r/ThirdCultureKids

Do we exiles need to send comfort parcels ? Is it bad on the ground ?

I find reflecting on my life there is a massive payoff that comes from the early development of moving at a young age. My personality has range for insight and general dexterity more than the average person who lived in one country. I tend to not be so tentative about breaking cultural rules and have the freedom to be creative compared to people who settle for 'this is the way things are'. ​​I am more tactile with how I use language when it comes to humor, argument and speech in general since I can see the same ideas express completely differently across languages. Ofcourse my personality formed later than my peers who had the stability of continuity but I think I would have been much less of a person if I didnt go through the immigrant experience - even at the cost of what I could've been if I didn't relocate. ​​

I am a male international student from India, I’ve tried to make friends throughout my college days but everyone just talks a bit and just leaves. Even when I worked back in college none of the people I worked with wanted to be friends or hangout once outside work place. Why is that it is so hard to make friends outside of your ethnicity?

TLDR: I have an Indian passport and grew up in India and the US. But I culturally feel and come across to others (almost) like an American and (almost not at all) like an Indian. Read below for why. Any other TCKs who feel a similar thing, feeling a close connection to one of their places and feeling really foreign/disconnected/incompatible with the other?

I only have an Indian passport and grew up partly in India partly in the US, but I feel much much closer to the US than India. In the US I feel comfortable and at home. I blend in and make friends easily and don't have any trouble really connecting with people. In India, however, even though I speak fluent Hindi, I constantly feel like a foreigner, out of place, and different. It's to the point that I even get along easily with Americans from more obscure parts like Montana and Alabama who have never left the US (the kind of "monocultural" people TCKs often struggle with). In fact, it's to a point where I even feel closer to the people and culture of some countries I've never even visited (like England or Argentina) than I do to other Indians. Hell, if someone random asks me where I'm from I often feel more comfortable saying the US even though neither me nor anyone in my family is a citizen there because that way they will be way less surprised when they hear my accent or American cultural references and slang (like "my way or the highway", "third base", "hail mary" etc).

Not sure why I'm like this. Maybe it is because while in India I went to a school where all the students just spoke English amongst themselves (and rarely if ever Hindi) and were generally really Westernized/Americanized (and many of them were TCKs and ex-US residents too). Maybe it's because I don't consume any Indian pop culture/entertainment while I consume not just globally popular American stuff but also stuff like country and Thanksgiving food (although the NFL is still a bit much for me - though I can understand and follow the action just fine if I do watch). Also my personal values align wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more with American culture than Indian (I'm very individualistic, I despise arranged marriages, I am not at all religious, I love beef, I could go on). Maybe it's because I hate cricket. Maybe it's because I speak English with a totally American accent. Maybe it's because I have way more American friends than Indian ones.

Oh and also for whatever reason all too often when I talk to Indians they notice my accent and sometimes even interrupt me mid-sentence to point it out and then turn the whole conversation into one about the US and my life there and if I'm a foreigner, as if that is the only interesting thing about me. Whereas in the US my Indianness rarely attracts their attention and I feel like they see me way more as one of them (even if they know that I'm Indian) and value me as a whole person instead of reducing me to one small part of my personality. Also I find people in India are also way more nosy (at least with me) and I hate that too. Idk why tf this happens but it does and it annoys me and it probably also makes me feel like I am basically American or at least not Indian. Hell, even when in the States, I rarely mingled with the Indians there and didn't get along that well with them and just stuck to mostly Americans and people from other countries. And given all my family grew up entirely in India, I do feel culturally really distant from them too.

Any other TCK here who feels like I do? Like they belong almost fully to the host country but not at all to the passport country? Because I constantly hear about how TCKs love all their countries and belong everywhere and nowhere at the same time but personally I feel like I basically belong to one place and NOT the other but I don't come across many TCKs feeling that way.

We have been talking this month at TCK Support about how much of what we absorbed about sex, our bodies, and desire came from more than one place at once, and how often those messages didn't agree.

Often the culture we were living in had one set of rules about bodies and affection and the culture our family carried had another. Whatever our home or family's faith added on top could contradict both. A lot of us ended up carrying messages that pulled in completely opposite directions, and no one ever helped us sort them out.

There are a few things that keep coming up:

• Learning one thing about touch and closeness from the world around you, and the opposite at home
• Rules that were different depending on your gender
• The way shame ("something is wrong with me") and guilt ("I did something wrong") can both get wired in when you grow up across more than one system
• Being read by others as one thing (because of your nationality, your race, your gender) while feeling like something else entirely

I'm curious what this was like for other TCKs. Where did you learn what sex and your body were, and did those messages agree with each other?

(Full disclosure: I run a small support community for adult TCKs, and we're actually talking about this on our monthly free call tomorrow, Saturday, if anyone wants to join, link in my profile / happy to share. Mostly I'm genuinely interested in how others experienced this. It's not something we got to talk about much.)

This was my experience, I moved to a country where I didn’t speak the language when I was a pre-teen and consequently had to take a step back in communicating, socialising, making friends easily etc. We stayed in this country for a long time and it took me about a decade to figure out who I was socially, and what my personality was since I wasn’t exploring those things in my native language. Many many years later I still feel like I’m living the result of this (some social anxiety, masking, not socialising as naturally as others seem to)

There must be other people out there who have had similar experiences. Or major life changes during those formative years. I’ve made a lot of progress but still feel like something was lost that I haven’t ever gotten back. How have you overcome this? Have you made peace?

I (32m) came back to my home country (Jamaica) back in 2015 and for the past 10 years it has been the most isolating and lonely experience.

All my old friends have basically scattered across the globe and the ones that are here still have already established friend groups and such so I’m just there some times, dating is vastly different here and in the 10-11 years I’ve been back I’ve had ONE relationship and it was the worst relationship I’ve ever been in.

Culture for dating is god awful and the last time I shot my shot at someone she was surprised that I’m actually straight. This kinda just obliterated whatever confidence I had, the constant rejection and being glossed over just because I act different from the stereotypical Jamaican man.

I hate living here, I hate this country and I hate the people. It feels like I’m in prison.