Hello
and welcome to my site! The saying 'love is blind' is very known to all of us.
Love is blind they say, even scientists, who gleefully point to studies that
show how the rush of emotions place blinkers on our brains, shutting down
rational thought.
'Falling' in love with someone from another culture is hardly a misnomer. We
truly prove our love with the ultimate commitment -- launching ourselves off
the hard ground of our personal reality into the unknown of another. By taking
a partner from another culture we tacitly agree to share and explore a new
reality in ways that reach into the most vital and intimate corners of our
lives. What does it matter if we shut down a few more synapses as we bungy
jump into this new adventure?
The pity is that this blissful state of irrationality often lasts only long
enough to get us to the church (usually after we have neatly written our name
on some paper or another) or across a border. In my case it took me to a
German registry office where I was asked if I would accept my husband-to-be as
'Oberhaupt' (I am talking about my former marriage), oh oh! That was the
beginning of a journey that has sometimes seemed like a Disney version of
snakes and ladders. If the average marriage has the odd obstacle just square
it and you have an intercultural partnership. The average conversation can do
it if you throw in one of those run-of-the mill miscommunications. "Did he
really mean to tell me he's had enough of me?"
Don't get me wrong, I would be the last to knock intercultural partnerships. I
happily am married, but like most people who come from different cultures
we've had an eventful journey in more ways than one. But we have been lucky.
We did get around the obstacles -- we might not have. Intercultural
partnerships are often a matter of 'touch and go'. On the other hand when 'go'
means leaving a country; lifestyle, friends and possibly children, most of us
think twice, or three times, saving many intercultural marriages.
The stumbling blocks of these partnerships start with the fact that no matter
how schizophrenic we become we can still only live in one place. '"Your place
or mine?" is a question with immense consequences. If the marriage lasts, one
partner will live far from family in a culture that is often not welcoming,
and that these foreign partners will often be unable to 'make their own'. Even
with the best of intentions the fact that one partner is out of his or her
'natural environment' changes the power balance in a marriage for a long while
-- long enough in any case for it to require a weighty mass in the coin of
effort, earnings, or straight battling it out to balance the scales.
Intercultural marriage is a journey into another culture and into ourselves.
It adds another dimension to life, but is rich in irony. Just those things
that appealed most in our partners are often those that cause us the most
problems when the magic transforms into the mundane. The differences that
added spice to a courtship can sour a relationship.
If a marriage ends "your place" can become a heartbreaking liability. There
are countries in which divorce is a matter of who has the most power and
influence and this is rarely the foreigner. Some foreign partners limp off the
battle-field in the direction of home with nothing but the shirt on their
backs. But going 'home' after years away is also fraught with challenges that
must be faced carrying the heavy burden of a failed partnership, missed
friends, lost opportunities. Where children are involved, the theatre of
intercultural life slips into the tragic. Either children will be taken far
from one partner or, as if often the case with the present shape of western
law, the children cannot be taken from the country they have grown up in.
Foreign partners must now return home without their children or face life
alone in a foreign country...
