My partner and I come from different cultures — here are the main barriers and hurdles we face & have over-come

...My partner and I come from different cultures — here are the main barriers and hurdles we face and have to overcome for a successful relationship

Author Jon A. Silver details the “moments of cultural confusion” and/or "cultural schock" that have arisen in his relationship with partner, JoAn from a different cross-cultural background.

Silver chose her because she was different, and he had struck out with his own king and American women in general marrying or in a consensual union, twice before.

Silver, a New York/ Rhode Island native, writes how his and his girlfriend (now wife), who grew up in southern Philippines, to Chinese parents differ on matters of language, food, and perception of societal pressures.

My girlfriend and I were born less than six months apart, infact we -- her sister and I were born on the same day (9/11, now an infamous day in herstory) but some, 25 years apart and over 7,000 miles away from each other.

While she was growing up in the relatively, modern cityscapes of downtown Manila/ and suburban Davao City, northern and southern Philippines, respectively - I was discovering the world from within the boundaries of small-town Riverside, Rhode Island and big-city outer-boros Brooklyn, New York. Our paths collided where while working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I vacationed in Kon-tiki Resorts, Mactan Island, Cebu, Philippine Islands. Where she worked as the manager/ bookkeepper/ receptionist.

We both hit it of, right of the bat, quite well and have yet to disengage or disentangle. We corresponded for two years as she muddled the prospects of getting together, again and possibly marriage. I connected with her again at Dumaguete PI on another vacation two years later. Meanwhile, she had started graduate school in Davao City for Nursing, where she visited her family and I sponsored her. As enterprising as she is, she made money by getting the students to buy their uniforms from her seamstress, mother's concern and secured the school's contract on subject.

While we both enjoy science fiction, comics (their movies), dry jokes, and searching for the best lunch/ dinner places in town, our relationship is not without moments of cultural shock and cultural confusion and things being (sometimes literally) lost in translation. For example, I love to go out, for dinner but she doesn't.

Language presents some challenges

When it comes to learning languages, my girlfriend leaves me in the dust. She is fluent in English, Spanish, Japanese (she's adopted - her birth mother was Japanese), Mandarin, and Cantonese. That said, there are still occasions when the appropriate English word, literal lack and/or it's proper pronunciation, thereof eludes her and we are both left in the dark.

For example, while munching on a batch of shortbread cookies or coffee cakes, I had baked, she told me how much she liked their “dusty” texture. After my look of horror, we quickly discovered that she’d really meant to compliment their crumbles or  “crumbly” texture.

Or the time I was sent out to get, "quequmbers", "toemattos" and "letters" for a "en salada" as stated in a garbled video cell phone conversation. After my look and sound of utter confusion, we quickly discovered that she’d really meant to say cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce for our salad.

Or the time when she couldn't take a shower because she couldn't figure out how to turn on the warm or hot water using only one knob on the wall. Or the time when she flushed the toilet bowl and blue water rushed down, to her horror. I explained, I had added an additive that, enabled... it to being cleaned each time one flushes.

And I had to help her with writing notes, papers, resumes and letters in proper English, for work assignments and classes in computer science.

Yet comparatively, my language skills leave much more to be desired. Aside from my quickly dissolving basic fluency Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese (my native tongue), Italian (mother tongue of last two), German (mother of English) and French, I speak no other languages, mind you. While this doesn’t create a language barrier for us, it can when we video-chat with her parents, mine or other gtiends and relatives, abroad, back home.

She’s taught me enough for a few confident ...Nǐ hǎo's Shen-shen's, but the conversations really relied heavily on her and my parents’ version of the King's English. To practice my Mandarin, we conduct frequent mid-dinner lessons where I try to (literally) get my mouth around Chinese tones, for example. This is also true for Japanese... Dom Arigato's
and Tagalog ...Mahal-kita's & Salamat-po's (native Filipino tongue a mixture of above languages to include Malay) but the conversations still rely heavily on her Filipino and my parents’ American English or lack thereof... the Queen's English.

