✿♡♡♡ Working on Your Intercultural Relationships ♡♡♡✿

The last post on choosing the language for intercultural communication had received many comments, and opened up some really interesting facts about you, my dear friends. I didn't even know that so many of you are actually in mixed relationships (next time I shall highlight who all are there), or having got someone who is in, or simply have got intercultural exposure and experience. 

Today I'd like specifically turn to a topic which is one of the most important in cross cultural relations when it comes to making such relations "work".

Love is what brought two people together, it helped them to build those bridges at first, then made them want to be with each other and finally entwined their lives - it's our story in short. But not a complete story. There are many more chapters to be added to it. One of them - what keeps these relations going. I think that I had already touched the theme somehow in the previous post where I expressed my opinion that partners shall try to learn each other language. Continuing this thought I'd say that to Learn something new about each other (also in broader term - cultures) every day is one of the ways to fill up cultural gaps, understand each other better. This can be anything from a conversation to a viewing of a movie or TV program, and reading of course.

In any marriage, you inevitably end up altering a little of yourself for another person. Here goes another building material of our marriage - to Adjust. I in particular couldn't t avoid this as much as inconvenient it was at times. It was painful too, because I felt like I was loosing my identity. One would probably say why would I do that for a whole culture above me? I had such thoughts too, and they didn't make the situation better. We both found balance to help especially me to adjust and adapt to a new cultural environment, to new people, a new family. 

At the same time some things we had to simply Accept.You cannot change yourself completely, and neither shall you demand this from your partner. We take some things as they are, and accept not only within the family but within the society too. 

We are very inspired by our relationships, especially at the prospect of having a child who will connect both of our cultures more. We Enjoy the marriage and think of all the possibilities this intercultural union can bring now and in future, in spite of all the difficulties.

After all it is necessary to Have a Sense of Humour in a cross cultural marriage to be able to face situations of misunderstanding, and not to be so serious in certain moments. Finding a humorous side of some things will help both the partners to see their cultures from another perspective.
There can be other ways as well, but in general it is important to have reciprocal communication in intercultural relations, where both are equally involved, both willing to contribute into keeping relations sustainable and loving. I shall tell about all of these more, it will alone take a whole blog post dedicated to the things I had to learn, adjust for, accept, enjoy, and have a sense of humour about during almost 4 years of our Indian-Russian marriage.
I am also starting to share some nice and useful articles/blog posts/forum posts about the same (or different) issues I offer to reflect on.
Married to an Alien: Can Love Conquer Culture? - an article by Tim Sullivan about cross cultural marriage problems, pitfalls and author's own experience being in an American-Japanese marriage.
Why So Many Russian Women Go Abroad? - a blog post in a "question-answer" style by the author of the Ask a Russian blog. Yes, why indeed? :)

source

Hope you find some of my thoughts appealing to you as well. Do you work on your intercultural/mixed/any relations or let them have their own course?