Can marriages survive expatriate life?

Can marriages survive expatriate life?



I am a researcher based in Canada, working on a project that looks at why many marriages cannot survive the test of time abroad. Infidelity? Boredom? Stress? Too much travel? Too many opportunities? If you are an expatriate who has experienced marriage difficulties or divorce while abroad I would like to hear from you. What is your story? What do you blame the breakdown on?


Any thoughts?



I am compiling these stories and would like to hear from you. Please contact me through asiaexpat site.

This doesn't sound particularly like research to me. You say that you only want to hear from people whose relationships have failed. How could you possibly gain any useful information without exploring why expat relationships can and do work?


Yet another negativity farmer.


"Tags divorce, mattiage in asia" ??? Good luck with that! ;)

Why focus on marital strife? Simple.

1. Because researchers generally like to focus on a single theme to limit variables.

2. Martial breakdowns among expats has become an increasingly worrisome issue from the point-of-view of large multi-national companies. Broken homes mean more money relocating families, etc.

I'm looking for some online feedback from individuals who might share some of their stories and insights.

Please note this forum is for Women Only

Aren't you worried that you'll only be receiving one side of the story?

"1. Because researchers generally like to focus on a single theme to limit variables."


It would clearly upset the study if you had to take into account variables like the fact that it's possible to maintain a successful relationship. How can it be possible to accrue any meaningful data without having a baseline comparison? Every study needs a control, especially on an issue like this.



"2. Martial breakdowns among expats has become an increasingly worrisome issue from the point-of-view of large multi-national companies. Broken homes mean more money relocating families, etc."


Do you work for an insurance company?


If you're a student trying to write an essay, then you've got a lot to learn about research. A professional researcher should already know better.

My now husband has been an expat most of his life. His previous two marriage didn't survive. Many bad stories and hurt for the family. We had LDR for about two years and bad things happened. Marriage in this kind of work and life layout is very diffficult. Now we are married and we are keeping our finger cross and ready for lots of sacrifices from both sides.

I think for the multi-national companies wanting to help keep their employee's stable family life, they shall do more than just offer a home leave plane ticket every a few months. Lots of things can be done.

What is a LDR? If you send me an email address, I could ask some of my friends to write to you, but are you interested even if they aren't living in Hong Kong or Asia? From what I've seen, Expats who work are often the target of local women for many reasons and the extra attention results in men who cheat on their wives. We can also afford luxuries like the services of domestic helpers, drivers or gardeners which you wouldn't have back home. Some men start to feel like they are such great catches that one woman or their boring woman is not enough. I also have found that different accents, expressions and mannerisms can seem exotic and intriguing to many. Women who used to work who move and then stay home can also be prone to depression, so that combined with a husband who has to fight off aggressive women is a bad combination. Expat men tend to travel a lot and that breeds temptations too. I have friends who've gotten divorced simply because the woman was naive enough to think she could move back to her home country and have a long-term relationship. Sure enough, the distance brought another woman into the husband's bed and divorce occured. Some of us think the woman upset the man by not being supportive enough to stay with him, but on the other hand, the women usually married their man not knowing that a life of moving away from their family and familar situation was exected. Men sometimes don't understand the sacrifices their wives make and even if they do, they get so tempted by the promotions, status and money that they can ignore their wives pleas for more visits home or to move home. Of course women appreciate that their husbands work hard. Some of the women work too, but if they don't, it seems more problematic. It's often more difficult for women to move if they have lived in the same town for their entire life. Change is easier if they've moved a fair bit. Whoever has the job is instantly busy and the spouse has to occupy him or herself, which is generally a new thing. if you are back in your country, you tend to be surrounded by people who remind you to stay faithful. having your lifelong friends around also makes every feel more stable, so you don't get so lonely and thus, so prone to straying. one friend of mine cheated on her husband and said it was just because she couldn't resist the man's scottish accent and the place where we lived was just so boring! it was boring and some people even starting having orgies, which of course don't always end well. If you include an email address, you will get more info. from some of my friends.

Notyou's point of view is valid. But I disagree with the demonization of those "bad things" expat men or women do. They are living in a world that is in between. If the couple do not recongnize what it will take, there will be a lot of "surprises" and hard time ahead. We just can't have the best of all. For the husbands, they can't expect that the money they make will pay off their the bad behavior. And the wives can't expect the husbands who provide their "free" luxirous life style behave like a saint among all the temptations while being alone in another country. I know most the multi-national companies prefer giving foreign assaignments to single guys since they know how much danger it would put a married guy into the test.

I think most expat husbands and wives shall be realistic and be ready for all the rocky rides. Always put the other as priority and be strong to anchor down when waves are up. Sometimes I see many people vented their frustration here, a public forum and I worry for those posters how much advice they would take from other strangers. The first person they need to talk to shall be their spouse. The priority shall be keeping a family together, not punishing each other.

Most outsiders (including those home rackers) only see the glamerous lives expats have. In fact, it is a difficult life style. So don't expect that others would understand all the not-so-glamerous things that expact couple have to do to make the marriage work.

Please note this is the Women Only forum - we have tried a Men Only forum and it generated no useful discussions so it was removed.


This forum is dedicated to womens issues from the perspective of women - if you are male please use the Marriage and Relationship forum.

I’m new to this forum. Came upon the posting by karenmaz while surfing on this topic of expats and marriage in HK. Although I don`t live in HongKong or China, a few years ago after competing in the university games in Bangkok and before resuming grad studies back home, I extended my stay in the region and spent 3 weeks in this beautiful former colony. True, things didn`t look anywhere near as pathetic as in BK TH when it came to foreign men and their real purpose for travelling to such distant lands, however while chatting with non-chinese female employees at some embassies and at travel agencies, I came to realize how inherently difficult the social environment can be for a foreign couple`s marital situation.

As well I learned last year that a respected missionary couple from my church who had been sent in Vietnam ended up divorcing because the man ran away with a local well-educated female roughly the same age as his own daughter. Well, thanks to whoever coined the term yellow fever…

At times I like to oversimplify and focus on practical scenarios. For instance, when it comes to those couples who end up divorcing or at least come under severe marital stress in KH, how would they have fared if the man`s assignment had been in (strictly for argument’s sake, OK) places like India, or Egypt, or Mexico ?


We all know about the overreaching emphasis on youth and “nubility” in most western beauty ads for women and in media/movies in general, but do we understand how all this crap affects men’s psyche as well? How really surprising is it that a proportion of men landing in a place like HK immediately are struck by what they see in local women, morphological differences and all, compared to their own wives, girlfriends, relatives – be it caucasian, mediterranean, indo-pakistanese etc etc. And that certainly has nothing to do with any shortcomings in women of these groups, even though one can suspect that some foreign spouses end up harboring feelings of inadequacy or self doubt. The role of support groups for such concerned expats in this region of the world thus becomes quite clear.


What appears problematic IMHO, and believe me I`ve seen this here on my own north American campus, from single 25 year old male students to married profs in their 50`s, is that obsession with the youthful qualities of asian women. And no one dares to bring out the P word as in ‘closet P’ ! How very convenient for non-chinese or non-japanese men to date asian women in their 20`s since they may look like and have body types of 15 year-old western girls, Interestingly enough I found a discussion group called modelminority.com that addresses some of those issues, albeit from an asian-american point of view.

Therefore I believe this topic of expat marriages is worth more scrutiny, and unfortunately it will always bother some with whom we nevertheless agree that not all expat marriages in Asia are bound to fail. An objective, rigorous treatment of this subject is long overdue for the benefit of all those foreign women who will settle in that region in the coming years.

(I am based in Canada)