Trailing Spouse? - What an unfortunate moniker for such a key role in the overall expatriate picture.

The term implies personal baggage, giving the impression of someone who’s come along for the ride. It’s a far cry from the reality of it all.

  My wife and I enjoyed parallel careers in different industries in Canada for most of our working lives. However, like many things in life, opportunity can be indiscriminant and gender ignorant and in our case knocked on my wife’s well deserved door first with little warning. A colossal test for the male species, indeed. Say “yes” enabling your significant other to realize her true career and financial potential while giving all involved the adventure of a lifetime and exposure to a side of the world and a different way of life only accessible to most via the Discovery Channel.

Or, let your male ego make the decision and say “no” keeping your lovely world status quo knowing that each and every day for the rest of your life you’ll be saying “should have”, “would have”, “could have”and wondering “what if”.

So how hard could it be? My wife’s role was well defined and our three school age boys equally so, requiring them to switch one great school for another. My role was not so defined but seemed close enough. Do absolutely everything and anything necessary to provide a smooth transition from exit to entry, packing up our old life and setting up our new life on the other side of the world complete with home, cars, furniture and a social life while keeping everyone happy, healthy and focused on work and school.

Fair enough, I’d been training for this. I’d run my own business for years: similar requirements, just different tasks, really. Break each project into digestible pieces, prioritize and calendarize and never stop until you’re done. And when you are done: get your own career started again. No problem! One the first things I realized as a male in this situation was that I was an extremely rare breed. I should have clued in early on when, as hard as I tried, I was unable to find much written about the Male Trailing Spouse, a species on the rise but rarely written about. It was kind of like researching an ailment that affects 5 out of 10,000,000 people. The second was that many people had a hard time accepting the concept of a Male Trailing Spouse. Their comments lead me to the conclusion that the vast majority of them slept through the Equality Lecture in Sociology 101.

As much as men and women would like to claim that they’re advocates of equal opportunity, my experience indicates that we’re still a generation or two away from that goal. The ironic fact is that my wife and I expected that she would be on the receiving end of gender bias when the opposite has proven to be true. Some of my favourite reactions from the seemingly worldly and socially savvy.

“Wow” – not very clever, but an indication that their concept of Universal Order has just been challenged. “So that makes you a house husband” – sure to always make my ears go red. “So you carry the purse in the family” – this makes my entire body tense up like I’m having an involuntary isometric workout. “I’m jealous”- clearly a lack of understanding as to the work involved, the sacrifices you’ve made to make this happen and your daily challenge of enjoying this time between careers and not upsetting your wife who is putting in 14 hour days tackling problems her company is paying her big bucks to fix.

One of my first survival skills was to develop my “elevator speech”, a 15 second blurb to communicate my situation and fend off the ridiculous. My first elevator speech I called “The Truth”- too long, too dull and open to comment. My second was called the “The Martyr”- the scarifies I’ve made to make it all work for my family. The third, “The Hero”- what a great guy I am, helping my wife realize her career dreams. The fourth “The Dilettante”- Just here pursuing the leisure arts until it’s time to return to Canada. My personal favourite and most widely applied, “The Pitch”– moved here from Canada on my wife’s expat package, have everybody settled and happy, now it’s time to get working again, would you like to see my CV or do you know someone who would?

Another survival skill: Just say yes! Our most important survival skill as a family and one that has contributed to our ability to settle in quickly was our willingness to say yes to everything that we sometimes would have otherwise turned down in Canada. * “Would you like to come to the Principals Cocktail Party?”– “Yes!” * “Would you like to come to the Soccer Club Fund raiser?”–“Yes!” * “Would you like to renew your wedding vows with 10 other couples in the Outback?”–“Yes!” Fortunately that one never materialized. * “Would you like to come to our families annual fall canning party, we make preservatives and slaughter a live pig to make pepperoni, it’s a blast”–“Yes!”And it was! Some people you click with, some people you don’t. The key is to get yourself out there. In no time at all we met enough people to have a cocktail party for 60 people which of course resulted in even more invites.

The Trailing Spouse plays a pivotal role without the benefit of an instruction manual or any real compensation. They reinvent their family’s lives usually on another continent while balancing the excitement of the foreign assignment with the realities of actually living in another culture and the truth is that it doesn’t always go well. There’s an interesting statistic out there that has proven to motivate me as I simply don’t want to become part of that particular statistic. Not all corporate expatriate assignments are viewed as successful by the firms that initiate them. In fact, of the expatriate assignments that do fail, 95% of those failures are a result of the assignment not working out for expatriates spouse and /or children. An interesting figure indeed when you consider how little thought and preparation firms invest in those who trail. For my family it has all worked out beautifully.

After our first year I can happily report that my wife is flourishing in her new position. Our 3 boys have upped their scholastic game; we have a wonderful home in Sydney surrounded by new friends, acquaintances and lots of visitors. Me? I’m now onto the final step -restarting my career. Knowing what I know now would I do it all over again? Absolutely! By the way, would you like to see my CV or know someone who would?

-- Cameron McTavish

I understand Cameron has subsequently landed a great job so he has proved that with the right attitude and approach to the trailing spouse situation it can work - Thanks Cameron, great article.