Being Single as an Expat: Opportunity or Challenge to Find Love Abroad?
184. Being Single as an Expat: Opportunity or Challenge to Find Love Abroad?
You are a single expat and you are struggling to meet someone to build with.
Or your job forces you to change countries every three or four years and you have to rebuild your social circle each time, which makes it even more difficult to meet someone.
You are in an expat country that makes meeting people more difficult, such as Dubai where dating apps are banned.
You are a single female expat and you notice that certain countries are more difficult for finding someone, like Singapore, where male expats are looking for more exotic profiles.
This episode aims to address the specific difficulties of being single as an expat. Having lived as an expat myself for several years and having accompanied many expats among the 600 people I have followed, I observe very specific patterns both in the obstacles to meeting people and in the wounds that push people to expatriate.
If you want more episodes on being single and meeting people, I have episode 99 on long-term singlehood, and episode 109 which explains why you think it is hard to meet someone.
The challenges of being single as an expat
Here are the main challenges I have noticed in my expat coachees:
- Changing location every three or four years, which forces you to find your bearings and rebuild a social circle, making rebuilding your life the priority over meeting someone. This can also create problems for building a relationship if you meet a local person who has their life in place and you have to change countries or return to your home country — or even if you meet another expat living on the other side of the world from you.
- The expat community which focuses more on professional expansion and tends to look for fun rather than commitment to a relationship. And depending on when you start your expat life, you may feel this disconnect.
- Certain expat countries can make meeting people more difficult. As Amel Talk says in her video Dating in Dubai, dating apps in Dubai have been accessible only via VPN for the past year. In Singapore, if you are a female expat, you may feel invisible as male expats tend to look for more exotic profiles, as Femme Expat mentions in her article.
The big advantage of expat life
❤️ Watch my webinar on how to finally be happy in love!
Not everything is bleak about expat life and being single. For a start, people who expatriate are looking for professional and personal growth, and this can be a great opportunity if you are looking for people with these values. Expat life forces you out of your comfort zone and to meet new people, which in turn contributes to potentially meeting your future partner. Something you would certainly not do if you stayed in your hometown with your childhood friends.Is expat life for me? A question of priorities
Meeting someone also requires time, having enough energy to create opportunities for meeting people — and in expat life, this can be a real challenge.
To evaluate whether your expat life is a barrier to meeting people, you can ask yourself the following questions:
- Am I able to meet enough new people?
- Am I meeting enough people who are looking for a stable relationship?
- Does my work leave me with enough time, energy and stability to encourage meeting people? In episode 75 I talk about the four barriers to meeting people and in particular the impact of a demanding job.
The wounds linked to expat life
There is no coincidence in choosing to expatriate. Having lived as an expat myself and having accompanied quite a few expats, there are two types of patterns that come up a lot in expats:
- Patterns related to one’s place in relationships (“I have no place in my family, I have to prove my place, I am unwanted”… and all the variations). This path can unconsciously lead you to distance yourself from your loved ones and your family because you feel less attached, less like you belong to the tribe, or you feel the need to prove your worth to them by succeeding through expat life.
- The abuse pattern. (I talk about it more in episode 164.) If you have experienced a great deal of disrespect of your limits and needs in your childhood, you may feel the need to take a “safety distance” from your loved ones, and geographical distance is the safest way to achieve this without having to justify yourself. It will also explain why you will be attracted to demanding roles with long hours, lots of stress and responsibility that lead to burnout (I talk about burnout in episode 79). To these patterns are added of course the other love patterns specific to your personal history: your childhood, your previous relationships… To go further, watch my webinar “how to free yourself from the love patterns you learned from the past to finally be happy in love?”.
For you
FREE Webinar "HOW TO FREE OURSELVES FROM THE PATTERNS THAT PREVENT US FROM BEING HAPPY IN LOVE?"
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Something new to try: the LovExpat app for expats
LovExpat is an app specially designed for expats that allows you to meet people with the same constraints. Worth trying (unpaid recommendation)!
Pour aller plus loin
Si tu as envie d’approfondir le sujet et d’identifier tes propres schémas amoureux, tu as mon livre S’ouvrir à l’amour disponible dans toutes les librairies.
Je t’y présente un outil pour apprendre à ressentir tes limites dans l’engagement social et ce que tu peux faire quand tu sens que c’est trop avec l’exercice de la bulle.
S'ouvrir à l'Amour
Le livre qui va te permettre d'identifier tes schémas amoureux et te permettre d'apprendre les clefs pour construire une relation saine
Going further
And if you would like to work on your love patterns and transform your love life, you have the programme Opening Up to Love.
Sandy Kaufmann
is a somatic therapist and coach, based in Switzerland. She is the author of two books published by Editions Eyrolles and has accompanied more than 600 people. She is the creator of the Somatic Deprogramming method and hosts the podcast “S’ouvrir a l’amour“, ranked in the French top 50 in the relationships category.
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