The Changing Faces of a Trailing Spouse
Finding My Identity contributed by Nichole Esparon
image courtesy of Emerald Lake Lodge
photography by Carolyne Kauser-Abbott
O
n a trip to Singapore a few years ago, I had a conversation with an expatriate friend that would eventually change the course of my life. Having not long before relocated from the U.K. to Singapore where her husband was setting up the company’s regional headquarters, she had the archetypal expat lifestyle: idyllic house, generous income and the ultimate outdoor playground on her doorstep in the form of one of the world’s most vibrant cities. I don’t mind admitting – I was more than a little jealous. But that day, sipping her Chablis by the buzzy riverside where we sat, my friend launched into a jaw-dropping attack on her life that shattered the rose-colored glasses through which I had been looking at it. “I’m invisible,” she suddenly poured out. “I’m not even sure who I am here. I hate it.” Her words got me thinking. Just how did newly relocated professionals pick up and leave their regular lifestyles, with its home comforts and social networks, to jet off to a completely foreign environment to work? Years later, I found myself back in London following a period of working internationally, at home with two young pre-school children, stung with a sense of isolation and loneliness that I was in no way prepared for, when memories of that day at Singapore Riverside flooded my mind. And so began a new phase in my life that, unbeknownst to us at the time, had germinated during that fateful afternoon. I embarked on a voyage through the lives of accompanying partners about relocation. I was curious – the glamour and excitement was clearly a huge incentive, but there was clearly more to it. What made so-called ‘trailing spouses’ agree to suspend their own careers and social lives to pursue their partners’ goals? How easy was it to integrate into a completely new location? And was there anything I could do to help them in the process? It used to be the case only a couple of decades ago that companies could practically take spouses’ cooperation for granted when relocating employees. They would largely be willing participants, packing their families’ lives into
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