I'm really glad you responded. It helps me understand Jamie a bit more as sometimes I can get a bit impatient as I DON"T need friends. But this makes me remember when I lived in the UK for 5 years and I often felt isolated and homesick - a sense of longing for something that I couldn't find. Coming home, I'm lucky - for example, today I went surfing with Dad and saw a few crew out in the water I knew, had a chat, fed my need for connection. Jamie'll be at work, bored to tears with the other teachers he's been working with for 20 years.
Thing is I try to make him go to do group things eg, join the run club, join the men's shed, start a repair shop, etc, but he doesn't want to or thinks he won't meet people. That kind of fatalism makes me throw my hands in the air. But as you say, our grandparents did exactly that kind of thing out of necessity. It IS a tough problem, I get it. I feel really bad sometimes that it was me that brought him to Australia and I'm the reason he stays. I know if I died he'd be on the next plane outa here. I wonder if he'd immediately find friends there either - it does seem to be a global problem. I dont know.