Dating as a humanitarian aid worker is a unique experience. The lifestyle, marked by frequent travel, remote postings, and high-stress environments, creates both opportunities and challenges for building and maintaining romantic relationships. If you’re navigating the world of love while dedicating your life to humanitarian work, you’re not alone. This guide delves into the general difficulties, possibilities, and dynamics of dating in this field, whether with another humanitarian or someone outside the sector. I’ve also included some real-life success stories from humanitarian relationships for you to read and reflect on.
The General Difficulties of Dating as a Humanitarian Aid Worker
1. The Challenge of Frequent Relocations
One of the biggest hurdles in dating as a humanitarian aid worker is the transient lifestyle. Assignments can last from a few months to a few years, often in different countries or conflict zones. Maintaining a relationship when you’re constantly on the move can be daunting.
- Long-Distance Struggles: Partners who aren’t in the same field may find it challenging to understand the demands of your work, leading to potential strain.
- Temporary Nature: Relationships formed in the field may feel fleeting, as both parties are aware of the inevitable relocation.
2. The Emotional Toll of the Job
Humanitarian work often involves dealing with crises, trauma, and challenging living conditions. These stressors can affect your emotional availability and ability to invest in a relationship.
- Compassion Fatigue: Constant exposure to human suffering may leave little emotional energy for a partner.
- Communication Struggles: Processing your experiences can be difficult, and sharing them with someone outside the field might feel isolating.
3. The Tight-Knit Nature of the Community
The humanitarian community is relatively small, and you’ll often encounter the same people across different missions and agencies. While this can foster connections, it can also complicate relationships.
- Overlapping Circles: Dating within the community can blur personal and professional boundaries.
- Reputation Concerns: Word travels fast, and personal relationships can sometimes impact your professional standing.
Dating Another Humanitarian Aid Worker
Dating someone who shares your profession comes with its own set of possibilities and challenges.
Opportunities in Dating Another Humanitarian
When you date someone in the same field, you’re likely to share core values, such as empathy, resilience, and a commitment to making the world a better place.
- Common Ground: Understanding the demands and rewards of humanitarian work fosters mutual respect.
- Support System: A partner in the same field can provide emotional and professional support.
Challenges of Dating Another Humanitarian
While dating another humanitarian may seem ideal, the reality is often complicated by differing assignments and duty stations.
- Separate Postings: It’s common for couples to be assigned to different countries, leading to prolonged periods apart.
- Coordinating R&R: Scheduling overlapping rest and recuperation (R&R) breaks can be difficult, further limiting time together.
- Career vs. Relationship: Balancing two demanding careers often requires sacrifices, with one partner potentially compromising their professional goals to prioritize the relationship.
Dating Someone Outside the Humanitarian Sector
Dating someone who isn’t a humanitarian can provide a sense of balance and perspective, but it also comes with unique challenges.
Long-Distance Dynamics
If your partner remains at home while you’re abroad, the relationship may revolve around R&R rotations.
- Limited Time Together: You may only see each other every few months, making it difficult to maintain a close connection.
- Communication Gaps: Sharing the highs and lows of your work with someone who isn’t familiar with the field can sometimes feel isolating.
Relocation Challenges
For family duty stations, your partner may need to relocate to be with you, which can be a significant sacrifice.
- Resistance to Relocate: Your partner may have a stable career, social circle, or family ties that make relocating difficult.
- Adaptation Struggles: Adjusting to life in a new country, especially in remote or developing areas, can be overwhelming.
When It Can Work
If your partner is willing to move, be flexible, and endure long periods apart, the relationship can thrive, but it requires effort and understanding.
- Shared Responsibilities: Often, the partner staying home takes on the majority of childcare and household duties, which can lead to imbalances if not acknowledged and appreciated. Despite being away for periods of time, how you can contribute to the family responsibilities to ensure your partner feels supported?
- Strong Communication: Open and honest discussions about expectations and sacrifices are essential for maintaining harmony.
- Having a Plan: Having a mutually agreed-upon plan can make managing the distance more manageable. When both partners are aligned on a shared goal and actively working towards it, this fosters resilience and strengthens the sense of teamwork within the relationship.
Tips for Balancing Love and Career
- Set expectations early on in your dating life. Be upfront about the nature of your work, including travel and unpredictable schedules.
- Prioritize work-life balance. Humanitarians are often working long days and the field can often dominate your life due to the nature of the work. Try to prioritize your home life as much as possible through video calls, remote dates, planning the next visit, and ensuring your partner feels prioritized.
- Create a plan you and your partner agree on so there is direction and shared goals.
- Consider moving to a family duty station after extensive time in a hardship location. This can allow you to be together with your partner/children, or at least allow for easier visitation.
- Make the most of your time together. Plan your visits around holidays, special occasions, and being there to celebrate your children’s big accomplishments. You don’t always get a second chance to see them cross the stage at graduation, perform in a play, or see them score the touch down at a big winning game. Try to be there as much as you can to avoid them holding resentment or feeling let down by your absence.
