You’ve Been Promoted to “Trailing Spouse”

Abstract

This autoethnography explores one woman’s international move from Colorado to Switzerland in the role of trailing spouse. Trailing spouse describes a person who moves abroad to support his or her spouse’s career. This term conjures an experience defined by a lack of agency and often intense identity struggle and can foreshadow some of the challenges trailing spouses face upon arrival in their new country. The author critically calls her identity, privilege, and gender roles into question as she navigates what it means to be a new mother, wife, academic, and expat in the role of trailing spouse. She exposes the invisible work of reorienting her identity to the new culture and roles, something she was too overwhelmed to do while living abroad. By examining how the role of trailing spouse is conceptualized and lived, it becomes clear that supporting spouses in an international move must make space for identity struggle instead of consistency or coherence. This piece argues that trailing spouses need to find space to embrace the identity struggle, in a world that values identity coherence.