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Intercultural Relationships: Ingredients for Meaningful Crosscultural Connections

August 8, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

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Crosscultural or interracial relationships take a little more work and a little more skill to turn them into meaningful relationships.

This evening, I was eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver, British Columbia. The city’s population is now 50% Asian, and innumerable Chinese restaurants dot the city. Twenty or thirty years ago, Caucasians would not darken the doors of these Chinese restaurants without a Chinese guide; today, Caucasians eating independently at Chinese restaurants is commonplace.

I noticed a table made up of a very interesting mix of individuals: one Asian man, one elderly Asian woman, and three Caucasian women, one of whom had two toddlers who looked half-African. The elderly Asian woman didn’t seem to understand much English, yet she joyously participated in the conversation, at times asking for translation. The Caucasian women eagerly included the elderly woman in the conversation in spite of the language barrier. I could not figure out how they were all related to each other, but one thing I was sure of: they were all enjoying the delicious Chinese food!

This group of people had formed the least likely community. Yet their community showed that meaningful crosscultural relationships are not born, but made. There are several key ingredients they demonstrated.

1. Willingness to step out to the unknown. We are creatures of habit and we seek security in the familiar. When you are willing to step out of your comfort zone into the unknown, with an attitude of adventure, you will discover so many new pastures.

2. Readiness to take risk. Any time you do something different, whether it is horseback riding, skydiving, or quitting a job to return to school, you are taking risks. In an intercultural relationship, you leave familiar customs and values to risk exposing your ignorance and lack of competence. However, every investment involves a risk. If you are willing take these risks, you will reap the returns.

3. Set aside familiar framework. Relating crossculturally requires setting aside a framework or paradigm that has been your roadmap. This involves giving up control while taking on the attitude of an adventurer or explorer.

4. Take responsibility for communication. In spite of the lack of language facility, the elderly Asian woman courageously engaged in conversation through her interpreter; the Caucasian women made an effort to engage her. Since everyone took responsibility for carrying the conversation, there was no dull moment.

5. Recognize that communication is more than verbal. In interpersonal communication, there is more going on than the mere exchange of words. Nonverbal communication through facial expression, hand gestures, and body vibrations all send out messages. Even without language proficiency, two people from different cultures can exchange messages using smiles, a friendly touch, or a warm handshake.

6. Show interest. Do you allow differences to bar you from reaching out? Show interest no matter how different the other person is.

7. Believe that a relationship across cultures is possible. Any effort to build a relationship has to begin with the belief that it is possible.

What are have you found to be the essential ingredients for a meaningful intercultural relationship?

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Intercultural Relationships And Multicultural Families: Support Your Spouse During Crisis

August 1, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

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Supporting Your Spouse in Time of Crisis

Intercultural or intermarried couples have different ideas about community, particularly in times of crisis. These ideas will shape how you support one another when crisis comes your way.

Let’s take the example of how hospitals are set up. In India, family members show up to cook for and to be with the patient. In America, hospital authorities tend to limit family’s access to the patients.

About twenty-seven years ago, when I was in the hospital as a fairly newly married bride, I didn’t know what to expect of my Caucasian husband. Since I didn’t have any extended family in the city, he was my only family at the time. I was concerned about him missing work (my culture taught me to consider the other person’s interests first); I was also anxious about going through the health crisis alone (I grew up in a communal culture). Eventually, I admitted to myself that I needed his presence and emotional support. I asked him to stick around to be with me.

Several insights that will help you support your spouse in time of crisis are:
1. Be aware of the importance of community in your own cultural background. If having people around is helpful to you, look in your social networks to see who can be present to support you. Your neighbors, your church, or clubs you belong to?

2. Be honest with yourself. Acknowledge your need for emotional support.

3. When you are in a crisis, it is honorable to put yourself first. There is no need to feel guilty about not putting other people first. Your spouse will most likely want to be there for you.

4. Include your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews in your support system. They may be too young to say the right things, but their presence is what gives you a sense of connection so you don’t feel alone.

5. Your spouse can be your advocate. Even if your spouse has to go back to work, he or she can arrange for someone to be with you.

What are some similar crises you have experienced? What kind of support would be meaningful to you?

