Expat Dating Mom

People sometimes ask me if I moved countries because of my ex’s job. It’s a simple question, but it opens something much heavier underneath. Because the truth is not about a single decision, or even a single relationship. It’s about a pattern — one I did not fully see while I was inside it.

I wasn’t always like this. I used to just move through things. I remember being on a student trip, driving five people back from Essen after Love Parade, while some guys joked that “we can’t let a woman drive.” I didn’t argue. I didn’t engage. I just drove. That was always my way — get on with it.

I don’t know exactly where that comes from. Maybe from growing up in Poland. Maybe from my father. Maybe from something like ADHD that makes you keep moving no matter what. Or maybe from the women before me — both of my grandmothers, who had no choice but to carry everything on their shoulders and keep going.

Because that is something people don’t always understand: many Polish women grow up learning how to hold everything together. Home, children, stability — often while the man beside them drifts, withdraws, or becomes quietly toxic in ways that are hard to name but impossible to ignore. My grandmothers each faced that in different ways. And importantly, they both called it out. They did not silently accept it. But life was not easy for them because of that. Standing up came with consequences.

I think about that now, because for a long time I thought I was just “getting on with it.” But in reality, I was also absorbing more than I should have had to.

There is a moment that, looking back, defines a lot.

In Singapore, my ex-husband hit me. The next day, instead of space, instead of accountability, I was told I could not move out — because we had committed to an expensive rental, and he would make me pay for it. At the same time, he promised he would go to therapy. That he would change. That he felt terrible. And also, in the same breath, that it was somehow my fault — that I should not have done whatever it was that triggered him.

I think it was organizing a birthday party for him with his friends. Something that, in itself, was an act of care. But it wasn’t what he had imagined. And that — the gap between what he wanted and what actually happened — became my responsibility.

Control is a quiet thread that runs through everything.

At the time, I believed him when he said he would change. I believed therapy would help him understand what he had done. But he went once. He said he understood, that it wouldn’t happen again. And that was it.

What I did not understand back then was how deeply controlling it is to tell someone:
“You can’t leave — I’ll make you pay.”

It’s not just about money. It’s about removing choice. About tying freedom to punishment. About creating a situation where staying feels safer than leaving, even when staying is not safe.

That pattern didn’t exist only in that moment. It was everywhere, just in smaller, more normalized ways. He rarely bought me birthday gifts. He often said I spent too much, even though I earned my share and lived simply. There was always an undercurrent that my independence needed to be checked, questioned, or limited.

And that same dynamic echoes now, just in a different form.

The current discussions — about money, about what I “owe,” about how and when I should pay — are not just financial. They carry the same structure: pushing toward arrangements that would lock me into ongoing strain, that would limit my ability to live freely, that would keep me in a position of obligation rather than balance.

Suggestions like paying large amounts annually, regardless of my current income, are framed as practical solutions. But they ignore reality. They ignore the fact that my income has changed significantly. They ignore that I do not have that liquidity. And more importantly, they recreate a familiar pattern: high, rigid expectations that I am supposed to meet, regardless of whether they are sustainable.

At the same time, I see a different reality on the other side. Spending choices that reflect freedom. Travel, personal expenses, things that are clearly not constrained in the same way. That contrast is hard to ignore.

And yet, I find myself no longer wanting to argue every point.

Because this is where something has shifted.

I am no longer trying to prove that I am right in every detail. I am not trying to win every argument. I am trying to step out of a dynamic where everything has to be justified.

I know what is feasible for me. I know what is not. I know that tying financial obligations to real events — like the sale of a property — is grounded in reality. And I know that committing to ongoing payments that I cannot sustain is not responsibility — it is setting myself up for failure.

There is also something deeper: I am no longer willing to accept structures that quietly limit my life.

Because that is what this has always been about.

Not just money.
Not just decisions.
But who carries the weight, and under what conditions.

My grandmothers carried weight because they had no choice. But they also named what was happening to them. They did not pretend it was fair.

And I think I am finally doing the same.

