Lure of overseas job too enticing to turn down

The year: 1992. The destination: England. The reaction: Excitement.

Carol Gilroy, then in her late 30s, was more than willing to accompany her husband being relocated to Europe.

"I made the decision that the opportunity for my husband's career was too good to turn down," says Gilroy, a Mt Eden-based IT trainer.

The couple had decided not to have children, says Gilroy. British-born but in New Zealand since she was aged 8 - and resolutely a New Zealander - moving to Sussex meant no language barriers and no problems getting work, though not at her usual level.

But relocation to Berlin five years later was not so easy, admits Gilroy. Not because of the culture shock - "I was prepared for it to be really hard" - but the impact of becoming a non-working, dependent wife.

Language barriers, a tax system that militates against working couples and high unemployment in the regions to the east of Berlin meant she probably would not work.

"I thought: if I'm going to be a hausfrau, I'm going to be an uber-hausfrau. I look back and think that probably wasn't me.

"Because I needed to have some control, I became very controlling on the domestic front.

"That was not the basis on which the relationship was originally formed."

Day-to-day tasks were hardest to master - "everything has to be done in person" - and what Gilroy terms her "kinder Deutsch" (child-like German) hindered attempts to communicate.

In her marriage, "the balance shifted. I became quite needy".

But confidence and self-esteem were eroding. "You do feel you're not in control any more, that things are happening to you. You're not making things happen."

On reflection, she says, she made things tougher for herself.

"I made a conscious decision in Berlin that I didn't want to get into the expat scene.

"I didn't want to spend my time talking to English-speakers."

Gilroy returned to New Zealand, newly single, in October 1999.

But she doesn't regret a moment of her experience as a trailing spouse.

She says: "Someone who has lived and worked overseas gets skills and insights which you don't get if you stay in New Zealand."