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Intercultural Relationships: Multicultural Families And Birthday Celebrations

July 25, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

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Birthday Celebrations

Intercultural couples may have different perspectives on birthday celebrations. For example, Asian cultures revere the elderly while the American culture values youth. The differences in values also result in the varying weights we assign to birthday celebrations.

As a new mother with an Asian upbringing, I was brought up to believe that celebrating the 60th birthday was more important than celebrating the 6th birthday. I had to learn how to organize birthday parties for our two children – finding party themes, locating venues, and creating party activities ? when they were growing up. It was a climb on the learning curve. It was also a value shift because I had to embrace birthday celebrations for a little toddler or a teenager as something important.

For me as an Asian mother, I would feel a sense of loss if our children did not celebrate my 60th or 70th birthday as their expression of love and care. To integrate the two different cultural traditions for birthday celebrations, I have reflected on and identified a few guidelines.

1. Name the goals for each birthday celebration. What is it you’re trying to accomplish? Is it just to get your child’s friends together to focus on your child? What would you like your child to learn through this birthday celebration?

2. Teach your children the goals you are trying to accomplish. This will help them learn that birthday celebration is not just about them but also about family and community.

3. Create opportunities for your children to honor an elderly person. Do something special for a grandparent on the child’s birthday. Visit a nursing home to read to a resident on the young child’s birthday. This will keep the child from becoming self-centered or self-serving.

4. Ask your child to write a short paragraph (if your child is old enough) imagining what kind of birthday celebration he would like to have if he were as old as grandpa and grandma.

5. Invite your child to take charge of the organizing of his or her birthday party. This will encourage the child to step into a responsible role instead of being a passive recipient of gifts and attention.

How have you and the rest in your family celebrated birthdays? What have you tried to bridge the cultural gaps?

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Intercultural Relationships: Five Reasons For Building In-law Relationships

July 18, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

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Intercultural Relationships: Five Reasons for Building In-law Relationships

In an intercultural marriage, cementing the relationship between husband and wife reaps rewards if you put in the work. However, you will reap so much more payoff if you invest in building relationships with in-laws as well.

My husband and I just returned from a long weekend in Vancouver, BC, visiting my mother and three sisters. For more than ten years since we started living on the West Coast, we have consistently taken time to visit them. These relationships have blossomed into healthy friendships and caused me to ponder on the significance of building in-law relationships.

1. It creates a sense of unity in spite of the cultural differences. My husband’s great love for Chinese food, and his mastery of the chopsticks, has been door openers for him to become one of us. My mother, who does not speak English, misses his English-only son-in-law when she doesn’t see him.

2. It meets our human need for connection. We have a need to feel we belong to families and tribes. Building these in-law relationships is tapping into the natural opportunities for growing our family and tribe.

3. It keeps everyone up-to-date about our lives. Staying in touch is important to keep the relationships alive.

4. It provides a model for our children. Our children watch us and how we maintain these relationships! Someday they will have questions about their background and origin. Their aunts and uncles will be their sources!

5. It opens up opportunities for friendship. It is gratifying to see how my husband and brother-in-law have struck up a friendship, after years of initiative on our part.

What have you tried to build relationships with your in-laws? What might be other good reasons for building these relationships?

Please leave me a comment and feel free to ask me a question by clicking on the button “Ask Me A Question” in the sidebar.

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Intercultural Relationships: Humor Coach

July 11, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

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Intercultural Relationships: Humor Coach
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Intercultural couples look at humor from different cultural perspectives. What is funny through the husband’s eyes may not be so funny, and sometimes offensive, through the wife’s eyes.

Humor depends on a variety of variables – cultural associations, historical connections, geographical locations, educational level, and context – and it does not always translate into something humorous or funny in a different context.

I have lived more than thirty years in the United States, and to this day, I still need my husband to translate a joke for me. It’s not because I do not hear the words; it’s because my upbringing doesn’t always provide the cultural lenses through which to see a joke as a joke.

1. Be honest when you don’t get a joke. It’s really OK.

2. Feel free to ask for a translation or interpretation of the humor.

3. If you are living in your spouse’s cradle culture, invite your spouse to be your translator.

4. Use the opportunity to learn about the culture. A joke or funny story reveals a great deal of the values as well as the social structures of a culture.

5. Practice visualizing yourself in the joke’s culture, embracing the values communicated through the joke. This visualization exercise is a wonderful tool for adapting to the culture you have not grown up in. You will learn to see things through the eyes of “the other party” from “the other culture.”

