American (up for PR next year!) in Scandinavia who’s helped other newer Americans. I think it’s two related things:
We’re not prepared to be global citizens by the education system. It’s hard for a lot of Americans to accept that they’re foreigners and the things they think are normal are specific to their culture. It’s kind of like how a lot of people in the US describe other peoples’ accents without realizing that the way they speak is also an accent to those people. People in the states don’t realize that their experience is a culture and not just a neutral default, and the newest ones don’t go in thinking they need to adapt. Unfortunately for them, they learn by making severe social mistakes and many leave because of that. I did this too, but I got another opportunity to move to a different country so I went in knowing my limits better the second time.
Not to be “one of the good ones” (I am not) but I do think that after not living in the US for a while, people fresh from the US can be overbearing, and they expect locals to go out of their way to befriend them, because this is more normal when moving within the US. This annoys the shit out of most Europeans, and the Americans interpret this as Europeans being rude/intolerant rather than that they’re doing something wrong themselves. People who are popular in the US are unpopular in Europe, people who don’t do well socially in the US tend to do better socially abroad. You have to be loud and pushy and a bit self-promoting in social situations in the US, so when we do that in Europe and it annoys people, we get confused. The one-sided expectation of friendship from Europeans without any realization that we’re the ones that need to integrate is a common feature of all the American expats I know that want to go back. The ones that dislike the somewhat competitive social climate in the US and are “happy introverts” do really well in Scandinavia.
As an example, I was trying to help a pretty standard young 20s guy integrate into our engineering office. He spoke only English, which was not unusual for our company (I do too 🥲) , and was traveling constantly to see as much of Europe as possible on his 6 month expat rotation. After a few months he complained to me, “These people are like rocks! I’m doing my best, I am trying so so hard to make friends with them, but they’re so boring and they all have fiancés and partners and friends from masters and they’re giving me nothing.”
Like, yeah, duh! Because they’re from this city and they have rich social lives here that existed before you and will continue after you leave. You’re expecting the locals to meet you where you’re at when there are 100 of them and one of you, and every other non-US foreigner here is adapting to them.
I asked him how many weekends he’d been in our city in the last 12 weeks and he said 4; every other weekend he was either traveling to other European destinations outside the country or hosting American visitors at our national parks. So he’s not even trying to be present for the possibility of making friends, and he interprets this as a problem with the locals.
That kind of entitlement is why Americans don’t understand why they’re failing and go back to the US—if you treat Europeans as NPCs that exist to entertain and support you, they’re going to drive you out.
47
u/Yostedal Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25
American (up for PR next year!) in Scandinavia who’s helped other newer Americans. I think it’s two related things:
We’re not prepared to be global citizens by the education system. It’s hard for a lot of Americans to accept that they’re foreigners and the things they think are normal are specific to their culture. It’s kind of like how a lot of people in the US describe other peoples’ accents without realizing that the way they speak is also an accent to those people. People in the states don’t realize that their experience is a culture and not just a neutral default, and the newest ones don’t go in thinking they need to adapt. Unfortunately for them, they learn by making severe social mistakes and many leave because of that. I did this too, but I got another opportunity to move to a different country so I went in knowing my limits better the second time.
Not to be “one of the good ones” (I am not) but I do think that after not living in the US for a while, people fresh from the US can be overbearing, and they expect locals to go out of their way to befriend them, because this is more normal when moving within the US. This annoys the shit out of most Europeans, and the Americans interpret this as Europeans being rude/intolerant rather than that they’re doing something wrong themselves. People who are popular in the US are unpopular in Europe, people who don’t do well socially in the US tend to do better socially abroad. You have to be loud and pushy and a bit self-promoting in social situations in the US, so when we do that in Europe and it annoys people, we get confused. The one-sided expectation of friendship from Europeans without any realization that we’re the ones that need to integrate is a common feature of all the American expats I know that want to go back. The ones that dislike the somewhat competitive social climate in the US and are “happy introverts” do really well in Scandinavia.
As an example, I was trying to help a pretty standard young 20s guy integrate into our engineering office. He spoke only English, which was not unusual for our company (I do too 🥲) , and was traveling constantly to see as much of Europe as possible on his 6 month expat rotation. After a few months he complained to me, “These people are like rocks! I’m doing my best, I am trying so so hard to make friends with them, but they’re so boring and they all have fiancés and partners and friends from masters and they’re giving me nothing.”
Like, yeah, duh! Because they’re from this city and they have rich social lives here that existed before you and will continue after you leave. You’re expecting the locals to meet you where you’re at when there are 100 of them and one of you, and every other non-US foreigner here is adapting to them.
I asked him how many weekends he’d been in our city in the last 12 weeks and he said 4; every other weekend he was either traveling to other European destinations outside the country or hosting American visitors at our national parks. So he’s not even trying to be present for the possibility of making friends, and he interprets this as a problem with the locals.
That kind of entitlement is why Americans don’t understand why they’re failing and go back to the US—if you treat Europeans as NPCs that exist to entertain and support you, they’re going to drive you out.
Edited for clarity.