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.