Couples Surviving Overseas
“Ideally, couples need three lives; one for him, one for her, and one for them together. - Jacqueline Bisset
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You may be single or overseas with a partner or spouse, plus children. In addition, everyone has family back home. The expat life produces a unique mixture of blessings and strains on families you would not encounter in your home country.
The Department of State even has a separate arm devoted to supporting diplomatic families. “Family life abroad can be very exciting,” they note. But they end with an offer to provide “guidance and referrals to those experiencing personal challenges.” This is a delicate way of saying that it won’t always be easy.
Couples - 3 Scenarios
1. Teaching couple
If you are a teaching couple, you’re going to be seeing a lot of each other - inside the school expat bubble, commuting back and forth to school together, going to the same events and parties, friends with the same people.
2. Business person + teacher trailing spouse
If your spouse/partner does not work at the school and you do, a different dynamic results. The business may demand long hours, lots of travel, and brutal amounts of stress, leaving less energy for the relationship.
3. Teacher + non-working trailing spouse
Or you may be that peculiarity of the expat world: the trailing spouse. It could be the wife or the husband; in the case of this charming blog post, it’s the husband, “In which I discuss how tricky it can be being the expat partner, but ultimately realize there’s way more to gain than there is to lose from the experience.” What puts the trailing in trailing spouse is that the partner’s job brought them overseas. The other half just came along for the ride.
One day in the Moscow library, empty at the time, a parent confided her distress. Her diplomat husband had been assigned a tour to Russia and she’d had to quit her very satisfying career. She wept bitter tears over the painful lack of purpose and loss of self-esteem that was her daily life. All I could do was listen and provide kleenex. I’d been in this exact spot and once spent a miserable spell locked in the bathroom, crying like a teenager.
In many countries the 2nd spouse literally cannot get a work visa or even work online and would in fact jeopardize the visa of the 1st spouse. That would damage the relationship of the organization or business with the local government. This means the unemployed trailing spouse is well and truly stuck in professional limbo. Which leads us to…
Stresses and Opportunities
Strains Unique To Expats
If both partners are on board 100% with going overseas, the adventure can strengthen the relationship and keep even a creaky marriage going longer than it might otherwise. Or the stress can blow open any rifts spackled over at home through routine.
As difficult as it might be to manage, each partner must feel valued. If one of the couple does not want to abandon their life and go overseas, things will almost certainly end badly.
If one of the partners cannot find professional validation and respect, a make-work job or volunteering with the Ladies Aid Society isn’t going to cut it either. “Adultery and fractured marriages are rampant in the expat world,” says Robin Pascoe who has written widely on the issue.
With all the temptations, things can go south. What to do? Talk to each other in depth for a start. If one of you really does not want to go, my advice is, don’t go.
This excellent summary from ExpatFocus Can Your Relationship Take the Strain of Moving Abroad Together? pretty well sums up the difficulties.
Sexual Pitfalls Overseas
The expat life features some sexual temptations a marriage would likely not face back home.
1. Many cultures have a much more relaxed attitude toward adultery and prostitution. Remember that America was founded by the Puritans.
A spouse who is working long hours and away from home a lot may fall into this trap and really not face much social stigma. Except for the spouse, of course.
2. Some countries are havens for sex tourism and mail-order brides and so even a very average-looking expat might be considered quite a catch.
This thread features a lot of snark but illuminates the complicated depths. Remember that frequently it’s not your good looks they’re after but your bank account.
Family Back Home
Single or partnered, pretty much everybody has relatives. Several dynamics peculiar to the expat life are in play. Let’s focus first on the negative aspects of this atypical lifestyle you have chosen.
Aging Parents
Who takes care of aging parents? This can be a thorny issue and must be sorted before you get on that airplane. If your parents become ill, will you have to relocate and abandon the adventure? Will you need to take a long leave and return home to make arrangements?
Are siblings nearby and willing to bear the burden? Might you move mom or dad overseas and find affordable care, in Turkey or Thailand, for instance? Could they tolerate the disruption?
These are questions to sort out in advance of need.
Decisions must be made jointly with your other family members.
It all depends on your relationship with your family.
Friends and Family Reactions While You’re Overseas
Instagram Life (Jealousy)
You know how other people seem to be having way more fun on Facebook than you sometimes? Your family back home may grit their teeth when they see you floating down the Venice canals on a long weekend, a trip they have dreamed of for years.
Your adventures seem so exotic (they are) and their life so prosaic (it can be.) The best advice is not to overdo the bragging.
Nobody Much Cares (Indifference)
After you have trotted out a few well-rehearsed tales, people back home typically return to their own concerns. Perfectly normal, and really, what else did you expect? You will discover that the only people who truly understand are fellow expats.