What has been your experience of using humor or telling jokes in your marriage or in your social network? How can you improve your joke-savvy?

Please leave me a comment and feel free to ask me a question by clicking on the button “Ask Me A Question” in the sidebar.

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Intercultural Relationships – What Attitudes Do Multicultural Parents Need?

July 4, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

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Intercultural Relationships – What Attitudes Do Multicultural Parents Need?

Intermarried couples breed multicultural kids. These kids enjoy the unusual strength of seeing the world through two sets of cultural lenses. As they navigate these two streams, they need parents who can transcend tribalistic thinking and teach solid values. Parents of multicultural families can model this by:

1. Speaking respectfully about the two cultures represented.

2. Recognizing diversity as positive and desirable.

3. Explaining the reasons why different cultures handle a particular situation differently.

4. Showing the children how to evaluate the merit of two different ways of doing things in a particular situation.

5. Demonstrating flexibility as the family navigates between the two streams.

My husband and I tried hard to speak positively of the different customs and traditions we each come with. Children do learn what they live. As young adults, they have learned to appreciate diversity. What do you find to be useful in parental attitudes when a family has more than one cultural stream? What would you do differently the next time around?

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Intercultural relationships: Dealing With Racial Hostility

June 27, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

Interracial and other intercultural couples face a spectrum of reactions from strangers and acquaintances, reactions that range from cold shoulders to racial hostility at worst. Unless people act out their racial hostility toward you and violate the law, there is not much you can do about them or to them. However, you can safeguard your relationship by having a conscious strategy for dealing with such hostility.

When my husband and I first got married, we were living in the state of Mississippi. Institutionalized and socially sanctioned racism was not only alive and kicking then, it was pervasive throughout all strata of society. As a white-Asian pair, we would be stared at, out of not only curiosity but also hostility. When I was alone, I would get dirty, racial slurs from both black and white people. We could not do anything about other people’s behavior, even though we felt violated.

During our twenty-eight years of marriage, we have adopted a few principles to protect our relationship.

1. We set our internal boundaries. Even though those individuals stepped over our external boundaries by their inappropriate behavior, we worked hard at not allowing their behavior overtake our emotions. We refused to own their derogatory remarks by getting emotionally distraught.

2. We process the emotions with each other. Since we no longer live in the Deep South, we don’t experience racial hostility as daily fare but we do encounter disrespectful behavior occasionally. Nonetheless, we make time to debrief each other when any incident happens.

3. We reaffirm our loyalty to each other. Racial hostility, even from strangers, has the potential of driving a wedge between two people in an interracial relationship if they allow it. We feel it is important for us to remind each other with these words, “I love you and I chose you.”

4. We remind each other that the problem is not ours. When people publicly express racial hatred toward strangers, they simply expose their own ignorance and lack of self-control. If we get on an emotional roller coaster ride as a result of their despicable behavior, we are handing power over to them.

5. We release our impulse to get even. As a new bride living in Mississippi, I had been tempted, many times, to get even with the people who so readily expose their own ignorance. Perhaps I could say something smart to get back at them, I thought. As we mature in years and as our marriage matures over time, we realize that even taking the time to give those people the attention is giving them something they do not deserve. Our strategy is to simply ignore the ignorant and move on.

Have you had to face racial hostility because you have an intercultural relationship or interracial marriage? How did you handle it? What worked well and what didn’t? What can you share with us to help others?

Please leave me a comment and feel free to ask me a question by clicking on the button “Ask Me A Question” in the sidebar.

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Intercultural Relationships: Marriage Mentors

June 20, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

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Intercultural Relationships: Marriage Mentors

In intercultural marriages, marriage mentors can be an invaluable resource to guide the relationship toward success and satisfaction.

A mentored life is an empowered life; a mentored relationship is an energized relationship. When a couple does not have any kind of guidance counselor, they are isolated in their relationship. They cannot see behavior patterns that are unconstructive, perspectives from different vantage points, and the need to change and grow. A marriage mentor can uncover blind spots, lend a listening ear, share resources, and offer emotional support.

In an intermarriage, the couple can benefit tremendously from another intermarried couple who are farther along the road. However, when a mentoring couple who has been married longer, or who is married cross-culturally, is not available, you can still learn from other intermarried couples your age or couples from within the same culture. My husband and I have very intentionally built relationships with other couples, some older and some our age. These relationships have been a real lifeline for us to grown our own relationship.

