Miss Clark is off to New York after being nominated to head the United Nations Development Programme, a nomination which is expected to be ratified by the UN General Assembly.
But Prof Peter Davis said he was not about to leave his medical sociology positions at Auckland University and "down tools" to move to New York.
"At this point the main thing is to make sure that Helen settles into the job and the place," he told the New Zealand Herald.
"We'll work something so that both of us can see a good amount of each other and she has space to get her work done and I have space to do mine."
The couple married in 1981, the year Miss Clark headed to work in Wellington after she was elected to Parliament, and they have worked in different cities for much of the time since.
Prof Davis is director of the Social Statistics Research Group at Auckland University. The medical sociology expert also has cross-appointments in the School of Population Health and the Department of Statistics.
Earlier, he commuted from the couple's Auckland home to Christchurch to work at the University of Otago's Christchurch School of Medicine, while Miss Clark commuted to Premier House in Wellington.
