Tag Archive | "parents"
Guess Who’s Coming to Diwali?
Slate's Dear Prudence column has dipped its toe into the intercultural relationship waters with a advice on how to deal with Indian parents refusing to meet their boy's girlfriend. The situation is one that a number of readers here have seen - or are currently in - so I thought I'd link to this timely advice. Personally, I think that Prudie's advice on what to do is pretty spot on: insist on having the parents meet the girl at the next chance. However, I don't think Prudie understands all of the intricacies involved in an intercultural relationship - especially one where the parent-child relationship of one partner's culture is so different from the other's. Septia Mutiny has a brief post on the same article - and while the post itself isn't much to write home about, the comments section has a lot of interesting stories and discussions on it. Check it out when you have the time.
Continue reading...Who is Affected by your Intercultural Relationship?
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Many people subscribe to the idea that your personal life is nobody's business but your own - as long as you aren't maiming others, anyways. While I generally agree with the sentiment this idea expresses, I also think it's important to realize that, like it or not, your actions affect a wide swath of people. In fact, at the margin, your actions affect the entire world. Let's all pause for a moment to ponder that grandiose thought while breaking out into The Circle of Life. Everyone back? Good. I brought up this topic because being in an intercultural relationships has a tendency to disrupt the "social equilibrium," if you will, of the people around you. In almost every country and region an intercultural relationship is the exception, not the norm. So while being in any relationship might affect those close to you - my dad still hasn't gotten over the fact that I'm no longer his little girl - intercultural relationships are both a regular ol' relationship and something of a challenge to the status quo. As if romantic relationships weren't tough enough on their own! In this post I'm focusing on how intercultural relationships, in particular, affect those around us. I'll start out by laying out a (non-comprehensive) list of the type of people who can be affected by your intercultural marriage or relationship, continue with how these effects ripple out through the social web of life, and then finish up with how much you should really care about it all. This post developed as I thought about how parents can react to their children's intercultural relationships - I'll be applying the principles and theory I develop here to that post, which will be the next "serious" one.
Continue reading...Meeting the Desi Parents
Monday, April 14, 2008
Few things fill me with as much dread as meeting my partner's parents. First off, I'm socially awkward by nature - at least when meeting new people. I never know how to make small talk, or when good eye contact crosses the line into weird staring, or if my posture and facial expressions are saying "possibly mentally deranged" rather than "cool and confident ". Then there’s the fact that I’m meeting the parents. While I’m not exactly a “people pleaser”, I do think it’s important to have a good rapport with the parents of your significant other, at least if he or she is close to them (and Aditya is). If the relationship continues then they're going to be a part of your life forever, and well, family matters, you know? And first impressions matter too. Finally, with Aditya’s parents I had the whole “different culture” thing to worry about too. All of the social rules and interpersonal cues – which I only have a passing knowledge of, anyways – go swishing out the window when you’re faced with a new culture. Not only could I completely mess up, I could completely mess up and not even know what I did wrong. Despite this, my initial meetings with Aditya’s parents – first Maa, then Baba – ended up going quite well. While this may be more due to their innate awesomeness than any actions of mine, I hope my story can help out some of you who are struggling with the same sort of worries I had had. Next post I’ll be focusing on some of the more “theoretical” aspects of meeting the parents, which will greatly extend some of the points I bring up here, so be sure to tune in for that too.
Continue reading...Gori Girl: Now Blogging from the Desi Suburbs
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
For the sixth year running, Aditya and I have moved our junk to a new home. Yes, you read that right: we've moved (together or both individually) every year for the past six years. It's not that I like moving; it's just a combination of being a student, having an urge to see the world, and a peculiar, magical moving amnesia that makes me forget every year how traumatic moving really is. I'll spare you the gory details, but beyond the typical panicked late night packing, this move has included our utilities being shut off at the new house, at least three separate lockouts, sleeping on hardwood floors, and a hail storm. In an attempt to stay sane (and nourished) through this process, Aditya, an Indian friend, and I went to the mall near the new place this weekend for food and a bit of light goofing off between hauling boxes. And guess what? We've accidentally moved to the Desi suburbs. About every fourth group we saw wandering the mall was sub-Continental, and I'd guess that at least a third of the mall population was Asian. It's like we're back in California! Tomorrow I'll get a post up about the first few times I met Aditya's parents, and I'll be blogging regularly now that the worst of the moving trauma is over.
Continue reading...© 2010 Gori Girl. Powered by Wordpress.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
3 Comments