This is the LONELIEST Country in the World

foreign countries consistently rank at the top of the global happiness index and it's not that surprising if we consider their high standards of living excellent Healthcare education a strong social safety net yeah okay all those sound pretty damn great I can't lie but there is a less shiny aspect that is not talked about too often I've now traveled to all the Nordic countries minus the incredibly tiny populated Faroe Islands and I've noted time and time again just how difficult it can be to make friends in the nordics and frankly how lonely you can get if you've just relocated here but there is one country that stands out on this list Sweden when surveyed only 33 percent of foreigners said that they made a close Swedish friend when asked how long it takes to connect with swedes the second most common answer was a year or more with most foreigners stating they have yet to make a friend and it makes sense swedes are notoriously reserved and it can be incredibly hard to crack through that shell but as someone who has spent the last couple of years researching Scandinavia to write the book sex before coffee I knew that even before stepping foot onto the Swedish soil and talking to people that the reasons went way deeper than that and I'm going to go through all of those reasons so stay tuned but first I was curious to know how to swedes feel about their Social Circle I mean do they have a hard time making friends and do they actually feel lonely I went to Stockholm the more reserved capital and Gothenburg it's friendlier counterpart to find out just that do you think Sweden is a difficult place to make friends yes when you started to talk to people they are nice yeah but people tend to like stick to their own good you know yeah how many Swedish friends do you have at the one two two have you had issues finding friends here gotcha it's so hard and I'm I don't know I'm quite extroverted I tend to get on with most people um how would you say in your experience it is making friends in Sweden it's pretty difficult especially the older and that you get at least for me 25 plus it started getting more difficult like finding new friends and stuff I still have my core base of friends it's not not very often that I get new friends or like talk to strangers you have a lot of friends are so friends so it's kind of like cheating almost you know because I also still have them no I think you can definitely make friends in Sweden but I think Swedish people are shy they're a little bit closed up and a lot of people they have their fixed you know the Friendship Circle from college or even before that they don't very often make friends of like oh I met this guy under Subway or like at the gym I'd say you and your friends some of you are hugely hugely different things these are my best friends and I don't think you've ever considered should they not really shouldn't be I love your friends I don't think you've ever considered should they still be my best friends are we still aligned in value that's a good point Hobbies or anything like that but because you've got so much shared history none of you care it's very common in Sweden to me grown adults who are still hanging out with people they were at high school with yeah I've still hangs out with us high school friends do you think people genuinely don't need new friends or they're just nervous and shy around talking to new people totally need friends I think Sweden is the most loneliest country in the some studies showed that it was needy do you personally this is a sad question but do you feel like you feel lonely or do you know a lot of people that are I would say yes in some parts I think yeah that's because of the society how it's built and I think everyone feels lonely sometimes I think maybe we we look happy but I don't think we are happy yeah I'm becoming happier I've struggled a lot with mental health issues in the past yeah yeah Taboo in Sweden to talk about like I kind of feel lonely it's like everybody's Biggest Secrets but everybody has it I don't feel alone at the moment I have to say I think that maybe I'm I'm a bit afraid to feel lonely when I'm older when I look at my parents like they don't have that much um social engagement anymore but they're not they don't feel lonely I think I think they're quite pleased with their situation but I I'm afraid I'm gonna feel a little late I don't have the feeling of being lonely but I would say that I wish that I had more sense of community even with my friends and I'm so happy with them it's still like we are our little Islands or our separate Islands I think that's the individualism that is coming really like into place that it's that you think first about like my schedule and then I will see how if I can fit you in my schedule I think that Sweden has the biggest number in uh in the world centrally in depression but I think it's because we kind of have it too good when it comes to safety and we don't know what your pure happiness is and it's just become a habit of working and swinging around wheel so here it was the first two reasons why Sweden is such a difficult place to make friends Sweden ranks at 71 on its individualism scale here there is a huge importance put on being self-autonomous and independent in the 70s swedes established something called the Swedish model or the Nordic model that helped establish a society where no one had to be forced to be in any relationships because of economic needs children now didn't have to depend on their parents women didn't have to stay with their men and the elderly needed not live with their children what has emerged is the Swedish mindset of be Reliant don't rely on me and I won't rely on you while this is great in theory this Swedish mindset really hinder people's ability to connect with one another which is why the Island's analogy that you just heard has really connected with me personally because it just made so much sense it sounds ridiculous to an outsider but making friends in Sweden and in Scandinavia at large stops in high school which means that if you are 18 years old and you haven't yet