Beyond the Traditional Role of Accompanying Partner – Are You Ready For It?

Perhaps you are new to expatriate life and are considering how you will define yourself as an accompanying partner or perhaps you have been an accompanying partner for a while and want to do something different.

If you take the next steps, you will be taking the first steps on a road less travelled for many accompanying partners.

There’s a common myth that if you have found the “right” thing for you to do in life, implementing it will be easy; the universe will bring you what you need; your work will “flow”.  We’re calling time on that myth not because of some Grinch-like desire to pour cold water on your dreams and ambitions, but because we see that this myth does a dis-service by creating unrealistic expectations of what’s required to succeed.

In the blog today we’re going to talk about some of the challenges we’ve had to deal with as we created Thriving Abroad and we’re asking you, if you’re thinking about a non-traditional accompanying partner role, to ask yourself if these are issues you are ready to deal with.

The “universe” might not give you what you ask for, at least not right away: As we said above, popular wisdom is that if you’re focusing on the “right” things, success should be effortless.  But that’s not our experience, nor do we think it’s the experience of most people who have created businesses. 

Had we thought that the first “no” was a referendum on the worthiness of our idea, we’d be long gone by now.  It’s taken resilience and persistence to start and build our business; we invoke both qualities on a frequent basis to keep working toward our vision.

Our tips – Set goals that extend you but are reachable.  The first hurdle is not a judgement of your employability or of the strength of your business proposition; it’s just the first hurdle to be overcome.  How can you build the resilience needed to keep going when it get tough?

We’ve have a frequent dialogue with our respective families to make sure we’re in alignment: Building our business has meant significant changes for our partners and our children.  We’re both lucky to have partners who are 100% supportive of what we are doing but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t involved significant adjustments.  We’ve both had to renegotiate established family roles and responsibilities, many of which were entrenched and longstanding. Our family lives have been structured around those roles and restructuring is not always as simple as deciding to make a change. Our tips - Ensure that you and your partner are in alignment regarding your respective roles and responsibilities.  This is particularly important when you are making changes to an already established pattern.  How can you take the steps to ensure that you and your partner are aligned?

Sometimes we feel left out of expat life and sometimes we’re quite isolated: We live in expat environments where the majority of accompanying partners don’t work.  Because we are working, we often have to say no to participating in social activities that occur during the workday.  This means we miss out – a lot.  There aren’t so many social activities that take place outside of the working day.  We’ve both had to find the right balance, carving out one or two activities per week, often ones that tick more than one box (exercising with friends for example).  Sometimes, because we are working from home, we go whole days without speaking to another adult.  Maintaining friendships and a social life requires planning. Our tips – make time for one or two social activities per week if you are working from home.  If you are in an office, participate in one out of work activity that will enable you to build a social network.  Join a professional women’s network for mutual support from people who share your circumstances. How will you handle it when your friends are out having fun and you’re working?

We’ve had to enlist other support: Working has meant that we’ve had to find support to fill the gaps and to ensure that our family lives at weekends are not completely overwhelmed by chores.  This has meant that we’ve had to employ people to do things for us, ahead of our business making money.  It’s also meant that we’ve had to ask friends to help us even when we’ve not been sure we’d be able to return the favour.  Children home sick from school still makes us break out in cold sweats. Our tips – Work out where you are likely to need support before you need it.  Plan for contingencies, such as days when children are sick OR the unexpected happens before you encounter them.  Can you find the right help to support you where and when you need it?

Taking the path less travelled as an accompanying partner is not easy, but the outcome of career continuity or a portable career can be life changing.  Which path is the one for you?  If you are frustrated with your career or fulfilment in 2019 and would help to make some of those hard decisions or if you’ve made them and you’d like to kick start your plans , we have a limited number of one-on-one coaching slots available.  Contact us HERE if you’d like to schedule a free strategy session with us.