Let’s start this off with a little bit of back story for anyone that doesn’t know me…
I’ve worked all my adult life in factories.
I started out as an electrical control panel wireman making control panels for machines that shipped all over the world, then during the recession that struck the United Kingdom in the 1990’s I was made redundant and started work in the warehouse section of a steelworks, over the years I worked my way from the warehouse to the machine section until finally becoming an operator on the companies forge section where I worked until Friday October 26th 2018.
The point i’m trying to make here is that i’m a worker, i’ve worked hard all my life.
Away from my working life I met and married a woman who too has worked hard, she worked hard raising two children, and worked her way up through various jobs, gathering experience, gathering qualifications, gathering status within her chosen profession.
Eventually her hard worked lead to her being offered an amazing opportunity, an opportunity to travel to the other side of the world, an opportunity to put her knowledge and her skills to the test, an opportunity to change both our lives.
Moving to the other side of the world meant that changes had to be made to our lives, we would have to leave the home we’d made together, we had the opportunity to bring family with us, but now our sons are young men with lives of their own to lead, so they chose to stay at home.
One change that had to be made was that I had to leave my job.
I’ll be honest, it wasn’t a job I loved, but it was a job I did well, it was a job I did because it paid the bills, it was a job I did because it was stable, I had friends at my workplace, friends i’ll miss, but this chance to change our lives was too great an opportunity to throw away, so on October 26th 2018 after almost 25 years of service I left my job.
Whenever Myself or my wife get asked about our adventure, one question almost always turns up “And what are YOU going to do?”.. And the answer? “Nothing” at this point I can almost guarantee the person that made the enquiry will react albeit slightly to my answer. There’s nothing I can do, any job I physically could do is reserved for Thai nationals, I could retrain but the money paid out over here simply wouldn’t make it worthwhile, plus… And this is the overriding reason behind me not seeking employment, putting it simply, we don’t need me to. It’s that simple. The new job pays enough to cover us both financially.
Now we come to the point of this.
If I had moved to Thailand for work, and my wife had given up her job and planned to spend the foreseeable future looking after the house, nobody would have given it a second thought. A woman looking after the home while her husband earns money seems so perfectly normal, Yet, even in todays view of all sexes being equal, people still do a double take when they hear of a man not being the bread winner in a household.
Does it make me less of a man? In my view no it does not.
I freely admit that through sheer hard work my wife has overtaken me as chief bread winner in my household, and furthermore, I couldn’t be prouder.
The days of “Man of the house” are gone.
Accept it