What Family and Friends Back Home Often Misunderstand About the First Years Abroad
Living abroad can create this strange disconnect where the people back home think you’ve fully adjusted long before you actually feel that way yourself.
After a while, family and friends start assuming you’ve adjusted. You sound more comfortable abroad and your routines seem established. You’re functioning in another language, building relationships, posting photos from places that look exciting and beautiful.
From their perspective, you’ve settled into your new life. Meanwhile, you may still be mentally rehearsing phone calls before making them.
I think this is one of the reasons the first years abroad can feel so emotionally confusing. The outside and inside of the experience often stop matching long before anyone realizes it.
In the beginning, people usually expect you to struggle a bit. If you’ve just moved abroad and feel overwhelmed, emotional, or disoriented, nobody finds that surprising. You’re adjusting to a new country, a new system, a new culture, and sometimes a new language all at once.
At that stage, people tend to check in more. They expect stories about culture shock, confusion, homesickness, and administrative chaos. There’s an understanding that you’re still finding your footing.
But somewhere along the way, the assumptions begin changing.
Usually around the 6-12 month mark, your life abroad starts looking more stable from the outside. You’ve figured public transportation and you know which grocery stores you like. You probably have routines by then, favorite places, maybe even friendships and social plans. Your photos no longer look like “new expat survival mode”. Your life starts appearing relatively “normal” again. And that’s often the point where people back home begin assuming you’re fully settled.
Sometimes they even romanticize your life abroad a little. From their perspective, you’re living this exciting international life. They see photos of dinners in beautiful places, weekend trips, another language slowly appearing in your vocabulary on social media posts. You sound more comfortable talking about your daily life abroad. You’ve survived the move and seem functional. Adapted.
Meanwhile, what’s actually happening internally can feel very different.
I remember a moment in France during my first year abroad, when I went into a crowded pharmacy to ask about some medicine for my sore throat and cough (one of the many “-itises” that I picked up during my first year abroad). By that point, I was functioning fairly well day-to-day. I could manage basic conversations, navigate the city, and handle most routine interactions without major problems.
From the outside, I probably looked like I’d completely adjusted.
But halfway through speaking with the pharmacist, I lost track of what she was saying because she spoke faster than my brain could translate. Immediately, I could feel my body tense up. I became hyperaware of the line forming behind me, the people waiting, the pressure of responding quickly enough, and the embarrassment of having to ask her to repeat herself again. The conversation itself was an ordinary one, but I walked out feeling emotionally exhausted afterward.
I think moments like that are part of what people often misunderstand about the first years abroad. By that stage, many expats and immigrants no longer look visibly overwhelmed. But internally, ordinary situations may still require enormous mental and emotional effort underneath the surface.
What makes this phase even more complicated is that, sometimes, expats help reinforce the misunderstanding themselves. I remember conversations with friends and family back home where people would say things like:
“Your French must be fluent by now”
"You’ve really settled in there”
"You have the most amazing life”
And most of the time, I didn’t correct them. Partly because I didn’t want to worry them. The people who love and care about you want reassurance that you’re okay. They want to believe the move worked out and that you’re building a good life abroad. And in many ways, I was…but there was another layer to it.
Admitting that things still felt difficult sometimes also meant confronting my own fears about what the struggle meant. When you’ve invested enormous amounts of time, energy, money, and emotional risk into building a life abroad, it can feel surprisingly vulnerable to admit that you still don’t fully feel comfortable there yet — especially to the people back home. Because somewhere underneath it all is the fear that saying “This is harder than I expected” might sound dangerously close to admitting “Maybe I made the wrong decision”.
So instead, many expats learn how to present a version of adaptation that feels easier for everyone (including themselves) to believe in. You let people think you’re fully fluent because, technically, you speak the language now. You let them assume you’ve completely adapted because correcting the perception feels emotionally complicated. Part of you wants it to be true already, too.
I think this creates a sort of loneliness that many expats struggle to put into words.
From the outside, people think you’re thriving. Meanwhile, internally, you may still be navigating moments that feel unexpectedly difficult. Maybe you still rehearse phone calls before making them, or feel drained after social interactions in another language. You may still spend enormous energy trying to interpret humor, tone, cultural expectations, or subtle social dynamics that used to feel automatic back home.
Over time, people simply stop seeing how much effort daily life still requires. And once people stop seeing the struggle, they often assume you’ve fully adjusted.
I remember another moment in my early years abroad when someone back home proudly introduced me to one of their friends by saying “Oh, she’s basically French now”.
I laughed because I understood what they meant. From their perspective, I’d built a life in France. I spoke the language, had relationships there, understood the culture more deeply than when I first arrived. My life abroad no longer looked temporary.
But internally, I still had moments where I felt completely American. Moments where I still felt slightly outside of things, socially-speaking. Moments where I still struggled to express myself exactly the way I wanted to in French. And moments where existing between cultures all day long still felt mentally tiring.
None of those things were visible from the outside. I think this misunderstanding affects those of us living abroad more than we sometimes realize. Because when everyone around you assumes you’ve fully adjusted, it becomes much easier to question yourself when you still don’t completely feel that way internally. You start wondering:
“Why am I still struggling with this?”
“Shouldn’t this feel easier by now?”
“Why do I still feel slightly out of sync?”
Especially when, from the outside, your life already appears stable.
Your external life abroad may simply be progressing faster than your internal sense of familiarity, belonging, confidence, and emotional ease can fully catch up with. And that process usually takes more time and unfolds much more slowly than people expect. Deeper integration isn’t just about learning how a country functions. It’s also about rebuilding a sense of self inside an entirely new environment. It’s about learning how to exist naturally in another language, learning how to feel emotionally safe in situations that once felt unfamiliar, and learning how to stop monitoring yourself all the time.
That kind of adjustment tends to happen through repetition, through hundreds of ordinary moments that slowly stop feeling so challenging and requiring so much effort.
At some point, you realize certain things that once felt exhausting no longer need the same level of mental preparation. A phone call that would’ve triggered anxiety in the past, starts feeling relatively manageable. You spend time with people and notice you’re actually present in the conversation instead of being self-cautious the entire time. Little by little, situations that once felt emotionally draining begin feeling more natural.
Individually, those moments may not seem particularly significant. But over time, they begin changing how life abroad actually feels internally. The country slowly becomes less like a place you are constantly trying to adapt to, and more like a place where you can simply exist.
If you’re somewhere in the middle of that process right now, still feeling more uncertain internally than your life appears externally, you’re far from alone.
Most people living abroad are not moving through this experience as effortlessly as they appear to be from the outside. They’re simply learning, day by day, how to build familiarity inside a life that once felt completely foreign.
And one day, often when you least expect it, you may suddenly realize something surprisingly comforting:
You’re no longer trying so hard to feel at home there. You just do.
———
Living abroad often looks much more settled from the outside than it actually feels internally, especially during those first years when you’re still learning how to exist naturally inside a completely different environment.
A lot of what I write about comes from trying to put words to those less visible parts of the experience: the emotional, psychological, and identity shifts that many expats and immigrants go through, but don’t always know how to explain.
If this resonates with you, you can follow along on Facebook & Instagram, where I share daily reflections on the emotional realities of life abroad and the process of building a life between cultures.
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No matter where you currently find yourself in your journey abroad, I hope this reminded you that adjustment is often far less linear — and far less visible — than people assume.
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