by Margarita
The fourth Intercultural Blog Carnival is finally here and today we will be focusing on 
Expatriation and Relationships. A huge topic for sure since it can include relationships with just about anyone (and anything!) — and luckily for our readers, today’s collection does. So without further ado, here are our participants:
Learning a language for love — Cat Gaa starts us off with a personal story of how learning the intricacies of a foreign language can make your romantic relationship evolve and flourish while also saving you from those awkward moments when you think they said/meant something that they actually didn’t.
In an appropriately titled Expatriation and Relationships, Susan Cross explores what it’s like to make a friend while an expat, then say good-bye to that friend, and then have to make friends again. A regular expatriate conundrum, isn’t it?
The topic of friends — and especially girlfriends — is the focus of The Importance of Expat Girlfriends by Judy Rickatson. Her personal experience with moving and making female friends confirms that our expat girlfriends often come to occupy the place of BFFL in our hearts forever.
Yours truly continues this carnival with a look at Expats and Broken Marriages–Who is to Blame? Since we, humans, tend to assign blame in almost every situation that troubles us, here is a good way to step away from blame and see how else we can either prevent a dissolution of a marriage or make our peace with it.
Orphan Spouses also focuses on the topic of marriage (or partnership). In this very interesting piece, Anne Gilme discusses the pitfalls and the effects of short-term expatriation where one partner goes on assignment just for a few weeks/months while the other one stays home.
Moving on to relationships with children, Reflections on the Expat Life by 3rdCultureChildren touches upon the difficulties that children experience when following their parents around the world — and the approach that parents can take to make those moves easier.
Improving your relationship with your children is the focus of Why we moved: Part 3 post by Noemi Gamel. Becoming an expat can certainly be one of the roads that allows us to focus on motherhood and being there for our kids.
Moving on to the topic of relationship mistakes, Norman Viss covers Three relationship mistakes you may not know you are making.
Relationships can certainly be helped by our ability to start and hold a conversation and Tania Desa provides us with a few pointers on The Secret to Sparking a Conversation with Anyone.
And finally some humor — not your regular kind of contribution but something an expat may want to know:
Written by an English woman living abroad (NicolaJane) — How to date like an Englishman
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed this Intercultural Blog Carnival!
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." 
Thank you very much for the inclusion of our blogpost – much appreciated! Greetings from our [nomad!] family currently posted in La Paz, Bolivia!
Reblogged this on 3rdculturechildren and commented:
Great collection of posts – thanks Margarita for the inclusion! “Moving on to relationships with children, Reflections on the Expat Life by 3rdCultureChildren touches upon the difficulties that children experience when following their parents around the world — and the approach that parents can take to make those moves easier.”