All alone and far from home - Keep Your Life, Family and Career Intact While Living Abroad - page 59

L ONELINESS
“It's easy to meet people in this town, but so hard to make friends.”
An often-thought, sometimes spoken, complaint among people in a foreign land.
Loneliness is the silent plague among expatriate communities around the world. Again, the
problem of “identity inflation” (discussed in Chapter Two) creates an illusion of gaiety and
romance of life overseas. With all the travel, all the money, all the interesting people to
meet...who could have anything to complain about?
People might hint at the problem, but few will admit to actually feeling lonely. Word
spreads fast in a small, gossip-mad expatriate community, and everyone is ever-conscious of
their personal or business reputation. Admitting to loneliness is admitting to failure.
Loneliness affects every level of expatriate society, from powerful, self-confident busi-
ness leaders to the many teachers and backpackers who drift from place to place. These can
be broken down into four main categories: The Lonely Housewife, The Drifter, The Lonely
Working Woman, and The Lonely Working Man. Lonely housewives are looked at in detail
elsewhere in this topic. In this chapter, we will review the other three types.
T HE DRIFTER
“Is it me or is it Singapore?” Rosemary asked.
“All I want is someone to love me and have a family with me. But I seem to always find
the wrong men.”
Rosemary, age 32, has been in Singapore for three years. She left Boston at age 20 and has
been living and working in different parts of the world. She blames the narrow expatriate so-
cial circle for limiting her chances of finding the “right” person. She claims that she always
ends up hanging around with the same old crowd.
Many people in Rosemary's situation blame expatriate society for their social unfulfill-
ment. It's true that most expatriates have a small social circle, often restricted to people of
the same nationality within the same profession. Under such circumstances, the choice of
potential partners for a single person is undeniably limited.
Although the situation may place obstacles in a single person's social life, it is not the
cause of social unfulfillment. Expat society is likely only one contributing factor, as well as
a convenient excuse.