Last post I talked about what can go wrong in your relationship if and when you decide to take that overseas job. This post I will talk about how people working overseas alone and away from their friends and families can cope with the new environment.
The below is based on my own experience and experience of people I know. When I refer to loneliness, I am talking about the feeling of loneliness of totally normal people, due to moving alone or with family to a new country and culture for work or settle down. This is not about people feeling lonely due to depression, disorders, or any other circumstances.
HOW TO COPE
When I said, “way to cope with”, I did not mean things to do and places to see in that country of city, that is very much depending on the place you are going to, and your character. What I mean is the changes you can make in your life to reduce the anxiety and the feeling of loneliness and at the same time, do not live in the digital world with people back home. It is important for you to keep in touch with family and old friends, but at the same time enjoy your life now in the new country.
1. Get comfortable with you surrounding, don’t be scared or disgusted.
First thing I would recommend you do after you get familiar with your work environment, is to get familiar with your new living environment. Learn simple cultural etiquette, major and serious rules that is different than your home country.
For example, it is polite for a person to have a direct eye to eye contact during conversation. However, in some countries that is not a good thing between opposite genders. Also, it is polite in the western countries to shake hands or even kiss and hug someone when got introduced, in many countries that is a big no for opposite genders or some places even for the same genders. It is normal in some countries to have drink on the street or public places, in some countries this is punishable by law and the result is detention, deportation and lifetime ban from entering the country.
People at work will educate you with all the different legal and social boundaries that is particularly important. Asking your local colleagues about these types of things can even create a nice relationship with them. It is also good idea to learn few words you use every day. If you come one day and great the locals with their own language that make many people happy and feel closer to you.
Getting comfortable with your work and surrounding might take couple of weeks to couple of months depending on the location and your personality. After you are familiar and confident, the next thing is to start exploring, increasing your circle of friends, and creating a routine.
2. Increase your circle.
One thing I noticed most westerners going to different country start making fun of that country, the culture, traditions, or the way local people drive, eat, talk …etc. it is quite easy to see the negative especially when you are always going out with homeys, and they all make fun of the locals.
Instead of making fun, try to understand, each culture is unique, and they do what they do for a reason. By making fun you will limit your circle of friends to an exceedingly small choice of friends, and atmosphere. Eventually, you will live in a bubble and this bubble will get smaller and smaller and you will feel angry, tired, and insult people around you, get so fed up and leave before reaching your goals or get fired and sent home.
3. Create routine.
The routine can be in form of calling home regularly as a routine, and talk to your family and friends, spend some time online to keep up with news from back home. Try to limit the time spent on that type of communication and leave time for you to explore, and not miss the great opportunity to live your life now and learn new cultures and broaden your horizon.
You can find same background people by communicating with your embassy, in many countries the embassies create activities and parties where you can meet others from your same nationality. In addition, try to create friendship with locals or other nationals you meet at workplace, GYM, pub, or neighbors where you live.
4. Use your free time to learn something new.
You might create new hobbies, or practice new sport, which is available locally, join local GYM, and create a personal goal that make you focus. For example, in Saudi, I started leaning golf, focused more on my health, learned cooking, improve my spirituality by participating in church activities (yes church in Saudi), learn about the country’s history and historic sites.
5. Instead of you going home more frequently, bring home to you.
Another thing I learned to be effective is to have your loved ones visit you sometimes, it might be more costly, but it creates some memories together in the new place which you can remember and be point of reference and more subjects to talk about after they return home.
6. Temporary romantic relationship will not help on the long run.
If you are married or in serious relationship, in my experience, having another romantic relationship overseas will only make your life harder. You might feel happier at the beginning, but later it will be too hard to hide facts and you will spend more time trying to remember your lies and it will drain you and, in most cases, end up bad.
I have seen many colleagues and friends get hooked romantically with local girls / men, or with other expats and it is easy to justify and explain to yourself. Many people are away from families and they want to create a small home in the new country, they feel they deserve that.
In most cases these type of relationships are based on temporary needs, or as some people call it “friendship with benefits”. This type of relationships can cause all type of problems and most importantly will divert your focus from your work, goal, and family and that is always not good thing.
Conclusion
For you to have the energy and the focus to live everyday alone for considerable amount of time in a foreign country is not easy. It helps if you keep in touch with your friends and family, create new friends, acquire new knowledge like new languages or hobbies, visit new places, do some activities with new friends.
Also, do not live the life of “work and home” only and spend all your time online or on the phone with old friends or on social media, it will only make you lonelier, self-pity and sad. Have your loved ones visit you to create memories in the new place with them and have things to talk about after they go back.
The most important issue for you not to lose focus, is not to create romantic relationships which will cause you lose focus and cause problems back home which will make you confused, lost, and distracted from work and the goal you went to a new country in the first place.
Need more information about this story? Simply fill out this form to contact me.