made friends in Sweden then you're kind of screwed sweets typically like the comfort of knowing someone for life so even if you change as a person your interests change and you have literally zero in common with Jonas from grade six you still hang out regularly because you have it's the comfortable thing to do and swedes typically like staying in their comfort zone and even once you have your close friends Swedish friendships can look quite different to an outsider like the way we hang out is not so spontaneous it's kind of like everyone is acting as if they have three children at home and have so important lives if it's after work work stops at six no I have four I'm sorry after four we have one time in the world to see your friends to go to dinner to have a drink what do you do with those hours so I don't understand why people just waste them on staying at home and recharging but they do that every day a lot of people sort of keeping themselves to themselves the initial impression of that is that it seems like people are either rude ignorant arrogance and sociable Swedish people like their space yeah when you come to like this park you don't you're not I'm not gonna sit Too Close like no you're in your own group and you don't really see other people that much and if you do it it feels very American when they say like they will meet you but they have to go home early they only get a little Slots of time to hang out with them but you know for birds and just lives you don't have it from when you're little that you're just like casually hang out spontaneously with like a big group of people most people maybe don't do that when they're growing up then it's like a bad cycle because if you don't do it it becomes awkward and if you're awkward you don't want to do it and you get stuck like this I just got back to Stockholm actually I lived in the U.S I think the people in the U.S are way better at making sure that the people that you meet actually become friends like inviting them over do things outside of the activities where you meet them in speaking of space even a capital city like Stockholm has so much of it I got off the Metro in what is considered quite a central part of the city and I found myself in a forest like look behind me guys Center of Stockholm everyone but here are a few other reasons that sweets can be so hard to get to know if you've ever heard about the pizzas versus coconut Theory so these are your typical coconut it can be incredibly frustrating to crack through that shell it can take years in fact to get close to someone but once you're there you will find a friend for life but the process itself is quite frustrating on the contrast Americans are your typical Beach very very soft on the outside while there is a pit in the center of it but it's a whole other video now I really wanted to share the next one with you because I think it's absolutely groundbreaking I cannot take credit for it I didn't come up with it but here it is this is something called negative versus positive politeness Theory now in North America Latin America and quite a lot of parts of the world we practice what is called positive politeness if we see someone who is completely alone at a party we might approach them and say Hey you look like you're not really having fun do you want to join our group or if you see somebody struggling with bags it is just a polite thing to do to say hey do you want some help with that politeness means a reaching out offering support and being friendly and connecting in that way now in Scandinavia politeness signifies something else here it's polite not to inconvenience it's polite not to interfere it's polite to let them be we're very self-aware I would say so we think very much about how we behave towards other people I think that's a big part of it like we're afraid of just letting loose tweets are far less confrontational or if they are it's very much like let's have a very measured car balanced conversation without getting our emotions involved and regulating properly and it's much healthier like it's much more civilized I like it but also it's taken a big adjustment you know I spent the years with this workplace and it's just sort of this very sort of high level trivial compositions going on about you know activities after work but the weekend and then but there's no depth to it the moment you do go there then then there's a kind of receptiveness to it or there's a fear and there's and then there's a moving away but that's totally fine there is a discomfort with confrontation and being forward 100 right like when you notice that someone is stirring the pot people are like you know making faces and you can see them actually physically move away really yeah and like oh you shouldn't be doing that you shouldn't be saying that I see like too loud too emotional right that's like the whole thing oh yeah this is just crazy if you're emotional you're crazy that's the equivalence it depends what type of emotion but if you're just you know if your emotions are outside and you act on every emotion that would be crazy Americans allowed and like Southern Europeans are dramatic and you know British are a bit more quiet but certainly no and at home we're not that's where you can I think be more expressive and certainly passionate about things whatever and again talking over you you're like do you have interrupted me like very very calmly like you you actually just interrupted me Ellie and I'm like oh my God I'm so sorry but like did I we were traveling in in America last summer and that was very like when people were taught like someone would interact with you with a slightly related story and someone would talk about a completely unrelated story and then you like you can't really keep track of the conversation yeah no I don't think I noticed the interruption so much and I found it so funny because we'd get back to our hustle or whatever at night and you'd be like oh my God everyone's interrupting everyone they weren't even interrupting about a related topic let's just talk about something completely different over the top and I was like oh it doesn't get