a great deal of the premiership games on Fox Soccer/ESPN. It is true though that unless you get into American sports you will often find yourself left out of a conversation with nothing to say.

My friends are a mixture of expats and Americans

Bink

It's taken me a while to get my head around this one too. I've married into an Aggie family (Texas A&M) and they are crazy about their football team.
I commented to my wife about it and she said well why aren't we proud of where we went to school?

Thinking about it, is there truly anything wrong with supporting a college football team etc? Is it really any different than supporting a British footy team from where you grew up?

Bob

Probably a lot depends on where you end up and the type of work I guess.

Making friends= acquaintances very easy. Making type of close friend that you'd probably be used to from school/college/work in the UK, less likely.

I thought I'd made some good friends at the last job. When everyone got laid off, pretty much nothing from all of them since. Been out with a couple of folks, till they moved away and comment on a couple of FB statuses with a couple of others, but the rest, pretty much ignored. I have more contact with some folks I did some contract work with one summer in England than these folks.

Bob

No...but it is weird dictating that your kids will go to the same school because everyone else in your family went there, regardless of what they might want to study or where in the country you might live. Also dropping friends because you found they went to a competing college.

It just seems to be taken to a whole new level over here.

Ethelred_the_Unready

Nothing wrong with it at all. It's just one of the cultural differences that I've observed here. Perhaps it's because many Americans forge lifelong friendships and romantic relationships while in college, so those are the day they look back on as the "fun time", so it stands to reason that they would continue to follow their college football team. Sports are also much more of a big deal in American universities. There's a lot of money in college football for example and scholarships are awarded to gifted athletes, which I don't completely agree with or understand.

In Britain, we don't tend to talk about university as much, nor do we place as much value on it for judging a person, unless it's an employer that may of course require a specific degree for a job. Our allegiances tend to lie in the towns and cities where we grew up, we generally grow up supporting our local football teams. Britain isn't anywhere near as geographically large as the US, so we're never more than a few hundred miles from where we grew up, unless we emigrate.

College seems to be much more of a status thing here, or maybe it's the time when Americans let loose before engaging in spending several decades at a corporate job, having the house, wife & 2 kids thing.

I hope that made sense. I would like an American perspective on this too.

Bink

Oh, I agree with you on this.
I think there is more emphasis on it here, but I also think it's become much more important in the UK in the last 10 years or so too.

I do think you're right about it being the time where American's get to 'let loose'. There definitely exists here a go to school, get degree, get a job, get married (frequently at college it seems), have kids cycle that a lot of people fall into and therefore college is the only 'fun' time. I use fun loosely as I personally think being a parent is fun but I'm sure you get my intended point. I think this is less the case in the UK and it's a lot more common for people to be a bit slower moving through these steps in life, perhaps taking a year to go travelling etc which I think gives Brit's more life experience outside of college than the average American gets and it therefore dilutes the experience slightly.

Yorkieabroad

I don't think there is anything wrong with it. Its just different to how we were brought up - I mean, college sports just don't exist on that scale in the UK, do they. What is there - the Boat Race? Anything else? Oh, yeah, Bradford Uni had a cracking netball team in the early 80's...I dated the GA for a while

What I do find odd is the way it dominates. I can remember a 4 or 5 year olds birthday party I took my wee one to - it was a pool party, but the Dad of the birthday girl spent the whole party glued to a barstool at the end of his outdoor kitchen watching the game on his outdoor widescreen while trying to drink himself into a stupor from his Kegerator fridge. Didn't even come over for the cake cos he might have missed something!
Couple of weekends back we were at an (adults only) Halloween party and there was a college game on on TV's in 3 different rooms. Most of the men gravitated to one or other of the screens, most of the women went to the kitchen or the backyard. I cycled through each of the ""viewing rooms" each one as dull as the next - 3 or 4 guys, no-one talking, no banter, no atmosphere - so I ended up on the porch with my wife, the other women and a couple of other "non-supporters". All a bit odd, but most parties we go to here have some sort of TV sport on ... I can't remember that ever happening back in the UK, unless it was a gathering specifically to see a match. If you go to a Superbowl party, you'd kind of expect the game to be on. But a Birthday Party? A Halloween Party? I can remember hating it when pubs started putting TV's in cost it killed the atmosphere. Same thing with parties here. Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old fart.

Yorkieabroad

When we lived in Singapore, in a culture that is significantly different to our home culture, our social circle was pretty much 50/50 locals and non locals (European, American, Scandinavian etc).

Here, where I expected our cultures to be more aligned, our social circle is more like 90% non-local, 10% local. Again, the non-locals aren't necessarily Brits - from all over the world, just not many from here!

Bink

Funnily enough, the Aggie's played on Saturday night, whilst I was at a wedding in town. The wedding venue had a bar with a tv showing the game. Granted, it happened to fall into the drinking time, post ceremony, pre-dinner when photos were being taken but you don't really get that in the UK.