Expat Loneliness Is Real — And Nobody Wants to Admit It

I live in Singapore — an expat city where meeting people is easy and forming something meaningful is hard.

But honestly, it’s not just Singapore.

I’ve lived in Amsterdam, London, the US, Seoul, Phuket — different cities, same pattern:

On paper, it looks like abundance: InterNations, Meetup groups, running clubs, dating apps, speed-dating events…

And now the new craze in Singapore: Time Left — an app that throws five strangers into a restaurant, promising “connection.”

I remember a guy I met through that app. A regular. Travels between Indonesia and Singapore for business. He proudly told us he’d already been to 33 dinners and “connected with so many people.”

So, I asked the obvious question:

“When you’re in Singapore, do you actually reach out to any of those ‘connections’?”

Awkward silence.

Because deep down, we all know it:

We confuse collecting numbers with forming true connections.

After my divorce abroad, I forced myself to be social again. One year in, I’m in eight WhatsApp groups… and there isn’t a single person I’d call if shit hits the fan. People love the illusion of choice — the illusion of connection — just like Tinder.

Even in my counselling studies, we have a WhatsApp group. We’ve tried meeting three times. Someone flakes every time. We live 30 minutes apart. We’ve never met.

Funny enough, in Seoul and Phuket — places I also lived — it was easier to form deeper friendships. Maybe because those places weren’t drowning in abundance. In Seoul, finding English-speaking women in their 40s was rare.

But here’s something else I’ve started to notice:

Half the people who show up at these dinners or “networking events” aren’t there to connect at all.

They’re there so they can say they’re networking.

They can post that they went for dinner with strangers.

It’s performative connection. A checklist. A way to feel normal in a place where nobody actually knows you.

Most people aren’t lonely enough to connect. Only lonely enough to keep showing up.

And that tells us something.