progressively louder when they're talking like everyone at the like one up growing up I think that people are so worried about what people think of them so that's why they start to close up if you show too much of yourself there's too much to judge so if you're acting just like everybody else there's really nothing to judge while in it only nuclear you know parents and grandparents oh what do you care what they think they're stupid and here is like well maybe you know Russian change the type of career change that you wear so our kids don't want you or maybe you should change this or that so like couldn't conform to what the society is doing yeah it's a pretty clear type of person like not too loud not too colorful um [Laughter] screw you all yeah well you know I mean you see in summer that people are dressing but they they didn't do that before how will being perceived is very critical in terms of like social acceptability and just general acceptability you know what that creates is a culture where everyone does on the surface behave well but there's also a lot of suppressed emotions and thought in the UK Australia or New Zealand there is something that is called the tall poppy Center in the Netherlands it's do not or be normal act normal being normal is crazy enough the Scandinavian version of that is yante Lovin or the law of yante which means that don't think that you're more special than anyone else don't think that you're better than anyone else be just like everyone else while most young swedes will argue with me to say that this mentality is now being phased out that people no longer live by the law of yante and I will agree with that definitely things are changing but I find that law of yante still does such a great job of describing the Swedish mentality there are many videos done about the swedes looking through the peephole to see if there's a neighbor waiting for an elevator there are so many jokes made about swedes not wanting to interact with strangers and I find it's hilariously true what might be a nice conversation with a stranger in North America would be deemed incredibly uncomfortable for the swedes it's just not something that they do because there's a fear of losing face of standing out of being a judged of looking like that weird person that decided to talk to a stranger and nobody wants to be that person so knowing all of that I wanted to get the sweets reaction on something that we North Americans live and breathe and that is everyone's loved small talk so this is something really common in Canada I'll go into an elevator with someone and I'll say like oh I I really like your shirt that you're wearing what's your like inner reaction to that I think it's happy yeah the comeback can be quite hard because it has to say something good to the person what about your shirt yeah they are so not used to talk to strangers so then we're like we don't know what to say no I love it I get so happy I I often tell myself that I should do that kind of things but I don't do it so I kind of find it I'm thinking of the Swedish word called like Pleasant sort of it can also feel awkward like especially if I can sense that oh this person just wants to get out of here I know and if I myself feel like oh we're really just talking because we have to talk and it doesn't feel genuine then I can feel uncomfortable and I don't like it I have so many friends and also with myself if you if I go to another country if I live abroad then I will start acting a different way but then when I come back here I will go back to the Norms that is here why I think comfort and the the risk of being perceived more as strange even though I just said it's not strange if I'm sitting next to a stranger here in Sweden it's it's very feels like there's a wall between us and even like on the bus even if I'm like touching someone on the bus we don't have the need to talk to to strangers but when when we do it's perfectly fine we're like everyone else we just don't have those natural Small Talk ignitions or what what you say maybe in a way we're actually better at at making friends because we because we skip a lot of the small talk we often go straight to the Deep stuff which makes you Bond even more with people emotional expression and confrontation is incredibly uncomfortable for the swedes and some might consider it a real no-go a Swedish theologist once wrote that in the 80s in the maternity Wards of Sweden women in labor grown as little as possible when they gave birth and then would nervously ask did I make a lot of noise if they found out they didn't they would feel much better about what is a pretty painful natural process where yelling is kind of a part of a deal and this is of course part of the reason why the swedes love to drink if you go out partying with the sweets it may feel like you've made a whole bunch of new friends so it may be incredibly frustrating to wait for the message The Next Day That Never Comes keep in mind that Suites tend to over promise a lot when they drink so at this point of the video you may be thinking man why did I click on this video all it does is list the reasons why it's so hard to make friends here I'm never gonna make a friend in Sweden so while I cannot tell you if this is true or not I can tell you one thing attitude plays a huge role in life and especially when it comes to connection and Sweden may be a more difficult place to make friends but that does not mean that it is out of the question is the key to living in Sweden and developing a friend network is to get inside of the networks and then be introduced once you're within it right because otherwise it's really difficult to get inside and but once you've been introduced then things get really easy because you're invited to places and then people know you and you're a friend of this person which automatically assumes was safe invite them to something because they are gonna sit and think like oh maybe it's strange if I invite someone so then they will just not invite you but they actually want you to be there so if you want to become friends with them then you have to take the step I think that's a