The movie Outsourced features a relationship between an American man and an Indian woman

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go all tabloid on you, but South Carolina governor Sanford and his Argentine honey’s high-profile affair shines a light on something most travelers and live-abroaders already know: that cross-cultural romance can be more than tricky, even if you’re not a governor.

Sanford and Belen Chaper should head over to the web site Expatwomen for some cautionary tales (and success stories). Take, for example, the Danish woman and her Japanese boyfriend who met while he was working in Denmark. The woman writes that when the couple moved to Japan, everything changed—and not for the better.

‘It seems that the man I fell in love with has transformed into a different person. He acts differently, he dresses differently and worst of all; he treats me in a different way. I feel I have been put in a different role since we got here, and somehow it seems I don’t fit into his life anymore. To make matters worse, I am not working here and feel completely disempowered about the whole situation.”

The move abroad stories are all from a woman’s point of view,  and are often set up in advice-column format, from My teenagers aren’t adapting to the move to Pregnant in Vietnam, who’s worried about the medical system there.