Robin Pascoe`s self-assigned task in her book is to validate, inform and empower the accompanying spouses of employees in foreign postings. First of all, it is a helpful revelation to know this is necessary, that there is a strong possiblilty that the needs of these spouses will go unmet and cause distress.
Robin does us spouses living abroad a great service. In addition to providing an insightful foreword by a wise couples therapist and a useful list of book and website resources at the end, in the eight chapters from "Moveable Marriages 101" through "Isolation and Dependence," "Dual Career Challenges," to "Restoring Balance in a Moveable Marriage," she shows us how she and her husband have adjusted and strengthened their marriage through many relocations and how she has come to have a positive attitude toward change.
What helped and touched me even more than the expertise Robin shares from her experience and research on the subject of relocation is her vulnerable authenticity in describing and accepting her own and her husband`s real feelings, shortcomings, mistakes ... and resulting insights. This book was written by a real woman and wife about her real marriage to a real man and husband. Both partners shine through the pages with their positive and sometimes limited attitudes and timings intact. Their commitment to each other and to their marriage is the strong thread that doesn`t break in spite of frazzling times. This is simply uplifting to read about as an example to follow. It is encouraging to know that, as Carl Rogers said, "we can be all of our experience," and that we can even be that together!
For example, Robin writes that she had felt her husband`s biggest "crime" was "his good fortune to have an identity that both elevated and inspired him." Later, when he asked her what would make her happy, she couldn`t admit to him it would make her happy for him to be a little less happy. These passages taken together show that a successful marriage is about both partners having an identity that elevates and inspires, and about both of them being committed to supporting each other in developing such an identity.
Every adjustment in life we make takes its toll in stress. Robin writes that relocation, along with death and divorce, is at the top of the list of life-altering, traumatic change. However, stress within limits is a good thing. Only if it overpowers our capabilities or continues too long does it become distress. Since the two human conditions having the most potential for producing distress are impotence (in the sense of being required to act but lacking the authority or ability to do so) and isolation, we see what a critical situation a moved marriage can be in. Robin gives researched and home-tested suggestions for preventing distress, especially in the transition period to a "new life abroad."
I wish I had had this book to read all those years ago when I first came to Germany, especially during the distressful in-between time after leaving Texas and before feeling settled here. It would have taught me what I have had to learn through stumbling and suffering: a steady, humorous acceptance of the ups and downs of living a marriage in a foreign environment; the conviction that my marriage is more precious and fragile than any of my possessions so deserves my best care, time and efforts; the realization that I am responsible for my own fulfillment as a person in the context of my family life and the demands of my surrroundings; the trust that I will be loved and supported in this endeavor as I love and support my husband; and, best of all, that my husband and I are allowed to learn slowly and make mistakes and can still be, not only accepted and valued, but eventually even fulfilled and successful.
One of the best lines I ever read in a book review was written by our daughter for 8th grade English class in her German school about Sue Townsend`s The Diary of Adrian Mole. Isabelle wrote: "I have read this book eight times and have laughed every time." I will go back to Robin Pascoe`s A Moveable Marriage again and again and am looking forward to reading her three previous books on successful living abroad and repatriation. I like it that the last word in A Moveable Marriage is "love."
Mary Susan Westhoff
August 2003
I am an American person-centered counselor based in Düsseldorf, Germany, with a special interest in intercultural living and identity.
