Moved to Foreign Countries to run away from NT expectations

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It wasn't until I joined this forum, yesterday, that I realized why I felt a frequent urge to move from one country to another to feel comfortable. When you are in a foreign society, people look at your "different" or "odd" behaviors as something acceptable because you are a "foreigner". They think that everyone in your country probably does it that way so they don't give you much grief about it. In social situations, I could comfortably stay in the margin when people spoke the local dialect that I did not know yet. At dinners/parties, I would day dream instead and just smile and nod and enjoy the good food. My family asked me if I felt lonely. But I never did. There was no need to spend tons of energy reading their social cues, facial expressions, etc... because people would spell it out to me since I was the foreigner. So I moved from country to country and loved it. Recently, I had to move back to the States and it made me feel so sad and alone. Wasn't sure why. I now understand being around NT people that have certain expectations of me is annoying and reminds me all the time how different I feel around them. Being around NTs that do not impose their social expectations on me so much is refreshing. I guess that is why I married someone from a different country, who by the way, turned out to be exactly just like me. (And thus he never dated anyone in his home country, LOL) Now that I have the "wrong planet" I feel I don't have to pack my bags again so soon.

You will definitely feel at home here And I hear what you are saying. I know of a guy that does not have any autism spectrum disorder but has paranoid personality disorder (not schizophrenia) and he moved from the US to India and feels so much at peace there. I may not have the same issue as him (though I do get paranoid often and that can be part of being under the spectrum too) but I can understand why he would feel more at peace living where he is living. You are in a foreign country where you are left alone and people won't be so quick to judge you.

though you may have to deal with staring which is very commonplace in India

hmm...maybe going to Germany (Berlin) for a trip is a good idea....


If I can afford it; lol Euro pwn dollar

Somebody's iris keeps changing colors.

I had the same experience when I moved abroad. Me being different from the majority was expected and accepted, because I was a foreigner. People didn't expect me to understand their culture and customs enough to follow them smoothly and they didn't expect me to understand their language well enough to pick up on subtle messages. They felt it was natural for me to be a bit awkward and different.

Things stopped being as easy after I had lived there for a couple of years. People who knew me started to feel like I had been there for long enough to pick up most of the local customs. That's one of the reasons why I didn't want to live there anymore. People's social expectations of me had become too high.

Yes, the magic wears off after a couple of years when people expect more from you. That is why I kept moving from country to country. My favorite place was Greece. *sight*

Having grown up living in different foriegn countries, it doesn't change things.

thats a great idea! way to go!

ASDMOM,

You've expressed something that I've noted in several other threads. That is, when an Aspie socializes with NT people from cultures other than his (or her) own, they find greater acceptance. Personally, this did not occur to me until after I found out about Asperger's Syndrome, which came after marrying a woman from a foreign country*. For over a decade, we had been attributing any "clash of issues" between us to cross-cultural values. Now we're so used to each other's 'quirks' that our isues are few and far between.

(*She's Asian, I'm Euro-American.)

I haven't moved to different countries specifically to run away from NT expectations.

But I'm British and I've lived for a few months in another European country, because I enjoyed learning French at high school and so when I got a chance to go there for a few months and brush up my language skills and do an internship, I jumped at it.

I'm not one of those Aspies who are averse to changes in routine, I've enjoyed travelling and going on vacation in general, which helps I guess.

I went travelling in the far east and accidentally found a job and settled there for a year and a half, getting engaged to a local (it didn't work out for other reasons).

I've had a couple of relationships back in the UK with people of different ethnicities and cultures.

And now I'm living and working in the Middle East.

I agree it sometimes helps to be living in a foreign country as an Aspie, because it doesn't matter whether or not you conform to societal conventions so much, people are much more forgiving of the mistakes a foreigner makes.

I've come to realise that by accident, because I never set out for it to be like this, just found an added benefit.

I had this experience after living in Asia several years. The social expectations of a different culture do not apply to you when you do not belong to that culture. No one expects you to be perfect or to use the exact right social norms. If you screw it up, they correct you gently and explain to you why you are wrong, and exactly how to do it the right way.

When's the last time someone in your own culture did that for you? Never! They expect you to just magically know.

I liked being a stranger in a strange land. I've never felt part of the world I was born into. Being in a different place was so much better! I loved teaching English to children and I loved going into their homes to learn about them. I'm sure they taught me much more than I ever taught them. The only thing that was ever hard was that the parents would always talk to me in the highest honorific because I was a teacher. I had to always remind them to talk to me like I was a baby so that I could understand them. That was hard for them. They were taught that teachers were the highest persons in society.

After I graduate vet school I want to move to South Africa. I'll start my own practice in the middle of the bush far away from the pressures of an everyday human society.