It is Impossible to Integrate and Make Dutch Friends. Discuss.

I live in Belgium, but I spend a lot of time in The Netherlands as I have friends in there as well, and I never really had trouble being welcomed by people. It is true that Dutch people usually switch to English when talking to foreigners. They enjoy speaking English, which makes things easier for us who speak English better than Dutch, and for those who, like me, are used to Flemish rather than actual Dutch (also, when you move and have yet no grasp of the language, having people gladly speaking a language you know is very helpful and a relieve). It is true that they can be blunt, but I think sometimes it’s best, at least you know where you stand and what they actually want from you. Maybe it’s the people I have met, personally, but I find them quite friendly in general.

I live in a different EU country (for about the same amount of time you have lived in the NL). I have plenty of friends here, and not all of them are from my passport country, but really the local friends I have are friends I made through my husband. And as I speak and understand the local language reasonably well (of course I still make mistakes and my accent seems to get stronger instead of weaker by the year it’s not really a language thing). The locals tend to make their friends very early in life and aren’t particularly interested in opening their social circles. Earlier I tried things like going to the local parent-child center for kiddie activities but I always felt out of place, as the locals all seemed to have known each other from their childhoods. Outside of parenting my hobbies tend to be rather solitary.

I used to find it a bit strange but honestly I feel like I don’t really have the proper time to devote to my friends that I have now anyway. I’m not against the idea of more local friends but it isn’t something that has happened naturally.

I used to spend a lot of time on the expatica forum for expats in the Netherlands. I was always amazed by how much of it was people complaining about how much they hated life amongst the Dutch. Sure, things didn’t always go smooth for me either or my attempts to integrate but I never had the kind of problems or bad feelings that most the people in the forum seemed to have. My experience has been largely positive… or I’m just far to optimistic.

I have seen the complaint of closed social circles quite often, yet I also see (especially with Americans) the amazement that the Dutch friends made while living in the Netherlands tended to stay friends (likely more than expected, but I can’t see all friendships weathering time and distance)

I think you and Stu have the healthiest and most practical approach.
Yes language definitely is an issue, Dutch is notorious for its difficult or even alien pronounciation, but if you’re honest that’s a two-way street. How many Dutch people can actually speak English without the telltale Dutch accent? Very very few.
Even though I consider my English to be pretty good, I’m quite sure a native English speaker will be able to hear or see (while reading) that English is not my first language. So even for me it’ll be challenging at times to say exactly what I mean in English the way I definitely could in Dutch. I do have the advantage though that my friends with a predominantly international background are more or less bilingual too, so our mesh ups tend to defy outside understanding anyways. But that is another issue all together ;-).

Another factor lost to many people foreign to the Netherlands is how stable many childhoods are especially concerning school and classmates and to a lesser degree sportsclubs.

Children tend to to spend years and years with more or less the same classmates, these won’t necessarily all be friends, but I do feel that it sort of creates a certain baseline. A Friendship in the true sense of the word should have more / deeper meaning than merely seeing someone everyday for some length of time. These aren’t friends these are kennissen (people you know, pref on a friendly basis).
I think a lot of expats are getting stuck at this kennis level and indeed lack the effort or perhaps the chemistry and or history to advance to the friend level

My experience may be less on point for some of your readers. You see, I was an expat in the 1960s and 70s. And, of course, I moved there when I was 5. So I didn’t so much ‘learn’ the language as ‘absorb’ it; on a trip back some years ago, I was overjoyed to find that after about 2-3 days it all came back and hardly anyone answered my Dutch with English (one person even asked where I was from (we were having a minor disagreement). I admit that was briefly a puzzler (technically, I’m from Ohio, in the United States, because that’s where I was born, but I gathered he wanted to know where I was from in the Netherlands, so I said: “Den Haag”. He snorted and said “It figures”. I asked him why, and he said “Your accent; you sound like you’re from Den Haag”.

I *sound* like I’m from Den Haag?! OK, true confessions: I pretty much am from Den Haag. I grew up there, or various suburbs of there (we moved a lot) for the majority of my youth (aside from 2 years in the US, I grew up entirely in the Netherlands, in and around Den Haag). So I probably do speak “bekakte Nederlands” (for the uninitiated, bekakte Nederlands is a term which is used to refer to what the UK might call “Received Pronunciation”. It’s not a compliment: the word ‘kak’ refers to feces, as in sh*t; the equivalent US concepts might be a Boston Brahmin accent. It always sounds put on from the outside, but it’s how I normally speak in Dutch). I had *no clue* I had any kind of accent in Dutch, other than an American accent (which I didn’t much want). I let him win, because I was so distracted being happy that I had a Dutch accent in Dutch :-).

I didn’t have any trouble making friends among my Dutch peers. (You’re right that speaking Dutch helped. A lot). And I found their bluntness and straightforward speaking refreshing; I do sometimes wish that Americans were more like that (we’re sort of a cross between that and the reservedness of the UK, nowadays, for all that people in the UK probably find us rude and blunt. We’re usually not as blunt as a Dutchman). But of course, I had the advantage of youth and an ability to absorb the language quickly; my mother tried hard, but never managed to learn much Dutch, alas, although she was able to make friends with our neighbors and a few other folks, I’m sure it was hard without knowing Dutch.

I’m glad it’s apparently getting better after a low point, though. I’m proud of what Dutch heritage I can claim (growing up there must count for something), and I sometimes miss the Netherlands. (Especially the last 4 years; I did wonder from time to time if they might take me back…)