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INTERCULTURAL MARRIAGES: Is My Way the Right Way?

Intercultural marriage adds an extra set of dynamics to relationships. Regardless of how those differing cultures met to love one another, the desire to marry comes with a need to merge two cultures into one. Many questions arise. Will our families understand? What about spousal roles? What differences will be encountered with food and meal preparation?Recently,we created a survey questionnaire about intercultural marriage and asked many such couples to respond to some of the positives and negatives within an intercultural marriage. The answers were eye-opening and helpful.

Probably one of the biggest assumptions made within marriage is that the way we do things is the correct way. After all, “My family has always done it this way and it works quite well.” This same assumption is found within intercultural marriages, but it’s magnified.

Assumptions about how we live come with each culture. All of our life experiences through family and cultural background teach us how to deal with life’s challenges. Within an intercultural marriage, many different assumptions will surface over time. We will formulate our opinions and make judgments based upon our world views. Initially, these judgments will be external or on the surface. In time, all of the internal areas will be exposed also. Often, this is how we begin to formulate our own prejudice against other cultures.

For example, there are banks in the United States and there are banks in New Zealand. Both banks serve a similar function, but in New Zealand you do not sign your checks to be cashed. Deposit slips are completed very differently as well. In the United States, one banking company will not cash another’s check unless you have an account with them. In New Zealand, the banks tend to work together. Neither banking system is wrong; however, to the spouse encountering a new and unfamiliar system, it may be a challenge. Then tendency to think, “The way we did it in my country was better,” will emerge quickly and frequently. Will we recognize it or try to hide it? This is the critical issue.

Another example of differences to think about is the medical arena. Medical services differ greatly from country to country. One country may have a national medicine provision,while other countries have very few doctors and distant or poor services. The United States has medical technology that many countries do not have, but it has a higher cost and a system that requires individuals to pay their own bills instead of the government. Will this present a problem for you? Consider this important medical question: Where will your children be born and why do you feel the way you do about this?

Other assumptions may be made in such areas as home decorating, the way money is handled, unfamiliar types of entertainment, differing degrees of acceptable openness in personal sharing, different understandings of extended family relationships, the celebration of unfamiliar holidays, differing views of romanticism, the use of free time and vacations and even the way children receive their educations. These areas are not meant to be all inclusive, but to give you a general idea about the assumptions we all have and would need to face in the event of an intercultural marriage.

Some of the negatives discovered by couples who are interculturally married can be quite varied. One wife confessed that her way of doing certain things drew a negative response from her spouse. For example, the way dishes are washed, the care of clothing or how the children are disciplined often varies from culture to culture. Marrying someone from an underdeveloped country and then bringing that person to the States may be shocking. The prosperity of North America can be incomprehensible. Likewise, the lack of what others may view as essentials can be equally shocking.

Feeling as though you are expected to be like the wives or husbands of the culture you married into can be a monumental hurdle to cross. cultural and social norms may be so diametrically opposed to your country of origin that you become emotionally confused. And inability to understand the perceived role is difficult enough, without the fact that you may not agree with the traditions.

Caution 1: Know Each Other’s Culture! With each of the couples we interviewed, several cautions kept emerging. One of the strongest was knowing each other’s culture. If at all possible, spend some time living in that culture before marriage. The minimum amount of time suggested was 2 or 3 months. While visiting your fiancé’s country of origin, it would be important to live with a local family as well as your fiancé’s family. This would enable you to experience firsthand the relationship differences within the family.

A word of caution: While you are picking up certain nuances, don’t think that all families of this culture operate this way. It would be like saying all North American or European families function in a similar way.

Caution 2: Be Accountable. The second area of strong concern communicated by various couples interviewed was being sure that you are called together. “There is a tendency not to listen to people and the concerns they express about your possibility of marrying someone of a different culture,” one spouse said. “It’s easy to begin thinking, ‘It’s us against them,’ and close yourselves to some very valuable input, confrontation and honest hesitation provoked by these loved ones.”

In time, the goal can become a desire to beat the odds, prove the hesitant ones wrong and press on ignorantly in order to make your point. Decide to be very accountable to your pastor, your parents and to those relationships you value. Listen to them. Do not shut them out and react by drawing closer to your fiance. Weigh their concerns and think through their questions.

Caution 3: Know What Both Cultures Value. In North American culture, there is a tendency to value things. In many other countries the tendency is to value extended family, the elderly, hospitality—a “what’s mine is yours” type of mentality. People become the primary concern; consequently, what people think of you is important. One husband mentioned that his culture is more formal and conservative, especially in dress. “My wife,” he explained, “is much more casual. In my country I wear long-sleeved dress shirts. They must be clean and pressed or people will judge my spouse as a lazy wife.”

Caution 4: Identify Adaptation Versus Core Value Changes. The final strong note of caution resulting from our survey concerned being aware of the difference between behavioral modification or adaptation and core value changes. It is possible, for example, for a Middle Eastern man to adapt behaviorally to U.S. culture and look like he is, indeed, fitting into it. His core values may not have changed; he is simply conforming on the outside to the expectations of others. Because there is no inward change, this same man in his country of origin would look like, sound like and think like a Middle Easterner.

