Is being an expat the kiss of death for most relationships?

[MrsSchadenfreude]

All of our friends in Paris, who were expats (or one of the couple was, and the other French) have split up. Of my expat school gate friends from Brussels, they have all split up too. In nearly every case, the man ended it, and has moved on to a new, younger wife and a second family. The wife is either left with the kids, to struggle in a country that isn't "home" or heads back to the UK with the kids, and they hardly ever see their father. Our UK friends are not like this! It all seems a bit bizarre to me.

I'm a reluctant ex-pat. I'm really only here to humour my husband as he grew up here.

It's an English speaking country, so no language barrier.

His family live here.

Lots of things can end a marriage. Some couples have the tragedy of the death of a baby or child to deal with. In some relationships there's been infidelity or dishonesty over money or time. That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to difficulties that can overwhelm a relationship. None of those things have got anything whatsoever to do with emigrating.

I understand that for some couples, emigrating is pretty much, 'last chance' for the relationship. In other words, they already knew it was on it's last legs.

Having a baby can put pressure on existing cracks in a relationship. I would say the same of emigrating too.

All I'm saying is that a couple could stay in their home country and split up or stay together. A couple could emigrate and split up or stay together. IMO it's one of the unknowns. OK, a lot of things can be seen coming. OK, a lot of things can't. However, somebody insisting they want that the other person doesn't for various reasons is something that will end the relationship i.e. a baby/another baby or move house or buy a spa pool etc. etc. etc.

I doubt you are in any way responsible for the demise of your friends' relationships but it is possible that you make friends more easily with people whose relationships are fragile.

That's an interesting point, BoboChic. DH says my expat friends are all mad, religious or both. And I don't necessarily know the other half in the relationship straight away, either - eg school gate friendships.

If your DH thinks your expat friends are dysfunctional (subtext: your home friends aren't) that probably explains their relationship difficulties.

I do think the expat life can sometimes attract the fragile, the people who think, maybe we just need a change and our relationship will pick up when we move to Brussels/Paris/Dubai/Wherever.

The insecurity of the trophy wife, who has a huge car that she can't drive and nothing else in her life apart from her husband, the kids and getting her nails done. The not having a job at all, often for the first time since getting married, and having to "fill your day" and "keep busy" while the DH's life carries on pretty much as normal, can cause stress points. And people sometimes seek solace in the church, alcohol, drugs etc. Two of the mothers at the DDs' first school were having a torrid lesbian affair (to the fascination of everyone!). The husband gets fed up coming home to a whiny wife, who can't deal with the plumber he sent over, because she doesn't speak the language and has no intention of trying, and he starts eyeing up Anneke from accounts, with new eyes. The bored wife looks at the young Ukrainian gardener... and so it can happen.

I've been reading this thread with interest as we're about to make the move overseas.

It's a pretty bleak picture you've drawn of expat life there MrsSchadenfreude. But if you've lived in all these different countries then you must have been an expat too at some point, is that an accurate picture of your life?

I can't help but make the connection to your nickname - perhaps you enjoy the drama of other people's rocky marriages a bit too much?

I'm looking forward to your new TV show, ^MrsS* - "Desperate Expat Housewives of Continental Europe"

When I lived in Beijing I could count on one hand the men I knew who didn't cheat on their partners. Mostly it was hand jobs in massage parlours, KTV games, and the like but very often prostitution in various forms.

Usually the men didn't include any of this as cheating.

Most woman had no idea and frankly didn't want to know.

Yes, I have heard similar from divorced friends who used to live in Beijing. Sounds perfectly dreadful.

Feckity - no connection to my nickname, I'm afraid. Another MNer, who knows me and DH well suggested this one, as he is Mr Schadenfreude, without a doubt. I am just his wife.

I have never been an expat wife - it's me that works and DH who follows, although he has always, apart from breaks of a few months, managed to work. It is an odd existence, you know you will only be there for a few years before moving on. You can live in people's pockets, see them every day, and then when you move on, never see them again, and maybe only exchange Christmas cards the first year. My neighbour in Belgium, when I left, said "I won't keep in touch, because I never do with expats. But if you come back here, I will be delighted to see you again."

