Overseas & Oversexed

An Asian posting can enhance an executive’s career. Sadly, it can also fuel infidelity, abuse – and murder.

Working abroad might be great, but sometimes the temptation to stray can be very hard to resist.

As it does not matter what you look like or how old or fat or bald you are … In Thailand, it is said, most farangs are treated like a film star.

By Karen Mazurkewich, Financial Post

Rob Kissel thought he’d reached the top. Recently appointed to head Merrill Lynch’s new Asian distressed-debt division, he was enjoying the exalted life of an expatriate: A luxury flat in Hong Kong and a $3-million vacation home in Vermont. But the work – 16-hour days and frequent trips to Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok, China and Singapore – were taking a toll on his private life.

His wife, Nancy, was not adjusting well. Frustrated by her husband’s workaholism and isolated from family and friends, she became emotionally unstable. So unhinged, in fact, that she drugged her husband, bludgeoned him to death and hid his body in a storage locker. During her trial, which ended two years ago, Ms. Kissel claimed her husband’s sexual exploits in the region had made him violent at home.

The media went wild. The sordid tale about alleged abusive sex, adultery, cocaine and money offered a rare glimpse into the private lives of Hong Kong’s expatriate community. It also shone a spotlight on the dark secrets of Western executives transplanted in Asia: Elicit sex, mistresses and dysfunctional families.

Infidelity happens around the world, but for expatriates on assignment in Asia, the combination of cultural isolation, career-obsessed spouses and a pervasive sex industry adds further pressure to a marriage. The city of Hong Kong has been called the “graveyard of marriages” and exclusive Bangkok nightclubs targeting foreigners, such as Pent Exclusive Club, have been dubbed “weapons of mass destruction for families” by local journalists.

The disintegration of families sent abroad is so well-documented that sophisticated firms are increasingly hiring relocation services to mediate overseas assignments.

“The No. 1 reason leading to assignment failure – when expatriate executives return home before their contract has ended – is spouse dissatisfaction,” says Scott Sullivan, senior vice-president of sales and marketing for GMAC Global Relocation Services in Illinois. China and Japan top the list of uncompleted assignments.

Not surprisingly, it continues to get more difficult to attract individuals and their families to go overseas, says Mr. Sullivan. While Mr. Sullivan doesn’t have statistics on extramarital affairs, ComPsych Corp., a U.S.-based provider of employee assistance programs, says marital and relationship issues account for almost a fifth of problems expats face while on assignment.

There are many reasons why married people stray, but counselors say that these problems are exacerbated when couples are uprooted. “Living abroad is [a] challenge and most couples have no idea what [that] entails,” says Hong Kong-based psychologist and author Cathy Tsang-Feign. Although they find themselves with a glamorous lifestyle, women who move to accommodate their husbands’ careers often don’t know what to do with themselves, she adds.

More than 60% of women have jobs before they leave on assignment, but less than one-quarter find employment in their new life. The woman may have given up her career and hired a nanny, and eventually feels that all of her roles and her identity have been stripped away. “The husband’s ego gets inflated and the woman is deflated,” says Ms. Tsang-Feign.

As well, men are often asked to work longer hours and spend a huge amount of time on the road. When they come back exhausted, they find themselves coming home to angry spouses. So, the men “shut down emotionally,” says Ms. Tsang-Feign, “and eventually tell themselves, ‘I need a bigger reward for the hard work I do.’”

That reward may be sexual; an affair with a secretary or real estate agent who makes them feel like the boss. “The men seek exotic Asian women who will look after them, and the women see them [as] men with power, and ‘wow,’ because they come with a financial package,” she says.

If these unhappy spouses don’t find love in the office, they will certainly trip over it in the street.

The temptations in Asia are greater than elsewhere. In cities like Taipei, Beijing, Hong Kong and Bangkok, the sex industry centres on business districts and hotels. A single man will almost always receive unsolicited calls in his hotel room, and local bars like Pent Exclusive Club in Bangkok have developed an exclusive clientele by inviting university-educated women seeking foreign or “farang” husbands to flirt with the men at the bar.

