Basically had the same exact situation with my iPhone 14 PM.

Currently traveling outside the country and my carrier sucks.. I called them about putting the eSIM and I would basically lose my US carrier if I switched it in the countries I’m visiting.

So what I did was, I got roaming from my US carrier and fortunately I was able to keep my old iPhone 7 Plus phone (because the trade in value was garbage), and used that as my “back up phone” where I bought the local SIM card and used it that way.

Hope this helps. It’s working great so far for me.