Sex and the Single Aid Worker

It was quite a shock to come home and discover that the vast majority of my friends in the States were either a) in a serious relationship, b) married, or c) married with children.

Which, granted, seems the normal course of things for people in their late twenties and early thirties.

Shocking, therefore, only because almost everyone I knew overseas was still single.  Not all, mind you, and not counting the occasional fling or relationship to be regretted later, but the vast majority.

There are, of course, the easy explanations.  A lifestyle of near-constant travel, stress, and expatriate drinking isn't particularly conducive to finding (or keeping) the love of one's life.

Yet that still leaves unanswered the fundamental question - the aid worker version of the nature vs nurture debate.

Are aid workers (most aid workers) constitutionally unable to have stable relationships? Does the same personality trait that draws people to rather unpleasant locales overseas also make it rather difficult to commit?

Or, is it just the environment - take the aid worker out of aid work, and he or she would soon find a committed relationship, or at least something more stable than a one night stand in a third world capital?

Personally, I much prefer the nurture to nature side of the debate.  At the least, gives grounds for hope. There's also a control-group, so to speak - those friends who've come home and, after a period of re-adjustment, found someone.

Anyhows, asked a few NGO-folk friends for their take on the issue - rather fascinating answers below:

Friend 1:

Nurture! Aid workers tend to be the adventure-seeking type, but they are able to do so in varied situations. Refugee camps abroad, marathons and mountaineering (or child-rearing) at home. I don't think personalities change that much over time (I'm a closet fan of the Myers-Briggs), but the bottom line is that all types gravitate toward socially embedded relationships. Now that I think about it, I know 3 couples that met while working together in the field and are now in HQ positions (1 couple has children and the other 2 are planning to). The pop psychology I read says that despite the conventional "opposites=attract" wisdom, most people end up with similar folk. So perhaps the difficulty for aid workers is that when they are finally in conditions to couple for the long-term, there aren't that many like them hanging around! My friends tell me that I have a better chance of finding a partner in Kabul than in New York. Maybe there's room for one more dating site?

Friend 2:

My personal thoughts based on my rather cynical view nowadays is that we (humanitarian aid workers) just can't function as Normals. We like adrenaline, we feel that we have to be challenged by helping others in impossible situations, and that means that we don't have the patience to work through the mundanity of a normal relationship. Normal people crave a little house and children and a family life. We crave jumping on a plane and rushing off to war zones. The two are not compatible.

People hook up in the field when the atmosphere is charged and then return to normality and often fall apart. But then again, I see couples who got together in the field reject the horrors of the field by having babies and coming to HQ where they create a little stable life for themselves.

Of course I see happily married men chasing every skirt in the office too like an episode of Mad Men.

So - I think it depends on the person. If you are one of those deeply fucked up people in humanitarian work because you are escaping your demons and failed marriage and inability to communicate with normal people, you will fail at relationships. If you are in the field because you think a little bit can help and you want to do your part, you are realistic about life and can leave the work and enter into a Normal relationship.

Friend 3:

An initial question I would ask is whether the nature versus nurture only applies to relationships? I would propose that the essence of your question is about commitment and commitment is not only about relationships - it applies to all aspects of life: job, friends, hobbies, relationships.

A friend of mine believes that it isn't the job that has caused you to ask this question but a "coming of age," if you will. That as one transitions from their early to mid-twenties to their early to mid-thirties what was cool and fun and easy in their 20's is simply sad in ones 30's.

My argument was that there are different types of aid workers. And that the type of aid worker plays more of a role than the age, per se. As I see it, there are three types of aid workers:

1) Those that are constantly on the move and cannot imagine staying anywhere longer than a few years and therefore constantly have short term and very intense relationships. These are the people more likely to travel to the "less than ideal" locations and get a kick out of the the danger and lifestyle that is natural in these places.

2) Then you have the long term aid workers that relocate their lives, stay 5 - 10 years and maybe more in one place - or at least have that place as a base while consulting elsewhere. These people are more like the colonists of old but with a different purpose, instead of the church and salvation they have poverty and health and education and democracy - whatever the development problem of the day happens to be.

3) The third type of development worker is a tourist disguised as an aid worker. They may have traveled as a volunteer and had a "village" they called their own, they did Africa or Asia or Latin America in the same way that young people from the UK do a GAP year. But when they were done they were done. They maintain a healthy connection from their suburban home but they return to their country of birth and they get their masters degree, or they get another job, and they meet someone and they get married and they have children and they talk about when they were in this place or that place.

After speaking with my friend I think that to fully understand the Nature versus Nurture debate it is important to look both at each type of aid worker and age as determining factors. That within each of the three types the age of the individual will play a role in their approach to commitment. In each of the types it is more likely, at certain ages, for them to be able to commit, or not commit, as the case may be.

Personally I think the second two types are more nurture than nature. The first type....now, that is a different question. The first type moves for the change, the challenge, the different environment and the new people. Is this type of person ever really going to be satisfied with one other person? I'm not sure. I would like to say yes, that it is the aid environment, the constant moving, that has made that person less likely to be in a committed relationship. That the unnatural environment created by the aid world, the insidious nature of the aid world, has made real and lasting relationships difficult to find and impossible to hold onto in the light of day.

However, I am not sure that this is true. It is nature that makes that aid worker move. It is nature that makes what is there not good enough. That there will always be something better, something different, something more exciting and more rewarding than what they currently have. For these people I believe it is more nature than nurture. Maybe if you put two of the first types together they will make it work...it's more likely. But if you put type 1 and 2 or 3 together I am afraid it might be a recipe for heartache and misery.

The question we have to ask ourselves is which type are we?

Friend 4:

Not interested in taking part in this pity party type debate which is a bit narcissistic. Lots of types of careers have this element (police, night shift workers, doctors, military, workaholics in general) so am tired of thinking we're "special".