My partner and I are about to move to my home country. What’s the best approach?
My partner and I are about to embark on a big, life-changing journey. We will be moving to Ireland, my home country, that I left 13 years ago. My wonderful and amazing partner will be arriving for the first time and it will involve meeting my family for the first time as well. My parents (in particular Mum) are over the moon that I’m coming back, and my partner will be royalty for dragging me home after so long away.
However, the visa process takes a while, and so my partner will be more or less just twiddling her thumbs for six months. Short term will be Christmas and spoiling my niece, but long term is when the dust settles and we have left that post-Christmas perk behind.
Some background also: my partner and I are very liberal; my partner is a person of colour. I know in the past some of my relatives have made racist and not particularly amusing comments.
How do I keep the peace? How is it best to approach this situation in the medium to long term?
Eleanor says: As I see it, the task is to help your partner feel like herself – a person separate from you – while so much of her life will be defined in relation to you. She’ll be waiting for a visa to make this big move to be with you, while being folded into your home and your family. It sounds like you really love and admire the person she is, just as herself. The question is: how can you help that individual show up in such a relationally defined space?
Begin by being sensitive to the fact this isn’t her home. Lots of things about the places we’re from seem true to us, and it’s easy to think that these are just objective truths, when in fact it’s the gilding of familiarity. The things that make it feel like home to you will not carry over to her without remainder – especially if some relatives will see her as capital-O Other. If you or your family take it as an insult when she doesn’t quite feel at home, that will really compound her feelings of isolation. So, as much as you can, make it OK for her to have those feelings. Mutually prepare for her to feel illegible, or sad, or homesick, so it doesn’t feel like she’s wrecking the party if those feelings appear.
It might really help her to know that you’re on the lookout so she doesn’t feel she’s the only watchman of her own wellbeing. Little ways of checking in can go a long way. “How are you feeling?” or “It’s been two months since we arrived: do you feel you’re getting enough time to talk to your people instead of just mine?”
And of course: you stand up to your relatives publicly if these racist remarks reappear.
Finding ways to show her she isn’t condemned to thumb-twiddling if she doesn’t want to be, and that this is important to you too, might also help. Buy her a membership to a club she might like; make room for a work or creative space that’s just hers; treat the task of preventing thumb-twiddling as a joint activity you’re working on together.
One useful thing to do might be to do things in Ireland that are new to both of you so it’s not always you showing her around. It affects the rest of the relationship when one partner is always in the position of learning and the other always of telling.
Let her find her own relationship to the place too. Give her ways to keep teaching you things. That means things to do with Ireland – her own haunts and routes and favourite spots – and things from the life she’s leaving behind. Make space for her skills and tastes and history and family.
With a bit of effort, this move can feel like you’re building a new home together, not just fitting her into the one you already have.
This letter has been edited for clarity.
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