International Schools and Divorce

jbiersteker
Posts: 121
Joined: Sat Sep 29, 2012 10:38 am

Re: International Schools and Divorce

Post by jbiersteker »

Buffalofan,

That's an interesting observation...it can be very difficult to be a good parent or spouse I'm beginning to believe in today's international schools (particularly in Asia), but what do I know? I"m also starting to believe that I was a little spoiled in the Ontario Teaching system.
shadowjack
Posts: 2138
Joined: Sat Oct 06, 2012 9:49 am

Re: International Schools and Divorce

Post by shadowjack »

jbiersteker,

the other factor to consider is many arrive overseas with marriages already in difficulty to some degree, seeing going overseas as a way to start over in a new place, leave the old stressors behind, and start anew/mend/rebuild their marriage. Yet what they fail to realize is that many of those things are internal and simply relocating does nothing to change those factors. The second thing they don't know (having never experienced it), is that for many couples, especially with kids, but also without, moving to a very foreign country and navigating very very different, strange, and sometimes seemingly hostile systems, creates a whole new set of stress factors which cause their already cracked relationship to implode for one reason or another. And boom!

I have seen this happen with a few couples over the years.
chilagringa
Posts: 335
Joined: Sun Apr 24, 2011 7:19 pm

Re: International Schools and Divorce

Post by chilagringa »

I wonder how the divorce rates would compare for couples who MET overseas versus couples who MOVED overseas together.
Penguin03
Posts: 3
Joined: Fri Dec 08, 2017 3:09 pm

Re: International Schools and Divorce

Post by Penguin03 »

Interesting topic to pose here. My husband and I met at an international School and are both from the states. We have talked many times about how our relationship might be if we were to be teaching in the US. We both feel teaching in the US would cause more stress on our relationship because we find teaching internationally to be far less stressful. In addition we enjoy the fact that we see each other periodically throughout the day and our children get to go to school where we work. Back in the US, we’d be dealing with expensive child care, most likely working at different schools, more bills and all the stresses of teaching in a IS public school nowadays. I’m not saying we would have marital problems we returned but we both feel teaching and living abroad works well for our marriage.
PsyGuy
Posts: 10789
Joined: Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:51 am
Location: Northern Europe

Response

Post by PsyGuy »

Ive heard of some papers that explored the concept, but the best of them were limited to data from an online survey and the others were case studies. I dont know of anywhere anyone examined court records and then did follow up interviews.

From my POV I dont think the differences in divorce between DE and IE are very different in terms of rates, what I see is that the causes between the two differ and that IEs are more sensationalistic. In DE the causes for DT divorces are finances and fatigue, which just isnt very sexy. In IE its more often some type of infidelity which makes for better gossip, and that in IE the community is much smaller and much more closed, theres always someone in every IS who is the resident gossip and everyone seems to know everyones business. Combined with the opportunities available to the male portion of the couple that wouldnt be as readily available. How does it go men are only as faithful as their options? In addition to the opportunities and the differences in femininity, especially in Asia, guys do a lot better in the divorce overseas (in Asia) than they will in the west. The wife gets the kids and some child support but they wont get alimony and the guy can ignore that by simply moving to another country with the next appointment. Usually if the wife is a trailing spouse she just leaves to stay with her parents back in their HOR with the kids, and the male spouse goes about doing what he was doing. There have been ISs and leadership that got involved when they thought a spouse on their faculty was being grossly unfair.

I imagine the forum filter didnt approve of the term for illegal betting that starts with a 'g'
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