Wish You Hadn’t Gone (Disapproval)
Some family back home may put pressure on you, subtle or direct, to return home and take care of business i.e. mom and dad need help, you dumped your house and financial chores into my lap and I regret saying yes, etc.
Your parents may express horror every time a disaster or international incident occurs anyway near you. Or they may just disparage your choice (What’s wrong with your hometown?) and feel your choice is a put down on them. It’s not, but try to be sympathetic.
They Visit (Excitement)
Best of all, your family is happy for you and will turn up at your door sooner or later. There is nothing like a local tour guide for enjoying a place, so just prepare yourself to host family and friends at some point in your stay.
Grandma had the time of her life.
A few notes. Your visitors have come from halfway around the world and will stay possibly several weeks. You probably won’t be able to take two weeks off work to show them around. Plan accordingly.
Also take weather and season into account. You won’t be touring Dubai in the summer, as the temperature is over 110, for instance. Christmas and the high tourist season in Venice may be way too crowded.
Remember how much hand-holding you needed in the early days and be careful about sending them out the door on their own. Visitors will be rookies just like you once were and will need their hands held.
Advance Planning For Visitors
1. Walk them through the process details (tourist visa, money, customs.)
2. If possible, have them bring an extra duffel full of items you can’t otherwise obtain.
3. Their time will be brief (certainly not two years) so settle on a doable itinerary and prioritize.
4. You will need to do the planning and executing, so start making arrangements. Think about arranging tours and a driver.
5. Think through exactly how long you want this visit to be. Do you need to take some time off work? Can you??
6. Be sure the school is aware you’ll have guests in school housing.
Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days, according to Benjamin Franklin. Obviously three days won’t work, but the visits can be a strain as well as a pleasure, but a priceless experience for both parties.
Can You Raise Children Overseas?
“So where are you from? Umm...”
Intercultural contact.
Can you take your children overseas? Can you become pregnant, give birth, and raise a small child overseas? Of course. And these children will be different than if they’d been raised solely in their home countries. They will even have a special name and an acronym to match: Third Culture Kids (TCK).
TCK (Third Culture Kids)
First culture means the passport culture of the child. Second culture refers to the host country where the child and parents have moved. This leaves a third culture unlike either but something entirely new. Several characteristics define this third culture. These children:
1. Actually live in another culture for a fair amount of their developmental years.
2. Experience a mobile upbringing.
3. Expect to return to their passport country someday, meaning they are not immigrants.
They might be military brats or MKids (missionary kids) or EdKids (teachers’ kids) or foreign service families.
Temporary Or Long term?
Let’s first distinguish between those TCK whose parents do not stay long nor expect to (tourist teachers) and those who are making a career of overseas work (career IS teachers, foreign service, NGO.) The positive and negative effects will therefore be greater the longer the stay.
Entire books have been written on TCK and their special upbringing. This post revisits the psychological effects of this childhood from the perspective of a grown-up TCK.
Positives?
· Tolerant and with a broad worldview
· Bilingual or even multilingual
· Culturally adept
· Open to new experience
Negatives?
· Ignorant of home culture
· Rootless and lack a sense of belonging
· Hesitant to make close friends or develop intimacy
· Unclear loyalties
Special Needs Children
There is no 94-142 Education for All Handicapped Children law overseas. For-profit schools are private and can legally refuse to admit whomever they choose. Even for embassy schools, the State Department advises finding another career path if the family does not pass the suitability review panel; even schools supported by the State Department may not support the necessary education.
That being said, children with special needs can be sometimes be accommodated. This assumes no severe handicapping conditions or behavioral issues, plus you might be doing a disservice to your child. DoDEA schools can be somewhat more supportive.Be sure to verify in advance and please be upfront with the school.
Pregnancy and Nannies
Yes, plenty of overseas teachers have gotten pregnant and successfully raised small children. A few things to consider in advance, as always:
1. What is your present/future school’s maternity policy? You don’t want to find out too late that pregnancy is grounds for dismissal or insurance does not cover maternity.
2. What is the level of medical care in the country and the options for childcare? In many countries, healthcare is considerably cheaper and better than in the USA, but certainly not all.
3. Do plenty of research and ask around before you decide that you need to go back home to give birth.
4. Since you won’t have family support close at hand, what kind of support system can you assemble? Better get started early.
Questions to Ask the School
1. For how many children will the school provide tuition? (usually one per contract.)
2. Any constraints on single parents? How much does daycare cost? Can kids play outdoors?
Hint: don’t count on it.