Why? In his thinking he has not lied or deceived—just adapted. He can now be who he really is and perform according to what he has been taught by his family and culture. His unsuspecting wife finds herself living with a man whom she feels has made a radical about-face. She may feel trapped in a country and a culture with an unfamiliar person whom she thought she knew.

Accept and Appreciate Differences: Whether or not the values mentioned above are biblical is not the point, even though there will be times you may feel quite ready to argue that the way your culture did things is biblical. The point is that cultural differences exist, and you will be forced to face some of those mentioned and many that are not mentioned. If you choose to marry interculturally, you will need to learn to face cultural differences as a reality and not deny them.

Accepting and appreciating as many of the differences as you can will serve to enhance the marriage relationship. This experience is not to be viewed as all negative. The differences are something to embrace and value in one another. No two persons think alike or value the same things. You will need to give one another the freedom to be who you are and allow the Holy Spirit to mold the two cultures together. Rejoicing in the richness of your varied inheritances and learning from both is to be a joyous experience.

Mixed Marriages

Why Expats Marry Foreigners and Then What Happens


It seems that every few years my colleagues and I celebrate the marriage of one of our former students to a foreign national they met while studying abroad. Timing and common interests seem to be the primary factors that bring these couples together.

A U.S. Foreign Service officer once told me that meeting his wife while in training in Taiwan made perfect sense. He was in his late 20s, dating, and ready to find a lifetime partner. Being part of a community in which intercultural marriage is seen as perfectly logical and “going home to settle down” at odds with his career plans, courting his wife in Taiwan seemed to present no complications or impediments.

Common interests also play an important part in the decision to marry abroad, especially for expatriates who have spent years learning the culture and language. How many of us have returned home to realize that friends and family are unable to understand how we have been changed by our experiences and by the cultures in which we have been living?

Finding a community of people with similar experiences is not always easy. Most of us end up adjusting to or accepting our circumstances (sometimes with great difficulty) or seeking other chances to go abroad. Living with someone who has some understanding of these experiences may create a port in the storm for those of us who have been changed by our lives abroad.

Expatriates Naturally Bond

Expatriates are brought together by the common experience of being foreigners. In the international community in which I lived for many years in northeast China, American students and teachers dated Japanese, Korean, French, and Russian students and teachers. Every year we celebrated at least one engagement.

People living abroad are often themselves the products of intercultural marriages. (I know of one couple in which the African American man’s mother was an immigrant from Haiti while his girlfriend was ethnic Chinese from Vietnam whose family had immigrated to Switzerland. Another American student who dated a student from Japan was the granddaughter of a Chinese doctor who had married an American missionary.) As borders become easier to cross, intercultural marriages become much more common and acceptable than they once were.

Of course, many more relationships in our international community ended once the realization of the realities of returning home and trying to maintain long-distance relationships set in. Often the couple is not ready to make a long-term commitment when the challenges of trying to get back together somewhere in the world appear to be too great.

I know of at least two Japanese women whose parents threatened to disown them if they married American men. In one case, the couple married anyway. In the other, the woman returned to Japan. Her boyfriend received a letter from her uncle saying that she had been bitten by a poisonous snake and died.

The Practical Matters

Couples who find each other abroad often come down to earth when they start considering the reality of building lives together under complex circumstances. Working through the details of what the relatives will think, where they will live, and how they will arrange the paperwork becomes a test of fortitude and staying power.

In my own case, the Chinese marriage license was fairly easy to arrange, but U.S. officials kept pushing back our departure date with the piles of paperwork, fingerprinting, and other documentation required for an immigrant visa application. Some people have said that the process is designed to be slow to discourage shotgun weddings.

Deciding where to live can also be difficult. Flexibility and the willingness of at least one spouse to live as a foreigner or immigrant abroad can make things easier. My husband has experienced the convenience, privacy, and mobility of American life as well as the frustrations of open discrimination. At this point the benefits of living in the U.S. outweigh the disadvantages, but we often discuss returning to Asia where I am the foreigner or moving to a third country where we both would be foreigners. Living in an area where diversity is common can make the move easier. Building a community of international friends also helps tremendously. If it’s financially feasible, yearly visits home can also help your spouse feel more in touch with family. Again, compromise and flexibility are key.

What to Watch Out For

When considering marriage abroad, think about the circumstances in which you met and fell in love and give yourself lots of time to see if it can last. Many vacation flings seem perfect at first but turn out to be impractical. I dated men whom I later discovered were more interested in a visa than a serious relationship. I know of many American men who imposed stereotypes of Asian female docility on their Asian girlfriends, then were shocked to realize that their wives expected to call the shots at home after marriage.

Even if family and friends on both sides of the marriage are accepting and supportive, you are bound to encounter naysayers who are sure your relationship will fail. An American friend of mine was told by her boss that “intercultural marriages just cannot work.” When she pointed out that her own marriage to her Chinese husband was happily in its third year, the boss said that she was in the “honeymoon stage.” Later she found out that his American son and German wife were struggling with their own marriage.

Statistically, intercultural and interracial marriages have a high rate of failure. But many succeed. When we look to older generations who dealt with a climate of greater disapproval and discrimination than we do today, we find keys to how to make these marriages work for a lifetime.

By Tamula Drumm