Why Your Friend Said You Need to Talk to Someone

Hi,

We are moving to our first posting in August. Both excited about the country we got, looking forward to the new adventure. But I just talked to my friend whose family is moving back to headquarters and she insists we should talk to someone.

She said we would talk more when we see each other this summer, but I wonder why she made it sound so serious. Is not life on posting supposed to be fun? We started doing our research about housing and schools for our son, watching YouTube videos about the posting country, planning the vaccinations. I started looking for jobs, fingers crossed. But what else do we need to know to prepare?

A Spouse

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Dear Spouse, 

You are moving in August and it means you have time to prepare. And prepare you must.

What your friend was probably trying to tell you is that your life and your couple's life will change. Dramatically. I like to use my friend's metaphor that diplomatic life is a journey of a million gains and a million losses. And it means that it helps to enter this world knowing what is waiting for you.

Your partner (and hopefully you too) will get institutional training on logistics, security, maybe cultural adjustment. Take it. It is useful. But no one will tell you what happens to you and your relationship when the structure of your entire life shifts. And that matters more than anything in your suitcase.

What each of you will likely face

You may need to leave your job and become financially and organisationally dependent. Your ability to make decisions about your own life will shrink. You will carry most of the household management, your son's adjustment, the daily navigation of a country where you may not speak the language and may not understand how things work. You may start feeling like a single parent, even when your partner is physically present, because their work will consume them in ways it never did at headquarters.

Your partner will face work demands that bleed into everything. More visibility, more pressure, fewer boundaries. They will come home exhausted and guilty. Guilty that you are carrying so much. Guilty that they cannot fix it. Guilty that when you try to tell them you are struggling, they get defensive because they are already doing everything they can. And they may have new work challenges and far less time and space to process them.

These are fundamental changes to who you each are, how you function, and what your relationship can bear. And if you do not talk about them before the pressure hits, you will spend your first posting thinking something is wrong with you or your partner when what is actually wrong is that no one told you this was structural, predictable, and preventable.

When the container is no longer available

Back home, you functioned as each other's container. When one of you struggled, the other could hold space. You took turns. That worked because you were equals. You both had jobs, autonomy, financial independence, your own support systems. The balance let you be there for each other without either of you collapsing under the weight. And you also had your support networks that you could reach in person (not through Zoom) if your partner was not available.

On posting, you will both face enormous stress at the same time. Both of you will be in crisis, at least the first year. Different crises for each of you, but crises nonetheless. And when you both need the container at once, there may be no container available. Neither of you may have capacity to hold the other because you are both underwater.

The structure that let you support each other back home may be gone. And most couples do not realise this until they are already struggling and wondering why they cannot seem to show up for each other the way they used to.

And there is no usual external support system either. Add to that the need to keep up appearances, one of the perks and illnesses of the diplomatic environment. With only one third of couples managing to upscale their relationship on a posting, the remaining two thirds struggle in silence. They post anonymously in spouse groups because there is shame in admitting it is hard and fear of damaging their partner’s career. This creates silence that kills relationships slowly.

What you can do before you move

I will say the obvious now: prevention is better than cure. You cannot wait until your relationship is struggling to start looking at what the diplomatic structure does to couples, how ready each of you are for this posting and its gains and losses. By then, the resentment has built, the distance feels insurmountable, and addressing it while living in the pressure is almost impossible.

So what can you do? Sit down with your partner now, while you still have emotional space. Talk about what may be coming. Not just the logistics. The changes to your lives individually and your life as a couple. What you will need from each other. What you are worried about. Say it out loud so you both know what you are walking into.

Most couples avoid this conversation because it feels negative to focus on potential problems when you are excited about the adventure. But the couples who do well are not the ones who pretend the hard parts will not exist. They are the ones who see them coming and decide how they will handle them. Together.

I have a free questionnaire that helps couples identify the topics they need to discuss before the move. Please reach out at olga.shumylo@gmail.com if you need it. And if you want help facilitating this discussion, checking if your container is ready for the first posting or fixing it before the move, I work with couples every day. You know where to find me.

Photo by Zahra Wijayanti on Unsplash