Marrying a Girl From a Different Culture

[katyseagull]

Anyone have experience with it? I have an American friend who’s been married for almost two years to a Korean girl, living over in Korea with her. He called last weekend to tell us he might be coming home without her. He just called me again this morning sounding extremely lonely and upset with his wife. Apparently they’re about to kill each other in that high-rise apartment of theirs. When I said “You sound just a little homesick,” he goes “You have no idea. Homesick is an understatement.”

I mentioned it to some of my family members and one of them (who hangs out with some Koreans) told me that the two cultures have many opposite characteristics and values. I thought that was interesting. Anyway, I got to thinking about how weird it would be to marry someone from a different culture. Off the top of my head I can think of 3 people who have done it. Two of the three are now divorced. I really liked all three of the foreign spouses. I guess cultural differences can take a toll on a relationship.


I’m curious if anyone’s tried dating or marrying someone outside of their culture. Was it difficult? I always fantasized about marrying a German guy. Love those accents! I wonder how different his values would be from mine.

[Blarg]

Interesting topic. My brother, who is Vietnamese(adopted), at first wanted nothing more than a blond-haired, blue-eyed, all-American girl. So he married one. She was a nice girl, but pretty dim, and after a kid and a good try at keeping it going, they split. He has dated all kinds of women since then, but wound up settling with a Vietnamese woman. I think it would be hard to picture him without some variation of an Asian woman. As he says to me, "As long as you find your way home again, Asian women let you have your fun." The lady herself seems to confirm as much.

She's also very polite, and has that old-country thing going about not trying to wear the pants in the family, and doing the stereotypical homemaker type stuff, always having food ready, that kind of thing. That's pretty hard for a guy to resist. Many American women have traded that sort of thing, the typical "woman's part of the bargain," in for a career, but quite a few have abandoned that sort of thing without replacing it with anything else. That's one reason Asian women are getting ever more popular.

Btw Katie, I'm a German guy. Became naturalized just before my teens. We tend to like order, clarity, and stand on politeness. If there is such a thing as a German national character, it loves its forests and is a bit of a romantic. If we see an open door in the house, we tend to close it. There seems to be a certain natural respect we lend toward each other that I see in some Asian cultures, but not really so much in America.

[jfk]

Much depends on the contest in which the relationship was formed. If two people meet more or less as equals then cultural differences something which can be hashed out and healthy, reasonable compromises or blending of traditions can take place naturally.

If the relationship had a large socio-economic or educational gap to begin with then often cultural differences can cause major tensions.

For instance, if a student from a Western country decides to study overseas and becomes involved with another student at a given university, the commonalities they share are probably enough to outweigh cultural stresses.

To take an example of a soldier or sailor from a Western country winding up in an overseas relationship it may be based on an entirely different set of socio-economic equations and the wants and desires of each party may be out of balance. Cultural differences then heighten the strain.

[Dominic]

off topic - did you watch Before Sunest yet??

[katyseagull]

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As he says to me, "As long as you find your way home again, Asian women let you have your fun." The lady herself seems to confirm as much.

She's also very polite, and has that old-country thing going about not trying to wear the pants in the family, and doing the stereotypical homemaker type stuff, always having food ready, that kind of thing. That's pretty hard for a guy to resist. Many American women have traded that sort of thing, the typical "woman's part of the bargain," in for a career, but quite a few have abandoned that sort of thing without replacing it with anything else. That's one reason Asian women are getting ever more popular.



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Interesting. This is pretty consistent with what KKF used to say about Asian women. He seemed to think that they are a big improvement over American women who, if I recall correctly, he sees as too bossy and selfish.

But my friend, the one who's married to the Korean girl, told me that his wife is stubborn and spoiled, that she refuses to do any housework and he's stuck doing the cooking and cleaning up. He also said she has a terrible temper and can't be reasoned with. I get the impression she wears the pants in the family and he hates it. I've actually met her and talked to her on several occasions. I found her to be very likable and open. I really think she's a great person.

