You've been here for months, maybe longer. You have colleagues, acquaintances, people you grab coffee with occasionally. But when Friday evening comes and you're sitting alone in your apartment, scrolling through your phone, you wonder: why does this feel so empty?
You're surrounded by people during the day. You're not isolated in any obvious way. But there's a difference between being alone and feeling lonely. And right now, even in one of Europe's most connected, bike-friendly, English-speaking countries, you feel profoundly alone.
If this sounds familiar, you're not imagining it. And you're far from alone in feeling this way.
The Netherlands: Great for Work, Hard for Friendship
Year after year, the Netherlands ranks among the most difficult countries for expats to make friends. In the InterNations Expat Insider surveys, a study of over 12,000 expats worldwide, the Netherlands consistently lands near the bottom for local friendliness and ease of settling in. In 2023, it ranked 51st out of 53 countries for finding friends. This isn't because Dutch people are unfriendly. It's because Dutch social culture operates differently than what many internationals expect.
Most Dutch people have friend groups that formed in childhood or university. These circles are tight, established, and often not looking for new members. Social lives are scheduled weeks in advance. Spontaneity, the kind where you call someone up and meet for dinner that evening, is rare. This isn't coldness. It's simply how social life is structured here.
Add to this the Dutch directness that can feel like rejection to those unused to it, and you have a perfect recipe for feeling like an outsider. The colleague who says "no, I can't" without explanation isn't being rude by Dutch standards. But it can leave you feeling unwanted.
The Expat Friendship Paradox
Many expats naturally gravitate toward other internationals. There's comfort in shared experience, in meeting people who understand what it's like to navigate a foreign bureaucracy or miss your mother's cooking. Expat communities form quickly, and they can be lifelines in the early months.
But these friendships come with a built-in instability. People leave. Contracts end, partners get jobs elsewhere, visas expire. You invest in a friendship, and then they're gone. After a while, some people stop trying. The prospect of another goodbye becomes too painful to risk another hello.
This creates a painful cycle. You crave connection, but the connections you make are temporary. You want to invest, but investing hurts. So you hold back, and the loneliness deepens.
What Loneliness Does to Us
Loneliness isn't just an uncomfortable feeling. A landmark meta-analysis by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues, published in PLOS Medicine, found that social isolation and loneliness are associated with a 26-32% increased risk of mortality, comparable to well-established risk factors like smoking and obesity. Chronic loneliness is also associated with increased anxiety, depression, and cardiovascular problems.
Research by John Cacioppo, one of the pioneers in loneliness research, showed that loneliness changes how we perceive social interactions, making us more likely to interpret neutral situations negatively, which further isolates us. When you're lonely, your brain becomes hypervigilant to social threat. You start reading rejection into situations where none exists. The colleague who didn't say good morning was probably just distracted, but your lonely brain whispers that they don't like you. This isn't weakness or paranoia. It's how human brains respond to social disconnection.
What Actually Helps
There's no quick fix for loneliness, but there are approaches that tend to work better than others.
First, recognize that quality matters more than quantity. You don't need a wide social circle. Research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships suggests that having even one or two close relationships significantly reduces the negative effects of loneliness. It's the depth of connection, not the number of contacts, that protects against loneliness. Focus on deepening existing connections rather than constantly seeking new ones.
Second, create regularity. Join something that meets repeatedly: a sports club, a language class, a hobby group. Dutch friendships are built over time through consistent contact. The people you see every Thursday eventually become people you know, and knowing becomes friendship. This is slow, and it's supposed to be.
Third, accept the grief. You've lost your social network. That's a real loss, and it deserves acknowledgment. Pretending you should be fine, or comparing yourself to people who seem to adapt effortlessly, only adds shame to an already difficult experience.
Finally, consider that loneliness might be pointing to something worth exploring. Sometimes it's about missing people back home. Sometimes it's about missing a version of yourself. Sometimes it reveals patterns in how you connect, or don't connect, that existed long before you moved. These questions are worth sitting with, perhaps with support.
References
- Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., Baker, M., Harris, T., & Stephenson, D. (2015). Loneliness and social isolation as risk factors for mortality: A meta-analytic review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 227-237.
- Cacioppo, J. T., & Patrick, W. (2008). Loneliness: Human nature and the need for social connection. W. W. Norton & Company.
- InterNations. (2023). Expat Insider 2023: The World Through Expat Eyes. InterNations GmbH.