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When the Easy Life Becomes a Nuisance

This article is about when you are suddenly pulled out of your regular life with work, running to the supermarket just before closing time and all the pressure that is on you every day, and suddenly just relax without pressure. When you have everything you need and you have someone to clean up after you and watch after the kids when you are going shopping. And how it can ruin your life.

The story revolves around a Danish woman named Dorte Werner. She and her husband travel to Hong Kong with their two kids. She leaves her job and the husband is the only one in the family with an income. Dorte thought it would be great to leave all of the stress and pressure that was regularly on her. Just for a year. They stayed two years, and they were miserable for Dorte. The first couple of months, she was doing something all the time, but then her maid did everything around the house, and Dorte felt superfluous. She tried to interact more with the children, but when she did not really want to play with them on the floor for hours, she felt as if she was a bad mother.
When she first came to Hong Kong, she saw all of the upper-class women, sitting and drinking coffee and going around shopping, not really doing anything, she said to herself, that she certainly did not want to be one of them. But alas, she now walks around, spending her husband’s money on shopping and coffee. Her feeling of inferiority became strengthened by the environment among the out posted in Hongkong, being very male oriented. She finally found a part-time job at the Danish consulate. She now encourages other women, dreaming of the highlife, to think twice, because: “It is hard to suddenly have all the freedom, you have been dreaming of.”