To conclude the theme of friendship, we focus on what we can actually do to make friends in a new country, particularly Sweden. I do not guarantee you friends, but offer some perspective on the process and a strategy to follow.
- Understand that this is hard. Individuals like university students have great conditions for meeting people in regular classes, campus organizations, dorm life. For most of us, it becomes significantly more difficult to create friendships without structural opportunities. We have to work harder. So be gentle with yourself. This feels hard because it is hard. Buckle up; it will be a long ride.
- Take time to consider what you’re really looking for. Here is a more in-depth explanation, but in short, do you “just” want social contacts? Do you need practical help or emotional support? Defining for yourself what your expectations are will help you invest your time and energy more effectively.
- Pick a community. In many locations, including Lund, we have the luxury of choosing between international or Swedish friends or a mixture of both. As usual, there are pros and cons to each. With other internationals, we have a really quick shorthand as people who share the feeling of not belonging anywhere: we don’t fit in at “home” anymore, but we’ll never be from here. That connection is precious and offers us a home away from home… but those relationships often get cut short. Contracts end, homesickness wins, visas run out, study programs finish and poof, my friend is gone. Locals may not relate to that part of our lives, but we have plenty else in common. We are, after all, students, employees, parents, children, athletes, enthusiasts or any number of other shared traits, but… locals usually already have full lives and, depending on how different our cultures are, building a friendship might be exhausting.
- Maintain friendships from “before”. Lucky for us, this is easier now than ever before with video calling and free messaging. These are our people, our ride-or-dies, and we still need them. We should lean on them while we build our new lives. Of course they cannot fill every void, but they can support us until we’re up and running. To that end, we should include them in our new lives to the extent we can. They should know the good and bad, so they can be there for us.
- Pay attention to fringeships. This interesting study coined that term for the types of casual acquaintances we see at every yoga class or all of our child’s basketball games or who happen to ride the bus at the same time as us every day. The people at the fringes of our social lives can become more. I know the advice in Sweden is to just keep your head down and ignore everyone like a native. I scared a neighbor every time I greeted him the first four years I lived across from him, but in the last year, he’s finally stopped looking startled. Despite that kind of experience, research suggests that people who show prosocial behavior and initiate friendliness have bigger social groups. That means smiling at people, complimenting them, asking about the thing they told me last time. People like being seen and chosen.
- Be broccoli. Be intentional about investing in new relationships. The advice I hear most often for foreigners about how to make friends in Sweden (I got it too, by the way) is: Join a club. Bad news, joining a club is not enough. Swedes are still Swedish, even in clubs. They continue to believe that you are self-sufficient and that they would insult or disturb you by addressing you. In short, even in a club, political organization, religious community, etc., we may feel ignored, but what a club or other regular activity provides is repeated exposure. Research shows that picky babies need repeated exposure to new foods, especially vegetables like broccoli, before they accept them – up to 15 times! Think of yourself as broccoli. New people need to be exposed to you several times before you start to feel familiar and be trusted. Studies suggest that to upgrade an acquaintance to a casual friend, it takes up to 50 hours of time spent together. That’s a lot of broccoli. Be broccoli.
- Make a plan is another common bit of advice on how to make friends with Swedes, but it happens to work with everyone, regardless of background, and be backed up by research. A shared experience is more relationally powerful than purely verbal interaction. Swedes themselves will tell you they’re not great at meeting up “for no reason”. They need a purpose. This can be fixing a bicycle tire, trying out a new ice cream parlor or walking the dog. One of the most common experiences I hear about is home owners who never meet their neighbors until the annual communal yard clean up day, when everyone works together and suddenly know each other. I have asked people to join me in activities I didn’t need anyone for, just so the Swede would feel a purpose. And while Swedes will rarely offer help, knowing, as they do, that we are all wonderfully self-sufficient, they are often eager to give it when asked. The possibilities are endless. Start small, but start somewhere.
- Keep the calendar in mind. Most individuals, let alone families, are booked up pretty far in advance. That’s true across the board in Sweden. Some people are very flexible and welcome spontaneous invitations, but generally people need a little bit of lead time, even more true for Swedes. A lot of people don’t appreciate that. Some of us value spontaneity as a mark of friendship, so I would like to stress that this has nothing to do with us outsiders. It’s just how many of them handle expending social energy and we can respect that. So don’t take it personally if someone answers you yes, but in two weeks. It’s still a yes. Take the win.
- Don’t create debt. In some cultures, sharing is so natural, we don’t think about it. The people here who react stiffly when we share food we’ve prepared, offer to pay for a coffee or confide some personal information don’t want to feel obligated to reciprocate; they like to feel that they are in a friendship because they want to be, not because two people owe each other anything, be that a coffee or a secret. It takes time to get to sharing level. Having said that, I don’t mean to make a hard rule out of this. I have had some very deep conversations with Swedish friends after meeting only a few times, but I read the situation as being ready for it and usually, I was right. There is no magic way to achieve this, but really paying attention to the other person will help us recognize the moment.
- Escalate exposure. Continuing that thought and returning to broccoli, the first exposure to it might be looking at it, smelling it, touching it. At the second exposure the broccoli might go into the baby’s mouth, but they spit it right back out. Third time, they take a tiny bite and refuse more and so on. When we jump straight to inviting over for a home-cooked meal with no projects, games or other agenda, we’re jumping straight to steamed broccoli with lemon juice and skipping all the other versions of broccoli where we hide it in cheese or puree it in soup. Escalating self-disclosure is another researched-backed model which works with everybody and particularly well with Swedes. At that first fika we might only talk about the weather and what brands of outerwear rank best. It would probably be awkward to bring up IVF treatments. (I don’t say that to be callous; it’s a real life example.) Yes, at the beginning of a new friendship, the conversations can feel superficial and impersonal. We might not know what to talk about. Escalating self-disclosure is the idea that we don’t begin with intimate topics; we grow into them. That’s why paying attention to the other person’s temperature, metaphorically, matters. We need to gauge if they’re ready for more depth.
- Two ears, one mouth. I learned from a preschool teacher that our anatomy means we can listen twice as much as we talk. When we really listen to another person, we can both judge their attitude toward the relationship and find something interesting to ask them about. Humans love talking about ourselves. Give others a chance to, within the parameters of the comfort level you’ve judged them to be on. This is now purely anecdotal evidence, but in my experience, most people are afraid to ask questions about someone else and rather fill the silence talking about themselves. It will take some trial and error, but I’ve seen good results from being curious about the other person.
- Friends for a reason, friends for a season and friends for life is advice I heard the psychologist Angela Duckworth speak about. I find it very valuable to remember that not everyone I meet will become a friend for life and that’s ok. If we take the term “friend” to be a bit flexible, then we have the freedom to have “friends” who serve a certain purpose, “friends” who populate our lives for a time and then don’t anymore and still make real friends who don’t need air quotes.
Hang in there, gang. Making friends in new places is possible. Good luck with yours.
No responses yet