Husband has job offer in Dubai- I'm not keen

[amhurst]

Just trying to work out which of us is BU? Is he selfish or am I? I'm 5mnths pregnant with little boy of 4 and just don't want to take on everything move wld entail. Don't live in home country but Dubai wld be even further away from elderly parents etc...It's v hard to be the one saying no to new opportunities but nothing about being in the searing heat of Dubai currently appeals..but am I being unreasonable putting the kibosh on this? Any experience similar to this out there? Many thanks!

Not lived in Duai was an expat in another hot, hot country. TBH, your kids are at a good age to go (mine were roughly the same age) and having young kids means you should be able to go to baby groups and hopefully find it easier to make friends. Also you can get help if you hired a maid to do the housework, babysit now and then. Can be a great help when you are new and no family or friends and perhaps a husband who might be away often. The heat can be a pain, especially with young babies/ children. I missed being able to go for long walks in the park and picnics etc. you often have to time shift and many earith till evening to get out and about - evenings are fantastic. Dubai has it's cooler times though when I've heard the weather is just perfect so you have both. Also, could your parents not come to visit?

You really need to know what is being offered and that it covers all your needs. A lot of packages aren't what they used to be. I wasn't keen on Dubai but luckily we had a choice and we went elsewhere. If there hadn't been a choice I might have still tried it.

And yes it can be a big strain on relationships, such a sudden change. Men's egos can get a bit carried away.

Why do I hate these threads? A bit like the hair removal threads(anyone who shaves has a paedophile partner) these threads invariably have google happy suburban activists who have never travelled, never lived abroad and think anyone who lives in Dubai is a slave driving imperialist.
That's why.

I didn't like Dubai much but mainly because of the Brits. However, Africa was worse.

My parents lived in Dubai for about 5 years, and we visited a few times with small dcs. Dubai gets a lot of vitriol on MN, some of it well placed, but my parents move around a lot (I grew up overseas) and it's no worse than plenty of other places and better than plenty more. Malaysia, for example, has a tendency to treat Indonesian and Filipino workers as expendable commodities and is not terribly egalitarian (or at least that was certainly the case in the 90s!).

My biggest concern in your position would be my own career, if you don't want to be a SAHM forever. My mum has never been able to have a career of her own as she has just followed my dad around the world, often unable to work on her dependants visa. She does a lot of shopping and playing mahjong and lying on the beach but, lovely though it sounds, it's not what I would want for my whole life. If you like it and you stay as expats, what happens next?

or theodorakiss, it could be people have different ethical standards to you! just imagine! I have lived in three different countries, travelled extensively and wouldn't even stop to consider UAE or Saudi. Not agreeing with you and placing the desire to live tax free above any other standards does not render one a suburban sofa warrior. Perhaps it indicates a more thorough thought process?
out of interest were you working in Africa & Dubai or along for the ride?

(the magic site cookies are now throwing up lots of Dubai holiday ads for me...)

I cannot believe that someone has come on here and said that Dubai cannot be child friendly because apparently Egypt and Morocco aren't

Do people not feel embarrassed making such ridiculous comments? Arab countries vary hugely, much the way European countries do. So the above comparison is very much like saying "Oh, I've been to Greece and Poland, so I can tell you what the UK is like". Ridiculous.

Also, all the slagging the Dubai regime gets on here, go on an MN thread about Syria and it's full of posts about how wrong the Syrian people were to rise up against the regime, that's it's all a western plot and other such bollocks, including fulsome praise of Assad.

Theodorakiss why do you assume those who don't fancy living in Dubai haven't either visited or lived there? I have a best friend who has lived out there for about 15 years now, I've visited her out there and I just wouldn't like it. Very hemmed in, she has lived the extremely suburban ex-pat life out there, it's limited her own horizons and their whole life is dependent on her husband's work visa- which if they lose that (e.g. through illness, redundancy, and the recession has affected some of the large companies out there)- they would have to leave the country within a month.

The pluses are- it is very child-friendly (Hissy, Egypt is not the same), great facilities for children out there, good lifestyle, heat not unpleasant all year round, plenty of other women also similarly positioned, more likely to have staff than in the UK and so on.

But I don't think everyone is speaking from ignorance, plenty on this thread have lived there and still don't like it and some obviously do think it's a great place although most UK people I know who live out there would still rather return to the UK if they could get their living standards higher (pools, maids, not possible in UK for most).

A link to the forum "expat woman" was put on MN a year or so ago. It was disgusting. The participants on the EPW site were slagging off their maids, talking about how to get more work out of them and sacking them etc. they sounded such a horrible lot, so everything else aside, you might want to consider the company you want to keep. No way would I want to rub shoulders with the likes of them.

Leaving aside for a minute what the place is like.

How long would it be for?
Would it enable you to come home and buy a forever family home before the kids started in school?
Would it protect his job now or in the future by being really good experience?
Are you good at being a SAHM with minimal company in the early days, just in case.