The trend is so pervasive that Warren Olson, former investigator and author of Confessions of a Bangkok Private-Eye, says he’s never met a wife whose suspicions were unfounded.

Robin Sears, a former headhunter in Asia and currently a political consultant for Navigator Consulting Inc., has seen many former clients revert to the “sexpat” cliché. One client, who had moved to Japan to work at one of the car manufacturing companies, moved his Japanese assistant into his home while his wife was away for a summer vacation. When his wife returned in the fall and discovered his indiscretion, she was turfed out by the husband.

“Not to let the errant husband – and usually it’s an errant husband – off the hook, but these are, in the main, guys who would never have behaved so ridiculously in their own environment,” says Mr. Sears.

“Unfortunately, they are often dumped in a place where temptation is high and the stress is higher and they do stupid things – such as the Hong Kong executive who arrived at the airport to find both his wife and mistress on hand to greet him, says Mr. Sears.

“Then there are the guys who are old, fat and bald, without any prospects of attracting the attention of a smart, young, attractive Western woman, but discover that they can be attractive because of their affluence or visa status to a whole range of [Asian] women, and strike up a relationship with one of them, not realizing that in the eyes of their friends and other Asians, they look at best [like] fools and at worst predators,” he adds.

These stories often carry a high corporate cost, says Mr. Sears. “The process of placing non-local executives in senior management roles in cultures and environments that are entirely new to them is a very high-risk enterprise,” he says. “It fails more often than it succeeds.”

Not only is it costly to relocate families, but when there is a long history of failed expat assignments, local management teams can become jaded and cynical, adds Mr. Sears. It affects morale within the host country.

Not all foreign assignments end in failure. Companies such as Siemens AG, the Germany-based engineering conglomerate, have learned to grapple with these issues. Europeans usually do it better than Americans because they have a deeper respect for cultural differences and have been at it longer, says Mr. Sears. They learn not to repeat the same mistakes. Mr. Sears says the worst cultural transgressions are usually committed by young American technology companies, although he’s encountered one major American oil company that routinely rotated executives because they “endorsed lascivious behavior by its executives.”

“There’s a high level of hypocrisy and tolerance for stuff that was frankly quite unpleasant to observe,” says Mr. Sears. “There’s still a nudge-nudge, wink-wink mentality out there.”

Some companies are trying to offset the problem by hiring more young and single employees for their overseas positions. There is also an increased willingness by corporations to offer more pre-evaluation and pre-counseling – before problems arise, says David Campbell, senior vice-president of customers and quality at the Chicago-based Com-Psych Group.

It’s not enough to offer more financial perks, he says. Vetting employees and offering better support structures on the ground are essential. “In order for the assignment to be successful, the family needs to be well looked after,” he adds.

The price of cheating?

What’s the price of infidelity? From a corporate level, an executive who exits his post can cost his company hundreds of thousands of dollars. For aggrieved spouses seeking evidence, the price tag to hire a private detective is in the thousands of dollars.

Across Asia, private eyes tailing wayward spouses is on the rise.

Thailand Investigation & Information Services promotes its services online and promises to “shadow his every move and provide the evidence you’ll need to get him to confess and, if divorcing, to obtain a very favorable settlement.” Founded in 1993, the sleuthing agency receives several inquiries a week by Western women seeking to track down unfaithful husbands, says field services director Charles Richards.

Not all women bite. “Only about 50% of the women go ahead with the investigation,” says Mr. Richards in an email. Cost is a deterrent but, “when they do agree to use the services, they are like bulldogs. They never give up! They want to know literally everything about the girl or girls involved.”

How many of the spouses he’s tracked actually cheat? About 75% are involved in an affair.

“It does not matter what you look like or how old or fat or bald you are … in Thailand, farangs are treated like a film star,” says Mr. Richards.

Via the Financial Post




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February 9, 2008 | Filed Under Being Farang, Society, The Thai Mind 

Comments

One Response to “Overseas & Oversexed”

  1. Bill on February 21st, 2008 12.36 am

    It’s really sad, but many times the best way to resist temptation is not to have it available.

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