Our cooking methods and tastes differ, as well

Flickr/greentleaf

Our relationship has a large focus on food — both preparation and consumption... the love it encapsulates. While this lovr or passion is culturally indifferent, through many meals cooked together we’ve found that the preparation behind the food sometimes isn’t... done with love.

Take for example, the oven. As a baker, I’ve always viewed the oven (microwave, as well) as the focal point of the kitchen. It’s essential for creating not only delicious baked goods, but roasting meats, vegetables, grilling pizzas, and even reheating leftovers, quickly etc.

When my girlfriend told me that many kitchens in China for example, lack an oven, I was shocked. While I can’t imagine a kitchen without one, she says that almost all Chinese cooking can be done over a stovetop flame instead. I guessing I shouln't be shock and awed for the same is true in Cape Verde, though the hearth can be used as an oven.

When it comes to taste, there are only two major points where our opinions vary: texture and sweetness. Growing up in Cspe Verde and bred in the United States, I am used to only a few textures in my food – smooth, chunky, crunchy, and chewy, for example.

In Chinese, Japanese or Filipino food the diversity of texture is much wider, and the crunching sensation of eating cartilage is still one I’m getting used to. Likewise, my girlfriend is still adjusting to how sickly-sweet American desserts can be. While fruit-based desserts like pies or tarts are generally safe, she’ll usually pass on a cupcake topped with a tower of frosting.

But otherwise she loves American food, for example after being back home on vacation visiting her parents, after deplaning in US, she can't wait to get an American Steak Dinner at Longhorn's Stakehouse.

My home state is the opposite of diverse, mind you

Sean Pavone/Shutterstock

Bringing your significant other home is always a relationship milestone, but for us it has a few extra barriers and hurdles. Primarily, it’s expensive and time consuming to fly to the Philippines via  China or Japan. As recently minted master's and doctorate students who can’t take much time away from work, that leaves Rhode Island as the more plausible option.

And it's interesting to get married, then in passing - on vacation abroad, introduce your then significant other to your shocked and awed parents.

Rhode Island is a small but beautiful state, however, when it comes to diversity it’s as white as the snow that covers it. To be precise, the Census Bureau reports while growing up, that the state is just under 95 percent white. That’s a shocking figure, but growing up as a seemingly "white" person in a white state, it wasn’t something I always noticed. Being mixed I had always the element of surprise in my relationships.  

That perception however has changed in modern times. Though I grew up in Cape Verde Islands Africa, where we didn't pigeon-holed ourselves, black, white, moreno or mullato - mixed- as we do here. See another article on growing up in US as a mixed race, Cape Verdean. Read on https://johnasilva.blogspot.com/2018/09/passing-for-portuguese-one-familys.html

However, it was one of the first things my girlfriend noticed when she visited Rhode Island. While she thankfully wasn't faced with any discrimination, prejudice or racism on that trip, there is still something noncomforming or unnerving about not being the only person to look or speak like you do, in a crowd of similar faces.

While I was away on business, she had an affair resulting in the birth of our daughter, which I have loved and reared as mine own inspite of that fact.

We setup a joint account for household expenses, she never deposited any money and when I deposited monies in the 10s of thousands, she claims it never got to the account.

She also like to say one thing an do another.

Like any couple, our relationship is built rather on the commonalities and similarities we have as individuals, not the differences our cultures may have. However, it would be naïve to believe our cultures haven’t shaped us. Discovering these differences, misconceptions, and even biases are essential to better understanding each other and each others’ families, friends, milieu, community and backgrounds. Instead of driving us apart, they give us the opportunity to learn, and love, even more. Otherwise, however differences that are sticking points can also, drive us apart and bring us to the brink of divorce. She's now my X-wife, since she can't be trusted because of the lying, stealing, cheating and "covert" abuse suffered during our passive-aggressive relationship. Apparently in her culture, it's okay to do these things.

It appears I was used, for access to the Americas, once she got her papers, became a citizen, she sold the house, traded in the car and took between $10K - $20K and disappeared. She was tracked down by facebook posts and found 1,500 miles away in Cleawarter/St Pet/ Tampa & Orlando FL, when discovered she packed up secretly, moved to the town of Wheaton, just outside of Chicago IL.