I could see this being an adventure for the family while your kids are very young, that could set you up for the future.

OTOH I moved abroad when my DC were 0,2 and 4 to support DH, and in the end I moved home early with the DC while he finished off the assignment. It was too lonely and I was too bored. You need to know yourself and to have an exit strategy if it turns out not to be what you thought.

I wonder if I'm one of Theodorakiss's 'suburban activists'?

For the record, I have lived abroad in a very politically contentious place, for quite a long time. There are many places I would go abroad to live, including other arabic countries. Like Leopoldina, I wouldn't consider UAE or Saudi though.

Yes all expat women are vile.

Childhood's friend's marriage has just broken up from the strain of expat living: basically, he got hooked on the good pay, comfortable lifestyle, interesting work and took one job after another and she sat in various compounds with nothing to do, watching her life slip away.

Relatives' marriage survived intact, possibly due to short duration of the job, but wife made it clear she did not enjoy her time as an ex-pat.

I would at the very least have a serious discussion about the time limits, what will happen if it doesn't work out, what about schooling, what about your possible future career etc etc. Not suggesting these things can't be resolved, but they need to be talked about.

I went there as a 'trailing spouse', OP. If you want to ask things, PM me, though my information is a few years old, and this was pre-DC.

We only went because the alternative was being unemployed for my DH, and I was able to take leave from my job. We managed to save some money, but the experience was miserable enough for us to return to the UK, even without a job for DH. Quite apart from the alarming realities of life as a foreigner in a 'benign' dictatorship with a minority 'native' population in fully-fledged cultural and environmental crisis and a lot of mistreated lower-level migrant workers, we both found it terribly dull, apart from when we used it as a base for travel. The priority has been to arrange amusement for tourists, and there is very little to do as a resident, other than get away.

And Cory's post reflects a lot of marriages I saw out there. Wives sitting out in godforsaken Arabian Ranches in an expensively-rented but shoddily built 'villa', with staff, bored and isolated, while their husbands, working full tilt, get much more entrammeled in Dubai life, high pay. It's not a recipe for happiness.

I have a friend who lives in Bradford. Doesn't give me the right to wax on about what a festering shithole it is to LIVE IN although I can say it was not great to visit.

I went to Uni in Bradford. I loved living there, so much so, I went back for my 40th Birthday .

Theodora, we are not all approaching Dubai from the festering shithole angle.

One very genuine concern with the situation the OP outlines is that she may end up isolated, with little opportunity of involvement in the local community, away from any family support and (if she is still there when her children become more independent) with very little to fill her own life with.

This has happened to several ex-pat wives I have known and has caused serious problems with dissatisfaction as they moved into middle age. Not saying it has to happen but definitely worth stopping to ask yourself "how do we make sure it doesn't happen?"

This is not the same as criticising Dubai as a country: the same situation could easily arise in an earthly paradise.

Surely though Theodorakiss you have the ability to see whether or not you would want to live in Bradford? And the right to say whether would or would not choose to?

Theodora, do you sit about waiting for Dubai threads so you can let loose your vitriol on 'armchair warriors'?

Cory makes perfectly sensible points, and the only unconsidered responses on this thread have been yours. Why can you not acknowledge that not all critics of Dubai have never left the Home Counties?

I lived there, and while I would not call it a 'festering shithole', to borrow your charming phrase, I would say that in my experience (which is all too extensive), the problems (ethical, environmental, cultural and otherwise) of living there far outweigh the possible financial benefits.

I would live in Bradford before I would return to Dubai without thinking twice.

Imo any decision affecting a family should be preceded by a careful evaulation of the likely consequences for each and every member of that family together with a plan for outweighing any negative consequences for each member
(if your career suffers from this move, what can we do to make sure your needs are met now or later/if we take ds away from his local school what opportunities can we offer him in our new setting etc etc).

I was offered a job in Norway a few years ago. By no means a shitty hellhole and the job would have been a wonderful opportunity for me. But by the time we had evaluated the likely consequences for each of the 4 members of our family (I would get a better job than here, dh would struggle to find any job at all let alone one at his level of competence, dd's health was likely to suffer from the climate and ds would probably be about the same), we found the total of negatives outweighed the total of positives. We didn't go.

Sometimes I think families do have a tendency to count the man's satisfaction at a higher rate than that of other family members.

Leopaldina, I work in the gas industry. I sponsored my huband in Dubai. Along for the ride? I have always been the main breadwinner, even in the NHS before I left the UK. But nice phrase, way to go patronising stay at home mums. How about you? Just along for the ride were you?

Like it or not, Theodora, whether or not you are the spouse whose job took the family to Dubai will make a huge difference to your experience of the place.

ah, so that's why you don't understand the OP's questions about what life would be like if you're unable to work and stuck in an expat compound. Could also insert generic ethics / gas industry gag here but you've doubtless heard them before. And no, I was working in NY, studying in Paris.