Family & Relationships Travel Self-Help

The Expat Partner's Survival Guide (Summary)

by Clara Wiggins

You've just landed in a new country, surrounded by boxes and a foreign language. Your partner heads off to their exciting new job, leaving you to figure out everything from where to buy milk to how to make friends. Suddenly, you're no longer the lawyer, the teacher, or the manager you once were—you're just 'the expat partner.' How do you rebuild an entire life and a sense of self from scratch when your identity has been erased?

You're More Than Just a 'Trailing Spouse'

The book tackles the jarring loss of professional and personal identity that often occurs when one partner follows the other for an international assignment. It validates the grief of this experience and provides a framework for proactively rebuilding your sense of self.

Wiggins shares an anecdote of a highly successful professional who, after moving abroad, found herself at a dinner party being asked "So, what does your husband do?" for the tenth time. This simple question highlighted her sudden professional invisibility and the societal assumption that her identity was now solely defined by her partner's career.

Embrace the 'Culture Shock' Cycle

Expat life isn't a constant adventure; it follows a predictable emotional cycle. Understanding the stages—from the initial 'honeymoon' phase to the frustrating 'rejection' phase and eventual adjustment—helps you navigate the inevitable lows without despair.

A new expat partner might spend the first month marveling at local markets (the honeymoon phase). By month three, they might be in tears of frustration over not being able to figure out the banking system (the rejection phase). The book normalizes this, showing it's a universal stage, not a personal failure.

Your Social Life is Now Your Job

Unlike at home, a social network won't just happen. The book stresses that the accompanying partner must treat finding friends and building a community as a primary responsibility, requiring deliberate and proactive effort.

Wiggins suggests using the "say yes to everything" rule for the first three months. Even if an invitation to a coffee morning with strangers or a local craft fair seems daunting, accepting it is a crucial strategy for casting a wide social net and creating opportunities for connection in a new place.

Repatriation is Harder Than You Think

While everyone focuses on the challenge of moving abroad, the book warns that returning home, or 'repatriation,' can be an even more disorienting and emotionally complex process. You've changed, but your home has not.

An expat returning home after five years in Asia might experience reverse culture shock when friends complain about trivial 'first-world problems.' The expat feels disconnected and misunderstood, as their own worldview has been fundamentally altered by their experiences abroad, a common struggle the book prepares you for.

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