With Valentine’s Day coming up in only two weeks, many couples are getting ready to celebrate their relationship. But for expats, the special day of love can be a whole different story: they might be in a long-distance relationship, have trouble finding a partner abroad, live in a country where they have to hide their sexual orientation, or have to deal with the challenges of a multicultural relationship. InterNations, the largest global network for people who work and live abroad, tells you everything you need to know about the romantic lives of expats. The data is based on the annual Expat Insider survey, one of the most extensive expat studies in the world, with close to 13,000 respondents.
Global expat community InterNations reveals how living abroad impacts your romantic life.
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Unhappy in Love: Long-Distance Relationships
Over one in eight expats in a relationship are currently separated from their partner by international borders (13%), and they are not happy about it: one in five is dissatisfied with their long-distance relationship (20%), compared to only five percent of those who live close to their partner. Moreover, expats in a long-distance relationship are substantially less happy with their life in general (74% vs. 81%). Career-focused expats, such as Foreign Recruitees (30%) and Assignees (28%), are most likely to be in a long-distance relationship, followed by (Ex-)Students (24%). The latter might also be one reason why the highest share of expats in a long-distance relationship is 25 years or younger (27%), while the likelihood of having a long-distance relationship sinks rapidly with growing age. International long-distance relationships are most common among expats from Egypt (28%), the Philippines (24%), and India (23%).
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All Alone in a New Country: Single Expats
Expat women (39%) are more likely to be single than expat men (30%): even though the most important reasons why women leave their home country include moving for their partner’s job or education (16%) and wanting to live in the same country as their partner (12%) — compared to only three percent of men stating the first and ten percent mentioning the latter. Moreover, regardless of gender, among those who originally moved for love, the romance did not necessarily live forever: one in ten is single now. And the lack of romance seems to be getting them down: twelve percent of single expats are unhappy with their life in general, just slightly more than those in a global long-distance relationship (10%) or those living close to their partner (9%). Venezuelans (51%), Nigerians (45%), and Italians (43%) in particular are often single, while Swiss (77%), Dutch (76%), and Danish (75%) expats are most likely to be in a relationship.
Source: Internations