The purpose of involving marriage mentors in your relationship is to invite accountability. Journeying alone without accountability creates the risk of tunnel vision, the lack of clear direction, and the lack of awareness of problems. You may not know your marriage is in trouble till it is too late. However, if you are accountable to another couple, they can serve as an objective voice and a sounding board.

What are the topics you and your spouse are wrestling with? What resources have you tapped into so far? Who in your circle are potential marriage mentors for you? If you cannot find a good candidate couple to be your marriage mentors within your circle, where else can you look (community groups, church groups, and online resources)?

Please leave me a comment and feel free to ask me a question by clicking on the button “Ask Me A Question” in the sidebar.

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Intercultural Relationships: Saying Sorry

June 13, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

Intercultural couples make mistakes and cause each other hurts, just like other couples. However, different cultures have different ways of cleaning up the mess afterward.

I came from a culture and a family that does not verbally apologize for wrongs done, at least not within the immediate family. Sometimes business operators may apologize to customers, to make amends and to smooth the relationship, but it is rare for members of immediate family to verbally express regrets, and apologize for mistakes or hurts. I still remember how difficult it was for me to say the words “I’m sorry” to my husband the first few years of our marriage.

One can speculate the cultural reasons for not using verbal apology. Perhaps the offender will lose face if he admits wrong; perhaps saying sorry will make the offender feel too vulnerable; perhaps words are not sufficient to pay reparations. Instead of a verbal apology, a Chinese wife may buy a gift to communicate her sorrow for hurts done and a Japanese husband may buy his wife a piece of new jewelry to make up.

As my Caucasian husband and I got to know each other and our cultural cues, I began to practice saying sorry because this is the language of apology close to his heart, and this is America where we live. Over time, I have also adopted verbal apologies as a meaningful way of making amends. Practicing saying sorry to my husband has also sensitized me to the times when I need to say sorry to friends.

Relating cross-culturally does require personal transformation and self-denial, but what relationship doesn’t? How do you say you’re sorry in your culture? How does your spouse or significant-other say you’re sorry in his or her culture? Which language of apology is meaningful to both of you? What steps can you take to learn the language that is meaningful to your spouse?

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Intercultural Relationships: Express Affection In Culturally Meaningful Ways

June 6, 2011 By Theresa Froehlich Leave a Comment

An interracial or intercultural couple is constantly decoding and translating messages when they communicate with each other. When expressing affection, it is important to ask the question: is my message culturally meaningful to my spouse?

During last week, I was wrestling with some difficult issues which have a longstanding emotional impact on me because these issues touched on my cultural identity. I have finally reached the place and time to let go of this set of issues so I can move on. Yesterday, I asked my husband to take me out for Chinese Dim Sum lunch (even though I have had Dim Sum twice already the past week) as a way to mark my decision to set aside the set of issues to move on with life. I knew that going out to McDonald’s for burgers and French fries, or to Olive Garden for Fettucini Alfredo would not meet my need. It was important for my Caucasian husband to express his love and care for me as a Chinese person by taking me out to Chinese Dim Sum.

Eating the comfort foods I am familiar with (Thank God! Dim Sum is available in our city) affirms my ethnic and cultural identity: that it is not just all right to be Chinese but that I don’t have to change who I am to be acceptable.

Being able to express affection in culturally meaningful ways is important for nurturing an interethnic or intercultural marriage. I find these pointers helpful for building our cross-cultural relationship.

1. Develop your self-awareness. Learn to pay attention to your emotional needs. Listen to yourself several times a day.

2. Ask the question: what would be the most meaningful way to meet my emotional need at the moment?

3. Articulate those needs to your spouse or significant other. Don’t assume your spouse can read your mind.

4. Request your spouse to meet your need in the way you find meaningful. This is really asking your spouse to speak your cultural and emotional language at the moment.

5. Explain to your spouse why this particular way of meeting your need is meaningful to you. This helps to build your mutual understanding and your relationship.

What have been (or what are) some situations in which you needed your spouse to show affection and support in culturally meaningful ways? What did you do to articulate those needs and request your spouse to support you? What were the results? What would you do differently next time?

Please leave me a comment and feel free to ask me a question by clicking on the button “Ask Me A Question” in the sidebar.

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