📕 Are You Following the Rulebook Too?

Happy Sunday, friends 😎

I recently had another great conversation with borderless psychologist Gabriela Encina where we spoke about connection and loneliness as an expat, and one idea from that conversation lodged itself firmly in my brain. The Expat Rulebook.

You know the one. The invisible checklist that somehow appears the moment you move abroad. Learn the language. Integrate perfectly. Make local friends. Love every second of it. And if you are struggling? Well then, perhaps you are just not doing expat life correctly.

I saw so much of myself in this conversation that I knew I had to share it with you in today’s newsletter. I have a feeling many of you are going to see yourselves in it too.

Next week we move away from the emotional side of expat life and into something a little more practical as we dive into the topic of buying property off plan in Portugal. So if this is something you have been considering, you are going to find immense value in this guest piece by Fresh Properties.

Also, a huge shoutout to those of you who have been sharing your experience with Documentos, the app we built to help organize your paperwork in Portugal and make sure you never miss a renewal again. If you are curious, go check out our shiny new landing page where you can also sign up for a free 7 day trial. We also have another epic feature launching in the app this week, and I cannot wait for those of you already inside the app to start using it. We will share the new release in next week’s newsletter, so stay tuned.

Let’s dive in, shall we?

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I've broken nearly every rule.

Four and a half years in Portugal and I don't have a single local Portuguese friend. I cannot eat bacalhau no matter how hard I try. I am still shy at school drop-off and I still watch the other parents part like the Red Sea when I arrive with Scarlet in the mornings. My Portuguese begins and ends with "my husband is having a medical emergency, he needs help now." And yes, I have spent more than a few stretches of this journey feeling deeply, genuinely unhappy.

By every measure of the expat rulebook, I am failing.

Except nobody ever handed me that rulebook.

Nobody sat me down and read it aloud. And yet within weeks of arriving I knew exactly what was in it. Befriend locals. Learn the language. Integrate fully. Love the culture. Be grateful. Do not complain. And whatever you do, do not admit that you chose this life and sometimes you are not sure it chose you back.

The rules just appear. And we accept them without question.

I recently spoke with expat psychologist Gabriela Encina about loneliness and connection abroad and she put her finger on exactly why this happens. When you move by choice, the choice itself becomes a contract.

You wanted this. You planned for this. You left a whole life behind for this. So when it is hard, when you feel lost or lonely or like you will never quite belong, there is nowhere to put that feeling except inward.

The rulebook becomes the evidence. You are not struggling because this is genuinely difficult. You are struggling because you are not “doing it right”.

That is a cruel thing to carry. And most of us carry it without even noticing.

Gabriela made a point that I have not been able to shake. Trying to force connection and integration before you feel safe and grounded does not speed things up. It backfires.

Because when you are running on exhaustion and loneliness and trying to perform belonging at the same time, every uncomfortable interaction feels loaded. Every locals-only conversation at the school gate feels like rejection. Every failed attempt at Portuguese feels like proof that you do not belong here. And instead of blaming the impossible standard you have been holding yourself to, you blame yourself. Or you blame the country.

I have done both. I have stood at that school gate feeling invisible and made it mean something about Portugal, about Portuguese people, about whether I will ever belong here. When really it just meant I was having a hard week and I did not yet have enough solid ground under me to absorb it.

The rulebook sends you out to perform integration before you have anything to stand on. And when it does not go the way it is supposed to, you end up more closed than when you started.

Permission. That is it. That is the whole answer.

Permission to be in the expat bubble while you find your feet. Permission to have mostly expat friends and not call it a failure. Permission to take years to feel at home instead of months. Permission to hate the food and struggle with the language and still be building something real and beautiful here.

We treat the expat bubble like a consolation prize. Like evidence that you have not tried hard enough. But perhaps some people need familiarity before they can open themselves to an entirely unfamiliar world.

Perhaps your expat coffee group is not holding you back. Perhaps it is the thing keeping you afloat long enough to eventually want more.

Real integration does not happen because you followed the rules. It happens when you finally feel safe enough to stop performing and just show up as yourself. Broken Portuguese and all.

Write down the rules you have been following. Not the ones you chose but the ones that just appeared. The ones you have never questioned but have been measuring yourself against for months or years.

And then ask yourself honestly: whose rulebook is this? And is it actually working for you?

Because you did not sign up for a performance. You signed up for a life. And you are allowed to build it at your own pace, from a place that actually feels like solid ground.

📕

Did this resonate with you? Share it with an expat you know who is trying to follow the invisible code to the point of exhaustion. And reply and let me know which rules you're ditching in favour of integrating at your own pace.

Thank you for reading. I can't wait for this conversation with Gabriela to be live on the podcast. Stay tuned.

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🗣 Do you want to learn European Portuguese in a structured and fun way and become part of our community within Mia Esmeriz Academy? Check out Mia’s free Portuguese course “Kickstart Your Portuguese - The Basics”.

💡 Mia from Mia Esmeriz Academy is a Portuguese teacher from Porto with more than 15 years of experience teaching foreigners. She helps expats become fluent in Portuguese in a clear and practical way. Alongside her courses, she also shares free content on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Thanks for reading! 💌

Hustle on!

Angelique

PS — got an expat friend who's one bureaucratic form away from booking a flight home? Forward this newsletter their way. We're all just trying to figure it out together.