Expat Dating Mom

“Sanne asked me who you are dating,” Marieke said.

“Are you sure? The one that never says hi to me at school? The one from the ‘Alley Ladies’ group you meet?”

The Alley Ladies is the ultra exclusive school moms WA group of WAGs. The exclusivity is based on that you have to live in one of the multimillion worth mansions and the name of the street it it on is not “street” but “alley”…

One crazy thing in this country is that I actually have a cross over with those other mom’s at school. The public schools being still perceived of better quality and the remainder’s of a frugal, egalitarian upbringing get’s the Sannes of this country to make the hard decision and send them to that school. Well, it is still based on a post code lottery whether you get in or not. Nevertheless, it causes me to have a graceful a wall flower in school conversations and introductions.

Marieke is my friend as she is strong and brave and likes what she likes, but most of the local moms she introduces me to look through me as if I was an efemeric transluscent presence, and swap immediately to local language so fast, that I can’t decide whether they perceived the brief intro in english or not.

“Yes, Sanne. She mentioned you are such a nice lady that you’re probably attractive to many nice men. I told her—’Sanne, there are no nice men…’ Anyway, I explained you were dating ‘the Tony Blair,’ the lawyer from our kindergarten she maybe met a few times 10 years ago, and she knew exactly who I was talking about.”

The lawyer I was dating indeed for three months—a relationship that only firmed my view of Brits as patriarchal and binary in their gender role views: women are supposed to be pretty and hot… having an opinion is optional. A nauseating, claustrophobic feeling overtook me. This place is too small to be dating aspirational socialite-expats just to throw some meat to those gossip-craving tongues.