At a glance
Saying yes to the move is different from saying yes to the role the move handed you. This article pulls those two apart, looks at why your partner may struggle to see the difference, and explains why the daily load and the isolation often weigh more than the new culture. It also suggests ways to reopen the arrangement between you.
Clinical insights from 22 years in psychotherapy
I’m Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist in Copenhagen. Qualified at the Psychosynthesis Education Trust and the University of East London. 22 years of full-time, face-to-face clinical practice.
- The role hurts more than the place. Clients seldom come to me upset with the country itself; they come shaken at having become the one who followed.
- Unpaid work stays invisible to whoever goes to the office. In couples I work with, the partner with the job is often truly unaware of how much of the week disappears into errands nobody counts.
- Feeling grateful muffles the protest. People tell me they cannot complain about a life that looks enviable, so the protest goes underground and leaks out in other ways.
Clinical notes: My observations are anonymised and compounded from my session notes since 2004.
Why does being the expat spouse sting so much?
The labels used for you, expat spouse, accompanying partner, trailing spouse, come from paperwork, and they describe whose contract it is rather than your share in the decision. They place you a step behind someone else. For a relocation department that is only a category. For you it can land as a verdict, and the sting usually means something real has been named clumsily. You did come because of another person’s job, country or family. You did not come as luggage, yet many small arrangements now treat you as if you had.
Look at an ordinary week and it becomes concrete. The rental agreement, the phone plan, sometimes even your right to stay, hang from your partner’s employment. The bank wants their details. Your social circle arrived attached to their workplace. You may have led a team in your old life, yet here not a single account or contract is in your name, which is a quiet shock of its own and not quite the loss of identity people prepare themselves for.
Why does this feel worse than the move I said yes to?
The country was your choice; the role arrived afterwards, without anyone checking with you. What you accepted was a plan: the city, the opportunity, a few good years, something better for the family. What actually arrived was an ordinary weekday. No colleagues, no work that is yours, deliveries, appointments and school emails landing on you because you are the one at home, and an evening of hearing about a day you were not part of.
Both are true, and the second does not erase the first. Yet your original yes tends to be brought out in arguments as though it closed the matter, and that is why these talks keep circling. Patterns like this set quietly. As the months pass, your partner’s weeks gather colleagues and purpose while yours fill with the logistics that keep theirs running. Neither of you designed that split. It is what tends to happen when one person lands with a role and the other lands with boxes and a to-do list.
Why can my partner not see how hard it is?
Your partner arrived inside a structure, and structures hide how much effort everything around them takes. They step into a team, a job title, a reason to be introduced. You step into an empty flat. By evening they have spent hours among people while you have dealt with letters, so your “this is hard” sounds to them like a small problem with an easy fix. Often that is honest incomprehension rather than indifference, though left unspoken long enough it can harden into indifference.
A review of research on families who relocate for work describes the accompanying partner facing particular strains, with lost professional identity and isolation coming up repeatedly1. It is a narrative review resting mostly on studies that measured people once, so I take it as a description of where the weight tends to fall rather than proof. Then there is gratitude. On paper you have a comfortable life somewhere safe, so complaining feels ungrateful and you hold it in. Held long enough, it no longer comes out as a wish and instead leaks out as sharpness about the dishes or the weekend.
Is the problem this place, or me?
Most often it is neither; it is the role, and roles shift more readily than nations or temperaments. One study of partners who followed someone abroad found that day-to-day stress and isolation explained much more of how they were faring than how culturally different the new country felt2. It was a single survey, and over 9 in 10 participants were women, so it cannot establish cause or describe everyone. I mention it because it echoes what clients tell me: they come ready for culture shock and are then flattened by having nowhere to be at eleven in the morning.
This is more fixable than it may seem. Warming to a reserved culture is slow and uncertain. Building a structure of your own, and sharing the household load fairly, is slow but far more within reach.
What can I do as the partner who followed?
Approach it as an arrangement to renegotiate, not a flaw in you to correct. That changes what you ask for and whom you ask.
- Name the role once, calmly. Not that you are miserable, but that everything here runs through your partner, and that this describes how things are set up, not a charge against them.
- Write the week down. Appointments, forms, school, the endless small jobs. Seeing it on paper often surprises both of you, and the arguing tends to quieten.
- Get one thing that is only yours. Work, study, a course, a space, anything that belongs to you and brings its own circle.
- Build friendships that do not go through your partner. Their colleagues are borrowed company, and it goes home when they do.
- Agree a date to look at it again. A move can be revisited. Choosing together when you will review it takes away the feeling that this is permanent by default.
These ideas suit an arrangement you can both still discuss. They do not fit where the imbalance has turned into control, where money, your right to stay or contact with home are used against you, or where raising any of this is reliably met with punishment rather than disappointment. That needs facing directly, not tucking into a conversation about relocation. It is also different if months of flatness have replaced frustration, or if you cannot imagine wanting anything where you live; that is nearer to depression than to a poor arrangement, and practical tweaks will not touch it. Whether I see you alone or both of you together, much of the early work is putting the situation into accurate words, with nobody cast as the bad one.
Questions people ask
Does this deserve therapy when I chose to move too?
Yes, and having made the choice yourself can make it harder to voice anywhere else. Agreeing to a move does not mean agreeing to everything it turned into.
Should I come alone or with my partner?
Come alone if you need to sort out your own view first, and together if the same row keeps repeating. Both are fine starting points, and moving between them later is common.
Could talking about it deepen my resentment?
Resentment usually softens once what lies beneath it is said properly, and it grows when it is not. We are not gathering evidence against anyone, only helping the real request get heard.
Can we have sessions by video wherever we live?
Yes, all sessions are online by video, in English. We agree a regular time in Copenhagen time, and couples can join together or from two places.
What if we may move again next year?
That is a reason to begin rather than wait, because the pattern tends to move with you. Unless something changes in how you arrange things, the same role often rebuilds itself in the next country.
If you followed your partner abroad and lost your own footing, online psychotherapy or online couples therapy can help you find it again.
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Sources
- Filipič Sterle, Fontaine, De Mol and Verhofstadt. Expatriate family adjustment: an overview of empirical evidence on challenges and resources. Narrative review. Frontiers in Psychology, 2018.
- Herrmann Aegerter, Meyer, Gaab and Ooi. Expatriation stressors and the well-being of accompanying partners: a commonality analysis approach. 207 participants. Frontiers in Psychology, 2025.
How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.
