As someone who has been an expat in several locations and also divorced, I have found that it's not really due to age but down to where the people around you find themselves in their life and where you find yourself in life. When young people go to college a significant portion of them are in a situation where they would need to seek and develop new friendships. The same happens if you move to a location which has a large expatriate population. It's when you don't have your old friends around and surrounded by people who are in the same situation. That means the people you work or take classes with are also open to making friends with people they work or take classes with. Everyone also live, work and socialise as close to each other as possible, for this purpose. This is in contrast to, say, if you move to a new country or a city where the majority of the people already have established friendships and families where they live and work. These people don't live close to where they work, they live close to where it's convenient for their established friends and family. They don't feel the need to make friends at work. This makes it hard for you, as an outsider, to make friends where most people you deal with don't have that need. This changes again if you have children who go to school and you find yourself with other parents in the same situation. The same when people move when they retire somewhere.
Fellow expat here. This problem had been on my mind for years. Like you said, the main challenge is how to spot the most compatible people in a sea of strangers that are in a similar phase in life.
I built We3 to try to make this easier (and it looks like it's working!). We launched recently and matched around 30k people already.
It's a mobile app where profiles are private. And it connects people in groups of 3, but not only based on interests, but personality, lifestyle, values, etc. It would be awesome if we could connect a bunch of this crowd IRL. What do you think? https://we3.app.link/
Looks like a cool tool, but I just wanted to add that I'm a man with at least 50% female friends, so restricting me to only making friends with men is a shame.
I think we've moved past the whole "not being able to be friends with someone of the same gender" thing (nevermind the fact that people of the same gender can date!). There are probably better ways to tackle people using the app for dating.
>I think we've moved past the whole "not being able to be friends with someone of the same gender"
I think you meant to say "of the opposite gender".
I find it difficult to make friends with people of both genders, but my hobbies and interests seem partitioned strongly to one gender, virtually making the other gender seem alien and extra hard to make friends with. I don't know why that's the case, and it seems to be one of the great questions of our time along with others like what dark matter is. :0 Indeed, some of them seem to FEIGN interest for the purposes of mate seeking, but questioning each and every person's motives would devolve us into some kind of McCarthyist wasteland of jade, toxic cynicism.
One possible solution is to keep gender secret in interaction. Another would be to segregate interactions by gender. We3 chose the latter. I whine at the strangeness and unfashionable nature of humanity, but I can't whine at We3's decision. It seems to keep everything pretty--
>(nevermind the fact that people of the same gender can date!)
> I find it difficult to make friends with people of both genders, but my hobbies and interests seem partitioned strongly to one gender, virtually making the other gender seem alien and extra hard to make friends with.
I don't think the fact that you find it hard to do so should be a reason to restrict your user-base. I see a case for single-gender outings and understand that some people would prefer such outings, but I think co-ed outings could add to the app.
EDIT: Just saw your link on why tribes are single gendered. I didn't really take the creep-factor into account. Maybe a 2 on 2 female/male ratio would help reduce it, best of luck with figuring it out, it's a tough nut to crack!
Yeah, it was a tough call tbh. The thing is that most other apps slide into dating territory because that's where the money is. And it ends up ruining the experience for everyone who's not there to find a mate. Wrote up a longer post on the reasoning here [1]. It's definitely in the roadmap, we're just two guys working on this, so it'll take a bit of time to manage that transition carefully.
I think you guys made a great decision as it definitely sets your app apart. It made it very clear that it's about finding friends, rather than a potential mate.
As another fellow expat, my main issue is trying to make friends with locals or other people that are outside the "expat bubble."
From my experience, those who stay in expat bubble too long become really toxic (both the expats and the locals that hang around them).
I've been learning the local language and have made a lot of progress by just getting involved in specific hobby groups like hiking and birding.
Yeah. Going to be replacing that soon. Thought it would be a good way to kill two birds with one stone: have an explainer video that was also worthy of press coverage. And it kinda worked, but it made some important people distance themselves because of the politics. Thanks for the note.
Is there any reason why this is a mobile only app?
I have a strong preferences not to use apps that are mobile only. And I firmly believe that communicating on mobile has a hard time turning into something more substantial. People nowadays are used to quick status updates while on mobile. Look at the popularity of Snapchat. Why bother writing something when I could just post a picture on Instagram?
It is difficult to make friends when you are over 30, and I think with society stuck on the internet and mobile, it will be even more difficult. At least break free from mobile.
Yeah, totally get what you're saying, but unfortunately people's behavior and perception of the product is different when something is on mobile, especially with an online matching service. Tinder was able to break down the stigma of online dating because they were on mobile only. I'm hoping We3 will be able to break that stigma for friendship matching.
I had the same experience, but also expat, love traveling.
For me making new friends is easy, probably because I am used to it. It is not that hard unless you are desperate.
It is like money, when you don't need it, it way easier to make money than when you need it.
The best way to make friends it to find an indirect way of being in close contact with other people, an help them.
For example I have made incredible friends helping people on drugs. After months or years of pain, when those people get out of drugs they are your friends for all your life, because you were there when very few people were.
I also made lots of friends volunteering teaching(poor) kids 3d printing and engineering in general. When those kids become men or women they surprise you.
From my point of view, you make friends when you don't need to make friends, because you have more important things to do than focusing in yourself.
Also, it's hard but not impossible. I'm in that situation right now, where I work in a new location but most of my colleagues have established lifes here. However there are also a small number of colleagues in similar situations, and also there's some movement going on all the time. So yes, my friendships don't grow as quickly as I'd like, but they grow.
One thing to note though is that one needs to pursue it proactively. Don't be ashamed to ask people to add you to their whatsapp group. Don't be afraid to supply other people with food they like, so they will remember you when they want to relax. And take off some time from your hobbies and work schedule so you can participate in meetups.
>Don't be ashamed to ask people to add you to their whatsapp group
That is rude and looks desperate. If a group actually likes you, then they would invite you first. As a general rule, never invite yourself to anything social. You can invite others to your place or to have dinner, but not to something else somebody already planned
Only if you already have especially likable personality, otherwise you do have to be proactive. For me, if I waiting for people to invite me first I end up with 0 friend. It does seem rude and desperate in the beginning but I have to learn to not think it that way.
I agree. I started developing adult friendships when I decided not to worry about this and start dropping “strong hints” that I was interested in social events that I overheard people discussing.
I tend to appear standoffish and several friends have told me that they initially believed that I disliked them. I have to tell people explicitly that I am interested in spending time with them to overcome this.
It might just be that they don't even think about you as someone who is interesting in interacting. That they basically dont register that you exists. It is not necessary that they hate you.
if you joined their whatsapp group out of self-invite and they begrudgingly obliged, then you will see all their invites and still be self-inviting yourself to their other events unless they personally asked you
I'm way too straight-forward of a person in a sense that I rarely keep anything I'm thinking to myself, to a fault. But that also means I'm not afraid to be rejected and people can always expect honesty from me. Charisma goes along way with people like me, because without it, we're just assholes.
Also an expat here who has lived in multiple locations. I discovered (accidentally) that meetup.com is a great way to make friends in a new place that have a common interest. Try to find a group (or start one) that is about something you're interested in and that meets weekly. Go every week! You'll make friends in no time. I've done this in a number of cities now.
Starting a group is the best strategy to know people. The organizer has some bonus standing. Attending to many meetups of other groups is the second best strategy. I mix them. My focus is on business relationships but I knew many people for sure.
This also works well in reverse, coming from someone who isn't an expat but has many, many expat friends. (living in a city like Berlin helps, of course).