I should mention that there's a big imbalance between their incomes; she's a doctor, he teaches English.

On top of his marital problems, my friend feels isolated and lonely in Korea. There is no one for him to speak English with and he said that Korean is really hard to learn. So anyway, he's having this big culture clash meltdown over there right now. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[katyseagull]

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off topic - did you watch Before Sunest yet??

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No. Don't get mad at me. Actually, I started to watch it this morning and was 1/2 hour into it when I had to turn it off to commence fighting. The fighting took awhile and then I had to go paint. I will try to watch it this evening.

[Blarg]

Yeah, I don't envy someone having to learn an Asian language at all, especially someone older.

Sounds like she has the very good presentation to outsiders that Asian women can be so good at.

[nescience]

Relationships between members of different cultures can be fairly difficult; typically humans seek out members of similar cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds as partners in order to minimize these difficulties. As individuals are raised from childhood, they are socialized into their respective social and ethnic classifications which will support specific personality traits. When encountering someone who underwent a different socialization pattern, these distinct personality traits will generally result in various difficulties in the development of relationships.

That being said, most of the time, I don't feel that the cultural or social differences are more powerful than the interpersonal connections that can arise in the development of an intimate relationship. Often, these differences can even make for interesting conversation and chance to further develop the relationship. These cultural differences will, however, always create some amount of strain on the relationship; it's just that this strain can be overcome.

Personally, I've dated/married outside my social class and ethnic group several times, with mixed results. I'm American, white, and was raised in a semi-rural middle-class lily-white community. My ex-wife, also white (and part native American), was raised in a working class urban environment. We had radically different life experiences, which definitely caused strain in our marriage, but which we were definitely able to overcome (our divorce, I feel, had very little to do with our different social backgrounds). I've also dated a woman of Chinese descent, although American-born and socialized, and I felt that while we had interesting differences in our cultural makeup, generally the strain caused on our relationship by those differences, while present, was minimal and fairly irrelevant to the development of our relationship. However, in dating an African woman, who had only been in the country for a couple years but who had been fairly Americanized, I felt that the strain created by the vast differences in our socialization definitely caused enough problems that it made the relationship much more difficult and uncomfortable than I'm used to.

I don't know if this helps, but I thought it was an interesting topic. =) I didn't mention religious differences, which in addition to social and economic disparities, can also create its share of problems. Basically, though, in my experience: yes, cultural (and socioeconomic) differences do place a strain on relationships, albeit a surmountable strain. You mention that 2 of the 3 interracial relationships you've seen have ended up in divorce; I wouldn't give that too much consideration, however, as that's actually fairly close to current percentages, at least in America (if all of these relationships involved Americans, as the one you cited did--I couldn't really tell from the post).

[Dominic]

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off topic - did you watch Before Sunest yet??

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No. Don't get mad at me. Actually, I started to watch it this morning and was 1/2 hour into it when I had to turn it off to commence fighting. The fighting took awhile and then I had to go paint. I will try to watch it this evening.

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did you at least win the fight?

[SuitedSixes]

My long sordid story has been detailed on many of the sub-forums here, but my ex-wife is from Mexico and I can say that the cultural differences are the #1 reason we are now divorced.

When we met she did not speak any English, so as she learned our conversations were limited to the boundaries of our vocabularies. There were many times I skipped over a conversation just because I was unsure of how to say a key word in the topic. As time developed, she became fluent in English.

Entering the marriage neither of us has any appreciation of how tough it would be to make a house out of two different upbringings. I mistakenly assumed that because she wanted to live in America that she would instantly become American and reject all desire to associate with the language, music, televison, etc. of her native country.

I tell people that we get along almost enough to be married. We have a wonderful bi-lingual daughter, but as we were leaving the court room after a divorce I said, "Sorry that didn't work out," and she said, "Sorry my parents are Mexican."