Why are we fighting so much since we moved abroad?

Why did the trouble start months after we arrived?

The early months run on urgency, and the strain appears once the to-do list is finished and all that is left is to live there.

Somewhere to live, the paperwork, a bank account, a school, a way of getting around. While the list lasts you are a team on a mission, and the relationship runs on the energy of the project. Then the list is done, and an unexpected flatness settles in. This is life now, and it feels smaller than the one you left behind.

The pressures of moving countries are slow ones. A review of research on families who relocate describes pressures such as an unfamiliar culture, missing home, a new circle of people, not knowing what comes next and loneliness, which touch everyone in the household, with each person meeting their own version¹. It is a narrative review rather than a measurement, but it fits what I see: none of this settles in a couple of weeks, which is why couples often date the trouble to the fourth or sixth month rather than the first.

There is a second reason, harder to admit. Moving was a decision, and rarely an evenly shared one. When the new life starts to disappoint, even a small letdown raises the question of whether you should have come at all.

Why is one of us coping and the other is not?

You are settling in on two different timetables, and the partner whose job, language or family was already in place has footholds the other lacks.

• Work. One of you has colleagues, a role and a reason to leave the house each morning. The other left a job to come.
• Language. One of you can keep up at a dinner party. The other spends the night a couple of sentences behind.
• Family. One of you has relatives a short drive away. The other sees theirs on a screen.

So your partner arrives home happy about a good week, you fall quiet, and your quiet lands on them as an accusation for doing well. Their ease is part of what leaves you on the outside. Your need for support is part of what leaves them feeling blamed. Each of you is giving an honest account of one and the same evening.

The burden is uneven. Whoever arrived to a ready-made job or nearby relatives has more room to notice what is happening, so more of the noticing can fairly fall to them. This reflects spare capacity, not blame.

Why do we keep having the same argument?

The real pressure sits outside the relationship where you cannot argue with it, so the argument lands on whatever is within reach.

Nobody can argue with a visa queue, a tax office, or a city where nobody laughs at your jokes yet. The dishes, the weekend plans and the tone of a text are always within reach. The topic is wrong and the feeling is real, which is why nothing gets resolved.

Something shows up in the way couples talk, too. In a laboratory study of 41 couples, when one partner described stress from outside the relationship, the other used the word we less often, and when there was less we-talk, the stressed partner gave the conversation lower marks². The sample was small and mostly well educated, the setting was artificial, and the design cannot show cause, so I treat it with caution. It does echo something I notice: how much it can steady a struggling partner to hear that this is happening to both of you, not only to them.

Try to see what each reaction is aiming for rather than how it appears across the table. Pushing harder is an attempt to be reached. Withdrawing is an attempt to stay steady. Neither lands the way it was meant.

Have we lost each other, or lost what held us up?

A good deal of the distance you feel comes from lost scaffolding, because the move took away the friends, routines and outside people the relationship leaned on.

Back home, two people in love are propped up by many others. A sibling hears the complaint about the in-laws. A colleague takes the work frustration. An old friend laughs at the same things you do. Abroad, it all lands on a single person, who is just as tired, still finding their own feet, and the subject of half of it.

In my experience the number of people you know matters less than whether a few of them know each other. A small circle that overlaps tends to hold you better than a long list of acquaintances. When a couple’s supports have gone, what they need is new support, not a ruling on whether they still love each other.

How does the move feel for the partner who belongs there?

This side gets talked about less, and it carries its own difficulty. They have watched someone they love shrink. They offered the obvious help, the translating, the introductions, and it kept going wrong. Slowly they come to feel that their own country, family and fluency are things to apologise for.

So they begin to filter. They stop mentioning what went well, since it seems to hurt you. You pick up on the silence and decide they are living their real life somewhere you cannot see, which is close to the opposite of the truth. Now both of you are tiptoeing around each other and saying less.

How do we get through this, and when is that not enough?

Tell apart what the relocation is doing from what is wrong between you, then help the partner who is further behind find something in the new place that is theirs alone.

• Say who is behind, and where. Talk about whose timetable is slower, and in what area, rather than who is harder to live with.
• Hear the cost at a calm moment. Whoever sacrificed more names it once, calmly. The other hears it out and does not argue for the move.
• Build new outside support deliberately. Look for a small group of people who know each other, not a long contact list.
• Spread the everyday complaints. Not every frustration with the new country belongs with your partner, who did not design it.
• Keep one thing from your old life. A language, a sport, a regular call, chosen and arranged by you rather than by your partner.

Give that a few months of real effort before judging it. That is a suggestion about order, not a clinical rule.

These steps do not fit every situation. If contempt has crept in, so that one of you talks about the other with a sneer, the move is no longer the main problem. If one of you has privately made up their mind to go and is handling the other instead of being honest, the effort is built on something untrue. If low mood persists through the better weeks, it needs attention beyond the relationship. Telling these apart from the inside is hard, and it is worth doing slowly with someone outside the relationship who has no stake in the outcome. A free 30-minute call is a sensible way to find out whether that would help.

Questions people ask

Should we come together, or should I start alone?

Come together if you both want things between you to change; come alone if you first need to work out what you want to say. Both are a reasonable place to begin.

We live in different time zones from Copenhagen. Can we still have sessions?

Yes: all sessions are by video, at a regular time in Copenhagen time that fits your day. You can join from the same room or, if needed, from two.

What if we disagree about whether the move is what went wrong?

Therapy can still help, as long as you are both willing to take part, because the disagreement about what is wrong is often the thing to work on. I would rather explore that openly than ask you to agree on a diagnosis first.

What does a first session look like?

Each of you tells me what relocating required, what you lost and what you were hoping for, and I listen for where your accounts part ways. You should leave with the pattern put into plain words.

Does therapy in English work if it is neither partner’s first language?

Yes, and a shared second language can make some things easier to say than they would be in your mother tongue. If one of you is less fluent, mention it early and I will adjust the pace.

When a move abroad puts your relationship under strain, I work with couples in online couples therapy, by video, wherever you have landed.

Sources

1. 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.
2. Lau, Randall, Duran and Tao. Examining the effects of couples’ real-time stress and coping processes on interaction quality: language use as a mediator. 41 couples. Frontiers in Psychology, 2019.

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.