good one or give them alcohol maybe also good yeah same might be dead with you a girl I became kind of super super close friends with in my year abroad we only became good friends because I realized okay you have to get them drunk and then when they're drunk they have to commit to going out and doing skating for the day or whatever it is that they'd never agreed to do with me sober so actually this girl was like you have to come and visit after Christmas like in my hometown up north and I was like she doesn't mean this because she doesn't realize that drug so I was like yeah yeah I'm I can be the obviously she did I made I was like yeah text me now or I'll forget it so she messaged me on Facebook the next morning I replied to it like oh I'd love to come and stay with you and she was like no what have I done but I had to go through with it it should message and then we became best friends and it was lovely and she's wonderful and we're still friends I feel so good it's uncomfortable doing that but I was like it's not gonna happen it's now or never yeah like four and a pass well one thing I've noticed that swedes really responds very very well too is a sort of being genuine being your yourself and what I mean by that is like being a little bit more willing to show your emotions because they can crave that because it's not really socially accepted within their own sort of circles I've been realizing that the more outgoing that I get is also like an effect I realized then so now I kind of start changing my mind like oh maybe people aren't that reserved after all you know maybe yeah they just need the permission to kind of yeah [Applause] when you do get to that point where you are friends with a suite try not to take it personally when they don't invite you to hang out with their other group of friends they also like to compartmentalize their friend groups so there may be a hobby group they may be some other activity group there may be the study group and there may be a work group and all of those are kept separate and this is something just to know when you're trying to make friends and and wondering why am I not invited to something else that Jonas was invited to why did I get excluded out of that and this is why I came to Sweden in June around mid-summer when the weather was at its peak people were enjoying their summer holidays and it was hot guys it was 30 degrees and I'm not even lying that that was the hottest week I experienced in Europe for two months that made it incredibly easy to not only talk to people in the Parks but to approach people because of course I was talking to the summer sweet AIDS and not the winter Suites I later watched a video about another girl going to Sweden and she had so much difficulty talking to Swedish people because she came in the winter now I didn't have that experience I found that approaching in Sweden was the easiest thing in the world I kid you not at some point I was in Stockholm and Gothenburg completely on my own walking around the parks approaching people and asking them to do an interview and 98 of the people said yes this gave you so much confidence I literally felt like I was invincible confidence that later got crushed when I went to Estonia and realized that wasn't really the case in other parts of the world whether the swedes were excited because it was the summer whether they were just eager to connect whether maybe some of them felt lonely and in need of this connection with a stranger I don't know what I know is that people were very receptive and that was such an incredible feeling thank you Sweden now what helped me was understanding the Swedish mindset I would approach in a friendly yet casual manner I would show genuine interest without pushing it and the key here is the phrase overdoing it now keep in mind there's nothing worse to the Swedish mindset than overdoing it whether that's with your energy with dishing out a million and one compliments with asking them way too many questions or in any way just being too too much and they would label that as fake not genuine not real so if you are interested in talking to someone remember to keep your interest casual relaxed don't go too much right away because that's just going to scare someone off and if I were rejected I would not take it personally because I understood the Swedish mindset the rejection didn't say anything about me it was rather about the person that didn't really want to engage and that was fine now of course I didn't live in Sweden so my advice comes from someone who was only there for 10 days now if you're living there the situation is of course going to be different and potentially a lot more frustrating but funny enough for my last interview in Gothenburg I got a little bit nervous to approach this group of guys who were hanging out now you have seen them in this video I was really really nervous about being rejected for some reason but I kind of pushed through it approached them and funny enough we had such a wonderful conversation and they invited me later to join them for a session of Acro yoga in the park which I did and I felt that that was such a wonderful ending to my church to Sweden where instead of fearing rejection and thinking what are they going to think of me Swedish style I just kind of went for it with my genuine interest with wanting to get to know a new group of people and in the end we ended up connecting and I still keep in touch with some of them [Music] [Music] my only advice is don't come in the winter

Channel: Dating Beyond Borders

Views: 298,402

Keywords: living in sweden, making friends sweden, living abroad, moving abroad, living abroad as an american, life in sweden, sweden, moving to sweden, stockholm, hard making friends sweden, expat life, sweden life, living swedish, what is sweden like, stockholm sweden, living in stockholm, swedish culture, why sweden is difficult, swedish mindset, sweden culture, swedes, sweden lonely, dating beyond borders, gothenburg sweden, stockholm sweden vlog, stockholm sweden city tour

Id: 0ojbm24M7uE

Length: 23min 51sec (1431 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2023