The school becomes the focus for your social life. If you have young children, and if you're not working, there seems to be a reluctance to leave the premises - you just go back to an empty house, not even having to clean it, as you have a cleaner. So you hold a coffee morning, or join a gym, or get your nails done. Very few expat wives seem to learn the language at all - maybe they think there is little point, if they are only going to be there for a few years - this enhances the "life in an expat bubble" syndrome. One wife I knew (children away at uni) told me that most days she didn't bother getting up till late afternoon, when she would have a stiff drink, get dressed and cook dinner. She had no interest in the country, beyond the supermarket at the end of the street, and never went anywhere.

The goldfish bowl of expat life in Africa is worse (novel currently with agent, BoboChic ) - getting in from the bar at 6 am, having a quick shower and heading off to the office still drunk for a 7.30 start. It floats along on G & T, served by the "boy", with the odd spliff as a canape and wife swapping for the main course.

Feckity, it's not an accurate picture of my life, but it's certainly what I've observed over the years. It doesn't have to be like that, but in a lot of cases, it is. If you want to avoid it, learn the language, and learn it properly, so that you can have a conversation with people and make local friends, not just enough that you can ask for a kilo of tomatoes in the market, but enough to respond when the stallholder tells you of a good local recipe for tomatoes, or to tell him what you want to do with them. Essentially, live life in the country, make the most of it, don't just mix with other expats (otherwise you might as well be in Bromley) and your life will be quite different.

Digger - same in West Africa, with the local "nightfighters."

In Paris/suburbs there is a huge difference between expats who use immersion programmes/bilingual schools where the whole family engages in learning French and adopting a French lifestyle, on the one hand, and Anglophone medium schools on the other. Many years ago I had an English friend in Paris who had grown up here and gone to ASP. His mother couldn't speak French after living here for 30 years

BoboChic, when I was in Belgium, there were families who had children go through the British school, from Kindercrib to A levels, without learning any of the local language (beyond what was taught in school). The parents maybe had "shopping Dutch" but that was all.

I also think there is a big difference between people who live in the suburbs, near an international school, and those who live in the city itself. I always found that those who lived outside the city showed a marked reluctance to venture outside of their suburb. In Belgium, I ended up being class rep, and had to organise the end of term Mummies Dinner Out (never Daddies, only Mummies). I had found a great new restaurant in Brussels that I thought would be perfect - great cocktails, atmosphere, food. I suggested it and got the response "But we always go to XX in the village." Brussels was too far (20 minutes on the tram), and they just wanted to go where they had always been, in the village. Some of them had never been to Brussels at all.

It's not straightforward with the language issue for us. We're going to Singapore, where English is an official language. I'd love to try the immersion route in a country where I could properly learn the language, but I'm not sure it's possible where the majority of people speak some kind of English. I'll definitely be trying to learn Mandarin, but mostly out of interest, rather than a need for it in everyday life.

Also, as a pretty introvert SAHM, I'm fairly happy with an empty house and surface level acquaintances/friendships that I'll move on from in a couple of years.

One thing I hope I can do out there is study. I'll be taking a break from my degree to go out there and I'll really miss it. If I can find something like that to have a bit of structure I think I'll 'fill' the rest of my time quite happily with whatever I fancy doing that day, without resorting to drink/drugs/shagging the hypothetical ukranian gardener.

Studying is a great idea, setting up structure and sticking to it works well, and enables you to avoid the needy extrovert mothers who will try and entice you out to coffee mornings or swingers parties.

This is an interesting topic and I agree with a lot that has been said. For me the strains have been great and I would say that being an expat exacerbates issues in your life. So for me troubled upbringing and dysfunctional, non contact family meant I had not enough emotional ties. Moving around in the UK and then going abroad has made that a lot worse. Without good solid family/friends those "surface level acquaintances/friendships" are not enough. I moved abroad with a very small baby and really struggled. I had postnatal depression and lots of issues from my own upbringing and was alone. To access psychotherapy/support services in a foreign country proved difficult and would have been much easier in the UK. Finding a native English speaking therapist is not easy.

