Has moving to a different country (for work) improved your social skills?

That’s the main message my parents are trying to sell me (others include having “the office experience”), and I’m curious to hear from this community on whether that’s true or not (from their experience). I currently live with my parents, work remotely for a company in Portugal, and am (at this time) scheduled to move there in a couple of months or so.

My personal thoughts is that I do not currently agree. The reason is that

* I can do my job just fine from home – there’s nothing in the role that “requires” me being in the office. Is it really true that just being in the office will improve social skills substantially?
* I don’t know whether I would end up being *more* lonely there (I don’t speak Portuguese for reference). It seems from an internet search that people’s opinions on this are mixed – some report that they have done substantially better while others disagree. I am aware that this is a bit of “it’s up to you”. I haven’t done particularly well in places where there *hasn’t* been a language barrier either – hence my sceptism.

Some other possibly useful information:

* I am known to have significantly below-average social skills (\~ -2 standard deviations), and my parents regularly complain about that. No one else in my immediate family is known to have this problem.
* Outside of work and my family, I do not talk to anyone else in general (barring a few Skype/Facebook messages from time to time)
* I’ve looked this up on the internet – and while there are several *adjacent* posts, I haven’t found one that addresses my exact question.
* Assume that the employer (which is pretty small, < 5 people working at that place) is OK with being remote for this post – I’m trying to justify this for *myself*.

Thanks in advance; personal experience from users relating to this are particularly welcome.