The author moved back to Canada after five years of living abroad in the UK.
Courtesy of Maria Polansky
People often talk about the loneliness of moving abroad. It's understandably hard to start your social life from scratch in a new country, where you may also be dealing with cultural differences or language barriers. What we don't think about is that moving back home can be even more difficult. It's something I experienced when I moved back to Canada in 2023, after spending five years in the UK.I anticipated some reverse culture shock, but I thought the hardest part about coming back home would be logistical challenges like finding a new apartment and setting up all my accounts again. The thing I was least worried about — my social life — ended up being the biggest and most disappointing surprise, as I discovered that most of the friendships I thought I'd maintained had essentially dissolved.Distance made me interpret my friendships differentlyI kept in contact with my Canadian friends via social media while I was living in the UK, and I even went out of my way to see them in person on visits back home. There was one day on a trip back home when I had back-to-back meetups with friends that made me feel like distance hadn't drastically affected our relationships. But when I moved back for good, the lack of enthusiasm was telling.Maybe it was because I decided to move to a different city than my hometown of Vancouver, which made re-establishing relationships more challenging. But Victoria, where I live now, is close enough that I can visit Vancouver often, just a 1.5-hour ferry ride away. Still, some people I previously thought of as friends haven't made the effort to reconnect, whether they're in town or I'm visiting Vancouver.Moving back home forced me to reevaluate the nature of my friendshipsIt made me realize many of those friendships were never that deep. I left Vancouver when I was 26, and a lot of the friends I made in my early 20s were just party friends. We enjoyed going out together on weekends, sharing fleeting moments of intimacy and connection sparked by the overall excitement of the night. I've since learned that if a friend can't get that deep with you during the day, or when you're away for a prolonged period of time, they're probably more of an acquaintance.And even though it wasn't the first time I found myself in a new place without much of a social circle, it somehow felt harder. In the UK, I could easily connect with other foreigners over our shared experience of living abroad, and I gained a few close friends with whom I'm still in regular contact. Sometimes, all it took was saying, "How are you finding life here?" to get invited on a coffee date. I can't exactly do that in Canada, so I've really had to go back to the start.
