People in multi-cultural relationships can actually consider themselves quite fortunate, from a communication perspective. If you grew up in the same suburb, on the same street, went to the same school and look and sound like your partner, there can be an assumption of ‘sameness’. This assumption can betray the reality there you are two quite different people, and it may come as a surprise, in the passage of time, just how vast that chasm is, on the ground.
Understanding the differences
Call it narcissism; call it egocentricism, or call it ignorance, but it’s human nature to believe that we are fundamentally correct. And that if we love somebody, they would or should automatically have a similar vantage point to ourselves. In a cross-cultural relationship, such assumptions are often challenged right from the outside, where there is rather an assumption and acknowledgment of difference. This makes it easier to jump right in and get your hands dirty, figuring out where you actually stand in relation to each other and issues that arise.
Words of Advice from A Friend
When I was marrying my husband and we were planning to travel to Iran for the first time, we had family friends who were a lot older and wiser than we were at the time. And the wife in that Union was not Iranian. The husband was Iranian, the wife was not. And she took me aside one day and said, “you have to embrace everything about this when you travel there.”
It is going to be your instinct to judge. It's going to be your instinct to disagree. It's going to be your instinct to take offense. But if you suspend all of that and you just drink it in for what it is, knowing that it's not permanent, but that it gives you incredible insight into your husband and how he thinks, how he feels, what has framed his experience, you will benefit immensely.
So, whether your husband wife partner is culturally similar or culturally different, if you take the same view every time you step into their world, rather than just being annoyed with the mother-in-law or pissed off with how things work in their dynamic, I think then there is huge potential for growth, connection and empathy.
And what you can understand, you tend not to judge.
