Expat Life Can Test Friendships Back Home
The more you take the boat out, the better you get to know where your ports are.
Updated January 2020
Living in another country part-time may test your friendships.
One of the outcomes of living in two countries that might surprise you is how much your arrivals and the departures make you reflect upon your relationships. My greatest worry was always that I wouldn’t be there if my friends needed me.
What I came to find, however, was that at this stage their lives, when they’re flirting with retirement or have enough seniority to have more time off, they travel plenty themselves. Much more than I do, in fact. I’m gone one long period, while they tend to travel a few weeks at a time a number of times a year. In this way, both parties get to be equally disappointed by the other’s absences.
Ironically, I’ve come to discover that I’m the one who most likely will need help. Picking up your life to live in another country for extended periods is fraught with potential for mishaps and emergencies; lost passports, home break-ins while you’re away, an item that needs delivering - all kinds of little things that can run aground while you’re out of the country.
Since moving to Mexico part time in 2014, my US friends haven’t been inconvenienced by my back and forth unorthodox lifestyle. But I’m aware of its potential to test friendships, as it has on occasion inconvenienced my Mexican friends, who have they come through with flying colors (and my undying love.)
Maybe testing a friendship isn’t a bad thing.
How well do we really know our friends? I’m convinced that if people manage their lives well and have enough financial resources, they never know who their real friends are. Those with resources can hire or pay their way out of 90% of life’s difficulties. They can always get a hotel room rather than unexpectedly inconvenience a friend when they have a late night fight with a boyfriend or girlfriend. They never have to borrow anything (they can go out and buy it) and rarely need to ask any favors.
I came to this conclusion about the positive aspects of needing people several years before moving to Mexico. At the time unemployed, I had joined the on the board of a suicide-prevention non-profit to network and provide relief from the grind of job hunting. On one particularly golden evening, I attended one of the organization’s charity events, which was held in an area of Denver unfamiliar to me. On the way back, the road seemed flat, but actually rose deceptively.
You probably didn’t know that if you have an older car, even if you keep it washed, an invisible film of oil often develops on the front windshield that simple washing doesn’t remove. As I crested the hill right at the point of sunset, the sunlight hit the windshield and it turned as fluorescent as a pair of ski racing goggles. In the seconds it took to register what the light show meant, I had collided into the back of a huge black pick-up truck.
Fortunately, the other driver didn’t feel a thing, barely a scratch to the truck. My car was another story. Once the police had done their job and the car was towed to a body shop, I started calling around for a ride home, at about 9:30 at night.
Several friends were out of town. After a few calls, I finally reached someone, a friend who was always quick with the small present or the offer to buy dinner. Not having a good feel for exactly where I was, I gave her the address of the body shop where my car had been towed, located in a dark office park in suburbia. In my shock at wrecking my car, it didn’t even occur to me to call Uber or a cab. I’d just totaled my car. I needed a friend.
She was not happy. As a chief financial officer in a demanding job with a long commute, making a drive to an unknown area of Denver at nine-thirty at night ranked pretty low on how she wanted to spend her evening. She bristled with annoyance, making me feel like a 16-year old who’d wrecked the family car, her family car.
I felt terrible. I know that panicky feeling you get as a career professional when you are out too late and start thinking about the exigencies of your job the next morning. I’ve seen people look at their watches and run out of bars mid-sentence. Anyone else but me, I lamented, would have avoided that accident.
After months feeling guilty about calling her that night, I finally realized that my call was a test of friendship, a test of the kind that we do everything we can to avoid. How many times have you moved along in a relationship for years thinking you meant something to someone before a relatively small test taught you otherwise?
I’d known and socialized with this person for almost five years before discovering that I didn’t rank above a perfect night sleep (after all, it wasn’t 2:00 a.m. in the morning).
I wish the friendship had been tested sooner. I learned that it’s hardship and heartbreak that creates bonds, not gifts and lunches. The more in control we are of lives, the harder it is to tell who our friends really are. When things are running swimmingly, with everyone getting what then need without anyone’s help, you really can’t tell.
From going back and forth to Mexico for a number of years now, I’ve come to realize that the further your boat goes out from shore, which it inevitably does when you’re a part-time expat, the more vulnerable you are to unexpected storms. One big benefit of taking your boat out is that you discover quickly and convincingly where the ports are.
Related link:
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About the author:
Hola! My name is Kerry Baker and I am the author of two books "If Only I Had a Place" is a guide for aspiring expats on how to rent luxuriously in Mexico for less. More than a how-to, if offers an infrastructure to the richest expat life. Its listing of concierges are available to view your place for you before you sign the dotted line from a distance.
“The Mexico Solution: Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico” is my third work. It’s a how-to dressed up as a great story. Most recently I co-authored a cookbook, “The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico” for snowbirds, expats, and travelers trying to maintain a healthy diet in Mexico.