Not by fighting louder.
Not by explaining more.
But by holding a line that is grounded in reality, even if it is not accepted.

Because “getting on with it” is no longer enough.

Now it is about choosing what I carry — and what I no longer will.

I was sitting in an office in another country yesterday, meeting colleagues for a workshop. It was a rare opportunity to gossip—the kind we don’t often get anymore with work-from-home.

“Do you know why Roger left?”

My colleague was taking the bait. A rare occasion to power trip is to discreetly demonstrate you know more than the other person because you’re SUPERIOR. You are meant to know secrets and show them off, but never “gossip,” because that is somehow filthy. To gossip is to fail the trust of our superiors.

The secret? He won a million in a lottery. I don’t even know why he was still working. My colleague eventually broke; everyone likes to gossip, even those who have sworn their soul to the matrix.

It made me think. I don’t partake in the lottery. But the fastest way to not win is to never buy a ticket.

My colleagues were not impressed with my cliché. But I went home and instantly agreed on a date with that Hinge guy. I had sworn off Hinge. Why do I need anyone anyway? Such a waste of time. But… you won’t win the lottery if you don’t buy the ticket, right? So let’s gamble one more time and see the lousy return for the precious little time I’ve got. I bought a cute outfit, too. I want to feel sexy. Certainly nothing in my closet fits.

Lately, I’ve been fielding questions from people I used to know. “May I ask a personal question? Are you ever going to find someone? Or have you given up on men completely?”

I don’t know how to answer that. This person sees me as I was 20 years ago, when it was easy. They forget they aren’t in their prime either; they’re just happy to live the comfy life where “the wife” fixes all the warmth and charm while they just show up and play.

Then there was the Christmas waffle. In my family, we split the waffle and make wishes for each other. A family member said to me: “I wish for you that you finally find love.”

As if I have not found it before. I have found it and lost it many times. But this wish hangs over me like an unfulfilled obligation to the world. To finally be “normal.” To finally be “complete.”

In my country of origin, you are only complete when you bond with a guy. He is worshipped like a golden calf, regardless of how shitty or unworthy he is. A woman (especially with kids) needs this proverbial man to validate her decisions. Once you don’t have one, your life decisions are suddenly doubted by a “committee” of well-wishers.

“I don’t know if you should be selling your flat. And what does your ex-husband think about it?”

You don’t know? I don’t know either. Usually, people make a decision and then wait and see—men or women alike. All I know is my ex-husband hasn’t lived in this house for five years. He didn’t hang the curtains or make the repairs. It wasn’t his money spent and he didn’t move the furniture to make space for my kids. He is happily living off rentals while the kids live in a tiny room that also houses his wardrobe.

And you still want to ask him questions regarding my life?

I’ve recently been catching up on cinema from 2015 to 2020—years I missed because I was raising young kids and living with someone who didn’t appreciate movies. I watched Tully and realized: she isn’t crazy. Then I watched the second season of Fargo.

There is a brilliant scene where Kirsten Dunst’s character, Peggy, goes into an existential rant in the back of a police car. The carnage of gang warfare is over; there is blood everywhere, and her husband is dead. The whole mess started because she accidentally ran a man over and just… kept going.

As she’s being driven away, she breaks down over the impossible expectations of being a woman in the late 70s:

“It’s a lie, okay, that you can do it all, be a wife and a mother and this self-made career woman, like there’s 37 hours in a day. And then when you can’t, they say it’s you, you’re faulty, like… like… like you’re inferior somehow. And, like… like, if you could just get your act together, until you’re half mad with…”

The policeman driving the car interrupts her: “Peggy, people are dead.”

It resonated. It’s the ultimate patriarchal summary. You try to explain the bone-deep exhaustion of keeping things alive and thriving, and they shut you down with a single sentence taken from their destructive games of death. I, for one, am tired of the war and the power plays. These “heroes” create completely unnecessary messes around the world and then expect their “heroism” in “sorting it out” to trump everything else.

They are the ones who should be interrupted.