I agree with the comments about language, but having been in this European country now for four years and having done a lot of language lessons, I am far, far from fluent and conversations in the local language are not fluid and goodness knows when they will be.

My children are very happy here, bilingual and very well integrated. Husband has and has always had work to fulfil and occupy him and that gives a lot of structure to his life.

I would have been better off staying in the UK (in one place, building the support network I have not had) and going back to work and carving out a life for myself.

Now I am trying to find work and keep going with the desire to build a fulfilling life for myself. Being an expat has made things harder. It unsurprisingly places strains on a relationship.

Living in a country where you do not speak the language or understand the culture is never a desirable situation. It's a huge hindrance to personal growth if you are not receiving the messages from society that we all receive whether we search them out or not when we live in our own language and culture. It is hard to revise our ideas without proper access to language.

I've been lots of different types of expat in lots of different places.

• single
• with DH, both of us working
• with DH, me being the trailing spouse
• with DH, him not working (right now, except we have been in London for 12 years now so not entirely certain we still qualify as expats)

When I was single I had loads of flings but no real relationships because all the local men were intimidated by me and my salary and all the expat men were dating the local young Hungarian (or whatever) beauties.

Being the trailing spouse was pretty tricky, for all the reasons set out by PPs. The best was when both of us were working.

In every case I learned the local language. Hungarian is bloody difficult but I still learned more than your average expat and was repaid in spades by the attitude and gratitude of the locals. I am now fluent in Dutch and German as well as French (Canadian). Made a MASSIVE difference.

Question - can you be a real expat in another English speaking country?

And follow up question:

What is the difference between an expat and an immigrant? Where do you draw the line?

DH and I are both Canadian. Except my mum was born in Devon and emigrated to Canada in her twenties. I have always had a UK passport. I have more extended family here (aunts, uncles, cousins etc) than there. We have lived here for 12 years. My kids are English and were born here. And yet I still identify as Canadian WAY more than English / British....

Absolutely I think you can be an expat in another English speaking country. The US feels very foreign to me; Canada marginally less so.

I completely agree on the relationships, Hearts. Have been in exactly that position.

On the expat/immigrant question, I think you are an expat if you intend returning to your country of origin at some point. I have some friends who lived in Paris for 30+ years. They have just retired and returned to the UK for retirement. I don't really understand this at all - their lives and friends and (adult) children are all still in France (and I find this particularly bizarre - although they are both English, their children never learned the language and speak only French).

In Asia this is weird too. Why do so many couples live here 30+ years, bring up their children here, and it seems have their strongest connections here, then both they and their children go to live their retirement/adult lives in the "home" country, e.g. UK.

This is so interesting because it is exactly the question that DH and I are pondering at the moment.

We spend a huge amount of effort (and money) making sure the DDs appreciate their Canadian heritage. We go back to Canada all the time - we have barely ever been on another type of family holiday. And we have finally admitted to ourselves that we do not see ourselves here in the UK forever. So with a 12 year old and a nine year old, I think we are moving back.

You don't want to move the kids in the middle of high school, and if they go to high school here then they will go to uni here, and meet English boys and marry them and have English babies. And then we are stuck here because I do not want to live thousands of miles away from my kids and grandkids if I can possibly help it.

So I think we are going back.

Hearts - PM me your Canadian address as soon as you get it & expect me to come & visit! Don't want you to go!1

Mrs S - I've only been to the US twice & it felt like the most foreign place I'd ever been & I am pretty well travelled in Europe & have lived in France at one time.

Apologies for the slight hijack, I've been following this thread with great interest. DS & family live abroad & I wonder if DH & I will end up in the same country.

I used to work with a Russian girl who went to the US to do her Master's. When she came back, an American colleague said "Did you not want to stay out there permanently?" She looked at him and said "Are you nuts? I'm European. The whole culture was completely alien to me and I couldn't wait to get back." He was quite shocked.

I could live in the US for a couple of years, I think, but no more. It is just too strange.

That's almost exactly what I thought - I really felt European when there & I know, despite the hurdle of learning a language , I'd find it easier to live in Italy or Spain that the US for more than a few years.