MANTALK: Where do lonely hearts go?

We all hear of the women who follow their husbands to new jobs abroad. They hand in their resignation letters at their jobs, perhaps sign off on careers they have built over years. They leave their friends and family and salonists and relocate to some foreign land, where it snows, to honour their wedding vows. I always wonder what these women do once they have settled in these countries with no friends to speak of thousands of kilometres from home.

I picture them waking up to get the kids ready for school and making sure that the husband hasn’t worn his bad trousers to work and then when the last person has closed the door, she is left alone in a house echoing with loneliness. Well, not exactly alone, she has very fast wi-fi for company.

In my mind I picture these expat-wives sitting at the window barefeet, staring outside with wet looks. Feeling somewhat marooned in a strange island inhabited by the ghosts lost in dreams.

I always wonder if she experiences any fear; fear that she made a mistake leaving her job and career, her friends and her manicurist, sacrificing a lot for this man with bad trousers and his burgeoning career. What about jealousy? Is she jealous that he is out using his brains while she waits for the plumber to fix the bathroom sink? Or reading another book in a still house?

What does she do whole day before she eventually finds something to do outside the house? How does she start from scratch, to build relationships, make new friends, get someone who waxes her without engaging in long talk like Linda back home? Does she resent the husband at some point for sacrificing so much for him. Does he sometimes catch her at the dinner table staring at him in that strange look that sometimes our women give us? That look of, “Gosh, I can’t believe I never noticed how large his nostrils are.” And this husband, is there an element of guilt on his part? That someone left everything to follow him. Does he sometimes feel heavily indebted?

I always picture the expat wife waiting expectantly at the door in the evening for their husbands to come back from home, following them around in the house as she talks incessantly while he kicks off his shoe, pours water, hangs a coat, dying to hear about his day, dying for adult mental stimulation...And when it comes to sex, is it the man who says he has a headache because he’s tired?

Then I thought, but what about the men who leave everything and follow their wives abroad to become expat husbands; staring outside at window, dropping children to school, staying back in a house that still smells of fresh paint, going online looking for projects to keep him busy, walking to the local bar at 4pm to have a beer and watch sports and waiting for his wife at 7:30pm to come home so that they can speak in mother-tongue because he’s tired of speaking English with these strange white men  with funny accents at the pub.

Then I found a man like that; a man who has lived in many countries in Europe with his hotshot career wife. A businessman. I asked him, “How was that life? How did you fill your days as an expat husband? What did your friends and family think of you? Were you scared of leaving your businesses here to follow her over there? She was obviously earning more than you, was that ever footnote worth close scrutiny?

I learnt a few things from him. The first being that nobody really sits at the window staring outside. (That’s regrettable). At least he didn’t. Second, and he said this indignantly, “I’m a man with skills. There are jobs out there for a man with skills like me. So I always found a job to keep me busy.” Hear! Hear!

A man needs to have skills. What about money? I posed. Money is the devil. Was your wife making more money than you ever an issue? He said their relationship is not and has never been based on money. That a relationship based on money crumbles faster than a deck of cards when the wife makes more. Here is what shocked me though; that he knows his wife’s salary which either makes him a man with not just skills but with superpowers. Either that or he’s psychic. Or better still he hypnotised her to get that information out of her. He swung a pendulum before her eyes after serving her tea and murmured; Linda, darling, do you feel sleepy? Look at the coin, look at this coin Linda...good...now tell me much you earn?

This guy also added that expat husbands are paid a half of what the wife earns in salary.

“They are paying you for disrupting your life!” he told me. Can someone tell me if this is true? He said he would get as much as 3,000 euros in some countries. That’s easily over Sh300,000, not such a shabby disruption, I would say. I’m sure there are many men who wouldn’t mind their lives being disrupted for that amount. Still, it takes quite a big man to leave his career or business here to relocate to each town his wife is posted in.