3. What about children with special needs? Will the school accept them? If yes, how much support is available?
4. Is it a true international school, meaning plenty of other TCK’s? Or is it an international school in name only where 90% or more of the student body speaks the local language and the only foreign faces are teachers’ kids?
National School
What about enrolling your child in a true national school? i.e. the public school just down the street. You might be setting your child up for:
Bullying. True TCK are largely very welcoming. After all, they’ve all been the new kid many times before and know how painful it can be. Not necessarily so in a local school.
Lost academic progress while your child learns the language.
Young enough children, however, might very well thrive.
You’d need a translator to work with the school.
So…should you teach overseas with children? Heck, yes. The experience is a great gift to your child.
Reverse Culture Shock
As much as you love and miss your friends and families, if you stay overseas for any length of time, ties will inevitably wither. You are simply not there for the day-to-day events that constitute life, and honestly, FaceTime is not an adequate replacement.
You will feel a sense of dislocation back home referred to as reverse culture shock. Holy cats! The toothpaste aisle is overwhelming, and why is everybody in such a hurry?
It may seem you’ve landed in an alternate universe.
You will probably also discover that after a brief flurry, nobody much cares to hear your adventures. They may even feel a bit of implied superiority in your Instagram happy life compared to their mundane lives. At some point you’ll realize the only people who really understand are fellow expats. Unsettling, but there it is.
Going Home
“Home is the place where, when you have
to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost”
The word home has a complicated meaning for an expat, meaning you. It also has a time element it does not have for the citizen who never worked overseas. Let’s examine four of these situations.
(1) During Your Contract
Meaning summers and holidays. Most typically, schools pay for a round trip ticket at the beginning and end of a two-year contract. So if you want to return to your passport country to see family in between, these flights are on your dime.
Plus you might well be couch-surfing unless you are lucky enough to own a home you can afford to keep vacant or can arrange a house sitting gig or house exchange.
I am a member of HomeExchange.com and last summer, a family of teachers from Mumbai worked a deal to stay in my house for two weeks to visit their family in Portland and also manage rentals. I wasn’t going to be home anyway; I’d already been to Mumbai and did not want to go during the rainy season. But still, it worked out slick for them and for me as well.
Summer Options?
§ Go back home for the entire period, which can be intense, exhausting, and expensive.
§ Travel overseas the entire period. This depends on your location, meaning it’s more fun to travel in Europe than someplace really hot. Also, occasionally a school will require teachers to vacate during the summer; avoid a school like that.
§ Mixture of both, perhaps with visitors.
2) Between Contracts
This means you will be rewinding the whole moving process. In addition, here is some advice on breaking the news to your school; remember that recruiting starts very early in the school year.
§ Close out your classroom and school checkout list.
§ Arrange shipping, sell or give away what you’re not taking in the teacher garage sale, arrange airfare reimbursement.
§ Pay off all financial obligations like landlord and utility charges.
§ Document all final payments to be able to leave the country legally.
§ Say sad goodbyes to the other nomads in your herd (IS teachers) and achieve closure, particularly if you have children.
3) Breaking Contract
Sometimes the school or personal situation is so awful that you just cannot tolerate the situation and you break contract.
§ What circumstances would you say justify bailing early or even sneaking out? Safety? Harassment or threats of violence not dealt with by the school? Repeated failure to pay salary on time or egregious violations of the contract? Personal or medical emergency? What justifications would you support? Each person will have a different threshold, so think about it.
§ Will you ever get another job and will you be blackballed? The answer is yes, no, and maybe to both. Reading through these comments reminds me again of the prospective teacher’s overarching responsibility to practice due diligence in advance. Plus the bitter whining in the comments. Whew!
1) Do your homework as well as possible in advance, particularly for-profit schools.
2) Do not rely solely on ISS or Search. You own this one.
3) Watch out for red flags, like when a good director leaves.
4) Keep financially liquid in case you have to pay your way out.
4) Permanently
“You can’t go home again. - Thomas Wolfe”
Actually you can go home again and eventually, international school teachers will need to choose where to nest for good, constrained by whether they can retire or must keep working.
§ Return to your passport country – if you still need to work, you can return to the public school system or try the private school route. Look at Carney Sandoe, private school recruiters or religious schools as well.
Just be sure you haven’t let your certification lapse, although sometimes private schools will give you a pass. There is dispute on whether overseas teaching is a plus or minus in the job market.
§ Remain in-country and go native to one degree or another, bearing in mind that some countries have visa and income minimum requirements. They may not want you and regulations may change suddenly. Ask yourself where can you afford to live and also feel comfortable.
The Same But Different
Family is family anywhere, but the expat’s relationship to parents, relatives, and children has unique twists. At the very least the aspiring overseas teacher should give some thought to the issues in this post and, as always, do the research.