- Have virtual dates: cooking nights, movie nights, trivia nights, game nights, have a book club between the two of you, craft nights, etc.
- Consider counselling to navigate the emotional challenges of your work and relationships.
- Build a strong support network of friends, co-workers, and those who understand the complexities of dating as a humanitarian aid worker
Real-Life Dating Scenarios in the Humanitarian Aid Sector
Here are a few scenarios I have come across through conversations with coworkers, friends, and senior managers in the field. These examples illustrate how humanitarian workers and their partners navigate relationships despite the challenges of the lifestyle. The names have been changed to protect privacy:
Scenario 1: Two Humanitarians in Different Duty Stations
Carly and Maya are both humanitarian aid workers currently posted in different duty stations. To maintain their relationship, they plan their R&R cycles strategically. Maya uses her break to visit Carly’s duty station, and Carly does the same on her next R&R. This way, they spend time together every couple of months despite their demanding schedules. Both are determined to transition to a family duty station when their current contracts end as they would like to start building their family together. They’ve already started coordinating their next moves to ensure they can finally live together, even if it means one of them has to make a career sacrifice.
Scenario 2: A Humanitarian and a Non-Humanitarian in Australia
Ben, a humanitarian working in a hardship location, is in a relationship with Sophie, who works a traditional 9-to-5 job in Australia. To make it work, Ben flies to Australia during his R&R to spend time with Sophie. Occasionally, they meet halfway in Europe for short vacations together. Their long-term plan is for Sophie to relocate to a family duty station once Ben’s current contract ends. They know this will involve big changes for Sophie, but they’ve had open conversations about the adjustments they’ll need to make.
Scenario 3: Humanitarian with Family in the USA
Emily is an experienced United Nations staff member (D1) who has worked outside of her home country for over a decade. Her husband, John, now stays in the USA to take care of their two teenage children. Every four weeks, Emily returns home to spend time with her family, ensuring they maintain a strong connection despite her frequent absences. John’s remote job provides flexibility, and they’ve made it work by living in family duty stations earlier in Emily’s career when the children were younger. Now that the kids are teenagers, the arrangement is easier to manage, although it still requires understanding and communication. Emily often adds annual leave to her regular R&R time to extend her visit with her family.
Scenario 4: Two Humanitarians, One Family Duty Station
Luca and Clara met while working in the same duty station. When Clara was reassigned to a family duty station in Rome, Luca decided to apply for roles in Rome and was eventually placed there, allowing them to continue their relationship in the same city.
Scenario 5: A Humanitarian and a Non-Traditional Open Relationship
Sophia is a humanitarian aid worker posted in a hardship duty station, while her partner, Mark, lives in a European country where he works a traditional 9-to-5 job. Recognizing the challenges of long-term separation, they made the unconventional decision to have an open relationship while Sophia is away. This arrangement allows both partners to maintain emotional and physical connections during extended periods apart, which helps them cope with the demands of their situation. However, they agreed on clear boundaries: when Sophia returns home during R&R, they focus entirely on their marriage, maintaining their bond as a couple and spending quality time together. During these visits, no outside partners are involved, ensuring their marriage remains a central priority. Their choice has worked for them because of mutual trust, open communication, and a strong foundation in their relationship. While this approach isn’t for everyone, it highlights the importance of finding unique solutions that work for both partners in humanitarian lifestyles.
Challenges of Infidelity and Boundaries in the Humanitarian Aid Sector
Cheating is unfortunately not uncommon in the humanitarian aid sector. The demanding nature of humanitarian work often involves long deployments, frequent travel, and periods of separation from partners, creating emotional and physical distance that can make maintaining long-term commitments challenging. Additionally, the sector’s compound living arrangements and party culture can contribute to situations where boundaries are tested. In close-knit communities, the sense of camaraderie and shared experiences can sometimes blur lines, leading to infidelity. This isn’t to say that every humanitarian is a partier, drinks, or will cheat. Rather, it’s to acknowledge that such behaviours can occur, often as a result of the unique lifestyle and circumstances inherent to the sector. The combination of these factors, along with high-stress environments and frequent social gatherings, increases the likelihood of infidelity, though it is not reflective of all relationships in the sector. Ultimately, the level of loyalty and respect in your relationship depends on the choices you and your partner make, given your current circumstances. With all of this said, for some people, choosing to remain single can be the most respectful and fulfilling decision, particularly in a demanding sector like humanitarian aid.
Final Thoughts on Dating in the Humanitarian Aid Sector
These examples show that successful relationships in the humanitarian field require careful planning, open communication, and a willingness to adapt. Whether it’s synchronizing R&R schedules, making sacrifices for family duty stations, or managing a household from afar, it is possible to find love and maintain meaningful connections even in a demanding career. Relationships in this field thrive on trust, dedication, and mutual understanding.
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Please note: the views and opinions expressed on this blog are that of my own and do not represent the opinions of any agency mentioned.