Rebecca Meyer
This 47-year-old woman and her husband, 49, recently moved to Malaysia with their three daughters (17, 14, and 10). Her husband works for a financial services firm, and the company transferred him to Malaysia and provided an impressive benefits package.
The benefits included free first-class flights, assistance with maintaining their household, free private school for their kids, and a stipend on top of her husband’s salary. As part of the new job, her husband would be a team lead for the global company, which was too great an opportunity to turn down. Unfortunately, the allure of their new lavish lifestyle was short-lived.
She was concerned about the effects of living as expats on their family. However, her attention was centered around the negative effects it began to have on their children and other children they met when they got together with other American and British families. Since her family was working class, it was shocking and upsetting to witness teenagers or younger children from other expat families mistreat others.
“They act like they are a band of elites who run the world, and the locals, who are their maids, drivers, and nail salon workers, visibly fear them. The kids decide to make them their verbal punching bags, and they have to endure it to feed their families,” she said.
Early on, she refused to acknowledge that the other expats and the lifestyle were negatively affecting her husband, but she knew the truth deep down and that he wasn’t the same. Initially, he started working late, saying she and the kids could eat dinner and he’d eat once he got home. Over time, her husband began making petty remarks about her clothes, hair, and their love life.
“I started suspecting he was cheating when he missed half of a school event and he was unreachable at his office. He then stumbled into the event, looking lost, and got defensive about it. He’s been moving assets abroad for some time now,” she explained.
Recently, her husband has been attempting to persuade her to sell the house they own in their home country. According to him, they’d eventually purchase a nicer home. However, she no longer thought her husband was trustworthy.
She didn’t want to sacrifice the one thing connecting her to their home country, especially since her husband would deposit the money from the house sale or invest it and assure her that he was an investment expert.
“So, I hired a private investigator and found out he’s been seeing a local woman. The relationship was serious enough that he got a luxury apartment for her that very few people on a local salary could afford. I bided my time until I took an opportunity to look at his WhatsApp messages,” she shared.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
