On their website “Global Coach Center” has the following facts about expat spouses:
A fact: A large percentage of expatriate assignments fail because of family adjustment issues.
A fact: Expatriate spouses play an important role in family adjustment.
A sad fact: Very few companies are doing anything to help expat spouses adjust and overcome challenges of an expatriate lifestyle.
A common feeling from the interviews I conducted was the need to reinvent yourself when you have no career/job to define who you are:
Re-inventing myself again. The kids and husband settle fast with school and work routines, friends and colleagues. Both times I have moved I gave up a job and a career to move and support the family.
Another response was very similar,
For me as a dependent (trailing spouse) it is all about..uh…what? There is no security in friends or surroundings, no one waiting for you, no job to go to. You have to reinvent yourself, time and again.
Once a spouse does manage to settle in to their new country (which according to my interviews can vary from 6months to 2 years), it is often the case that the husbands “Professional clock” rings, and he is moved to another country, where the whole situation will happen again.
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Maureen Morton
May 10, 2013 at 7:58 pm
Dear Karen
I found this article fascinating. I often wondered and marvelled at how you coped and were coping in those early years. To have remembered and written it down is so worth while and I hope it will go into the reading package of every new expat, wherever they are going.
I can also see a career blossoming for you, wherever you are, by introducing this concept, of providing a coach to expatriate spouses in the early days of their moves, to the Human resources manager of companies. You could certainly sell the idea on the basis of cost alone, when you think how much money they lose when an employee goes home early because the family cannot settle in a new country.
Thank you so much for sharing this with me. I really enjoyed reading it.
Nothing like the usual academic waffle
love and hugs
Maureen
Truth always
May 12, 2013 at 4:35 pm
Hey, Karen doesn’t mention here the really telling background story of how she came to be an expatriate, leaving her former policeman husband for her current one that’s a banker, with three kids under 10 at the time. Plenty of grey facts about whether it was adultry as well. Not sure I would recommend her services as a lifecoach. Amazing how some people re brand themselves so anyone needing marketing tips should follow her advice. Also one of her current family members seems to be leaving the positive notes. Karen as a lifecoach is the funniest thing I could ever imagine. Would be interesting to hear her guidance in ethics or family morals
e.curran
May 14, 2013 at 4:09 am
Truth always , isn’t it strange how people like you do not use their real name especially when they are leaving negative views, or just their side of a story.
vorameghana
May 30, 2013 at 2:55 am
Expatriate is very important, especially for those who travel to different countries for work purposes. Expatriate can be anyone which chooses to live in a country other than the motherland.http://www.whatisall.com/people/what-is-an-expatriate.html