Photo Credit: by ϟnapshot 19
If there is ONE piece of advice I could give to intercultural couples with questions and concerns – only one – it would be to
Ask Your Partner!
It seems like such a simple thing. If you have a question about your significant other’s culture, religion, traditions, or family, why wouldn’t you ask him or her? Your partner is your best resource in understanding his or her cultural background! And yet, rarely does a day go by when I don’t get a question in an email or blog comment (or read a post somewhere else on the internet) in which the quickest, most direct way to get the question answered would be if the curious or confused person just started a conversation with his or her partner on the topic.
So, people, please don’t forget that your best cultural resource is sitting right next to you, taking up an unfair portion of the couch while obsessively playing FIFA 10 online.
(Oh – your partner isn’t doing that? Interested in a trade?)
I would like to add in one caveat, however, to this advice – while your partner is your best resource, he or she is not a perfect resource. Individuals have biases, limited experiences, quirks, subjective viewpoints, blind spots, and a disappointing inability to perfectly predict the future. Which means that sometimes your partner could be uniformed about a topic, misinformed, or just plain wrong. Shocking news flash, I’m sure!
Warning: Despite the obviousness of this observation, personal experiences suggests that pointing this out to your partner might be damaging to his or her ego.
So, when you have a question, first turn to your partner. If it’s likely to be a sensitive topic, try to ask about it in a sensitive and intelligent manner. But do remember that he or she is not infallible nor gifted with perfect foresight. If this is his or first intercultural relationship, your partner will likely not know exactly how the parental units will react to it, for example. In those sorts of cases, I think it’s a great idea to find out what others’ experiences are like. That sort of sharing & dialogue among those of us in intercultural relationships is, hands down, the best thing about this blog, and one of the things I love to seeing develop in the forums. So feel free to mosey over there if you’ve got a question to ask – one that can’t be easily (or best) answered by your significant other.
Also: for anyone interested in trading in a non-FIFA obsessed boy – I’ll be looking for your thread.
30. October 2009 at 4:51 am
GG! Hi! I haven’t been in the blog world for awhile, but updated my blog and of course, saw your link there, and thought of you. WordPress is still blocked in our part of the world so I update my blog sporadically, but I should come here more often, as GG is not blocked.
Great post. I always ask my husband whenever I have a question about China — culture, society, history. His answers aren’t perfect and of course they reflect his pov and biases, but they give me a place to start, and are usually pretty on the mark (because of course I respect his pov, otherwise I wouldn’t be married to him).
30. October 2009 at 9:33 am
Yeah, I can understand the difficulty of blogging if you always have to go through a proxy site. What a pain! Have you considered shifting to a self-hosted site?
30. October 2009 at 6:04 am
What about my hubby who doesn’t play FIFA but spends precious time seeing the “highlights” of the latest cricket match? Note: Highlights of an 8 hr match can be lengthy too.
I know your post originated from Sharell’s blog where they said a few things. Of course our other half is always the first resource but at least mine has realised his point of view is not ultimate (or he is bored of explaining things) and sends me to his sister to compare also pointing that her view is limited.
When I have a question abt North India or Muslims or he admits he doesn’t know much.
At the same time, whenever he has a question regarding my culture, I just give my point of view which is of course based on my upbringing.
At least when we come up with comments or questions abt each other’s culture, it makes us think and assess our own place in the world.
30. October 2009 at 8:09 am
Hmmm – what’s that about Sharell’s blog? I’ve had this post in the queue, unedited, for awhile. I’m lazy like that.
Anyways, I think it’s pretty awesome that your husband sends you to his sister to compare POVs – I ask Aditya’s mother sometimes about cultural questions (particularly religious ceremonies), and my South Asian coworkers & friends regarding current events. Aditya admits where his biases are (like he hates Calcutta), so I’m normally just make sure I get a second opinion on those sorts of topics.
P.S. Does your husband at least watch the cricket highlights of good games? That’d be the key decider for me
30. October 2009 at 9:37 am
Good post as usual, GG! While we’re all always glad to help out with questions, I find it a little strange sometimes that people turn to the interwebs before asking their partners. Although sometimes it is helpful to be a little bit informed before you have the conversation.
My boy has no interest in sports and rarely plays video games, so lucky me! He said he felt very emasculated since I ignored him to watch the World Series last night. (Go Phils!)
30. October 2009 at 10:07 am
I like both sports and video games, just not together. But, um, not baseball. Who’s up against the Phillys?
30. October 2009 at 12:24 pm
Oh my gosh! That’s one of my favorite things about “us”. He and I both LOVE baseball and football (Eagles and PHILLIES!!!) so we spend a LOT of our time watching sports together. It’s wonderful!
GG, that would be the YANKEES and just so you know, we are going to kick their butts tomorrow, Sunday and Monday!
30. October 2009 at 9:44 am
So Aditya is obsessed with FIFA too? What about British Premier League? I think I am now updated on a daily basis on all football gossip about Manchester United (P’s favorite) and Chelsea (P’s worst enemy) with a few other teams tossed in for good measure. Now that World Cup qualifiers are on (my Danish boss just informed me today that Denmark made it for the European quota)… and in the summer when World Cup is playing, I think this will take up a lot of his (our?) time.
It’s fun though… I’m not a big sports fan in general, but I came from a big “American football” household (which admittedly is a sport I can’t really stand), while “real football” is a sport I can actually get into, even if I don’t need to watch all the highlights on “FootyFilms” every night. Actually, sometimes I even hear him watching goal highlights from games in the 1980s or early 90s! I ask if he has seen these goals before and he says yes but he needs to “relive the moment”. (I think I feel a lunchtime blog posting coming on)…
Actually last night I held a program at the university for the freshman international students about dealing with homesickness and cultural differences. Sports was a major topic. Two male (a Jamaican and a Bangladeshi) students brought up the topic, “What is with American students and “football…” I mean, if the game only spends 5 minutes with the ball on your foot [kicking a field goal, etc] that is *not* football… having the ball on your foot for 90 minutes is football…” hee hee, I couldn’t agree more. I don’t know where “American football” got its name!
30. October 2009 at 10:19 am
Heh. Aditya supports Chelsea in the British Premier League, and hates on Man U. I support Man City, and thus also hate on Man U. Sorry!
Aditya also follows Serie A & supports Inter there, altho he’s pretty depressed about Ibrahimović’s shift to Barcelona. Ah, football… Personally, I can’t wait for the World Cup – woot to the US for getting so far in the Confederation Cup!
We follow American football too (and Aditya plays Madden Football video games…sigh) – so far, I’ve had great success in explaining the game to internationals. Couple of years back we had a party for all of the grad students in my econ program for the Superbowl (the Giants v. Patriots game, which I’m sure you were aware of, if not watching, given your location…). By the end of the game everyone was really into it. (It helped that the game was absolutely superb, and had a good back story/narrative for both teams.)
Hmmmm… maybe I should write a post on sports too!
30. October 2009 at 10:36 am
I knew there was something about Aditya that I liked….and now i know! A Chelsea supporter….and he hates Man Utd. What a guy!
Did you cry when we lost to Barcelona in the European champions league Semi final? My son and I both did….
Keep up the good work Aditya! Oh….and your Mrs is ok. Although the Man City remark was a bit lame.
30. October 2009 at 10:47 am
*sniff* Whatever happened to “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”?
30. October 2009 at 12:01 pm
Yeah, we were at a Superbowl party because of the Patriots. Right as the national anthem was reaching that high note at the end of the song the electricity went out. You could hear people screaming all up and down the street (much like when the Red Sox won the world series a few months before hand), and five minutes later you could hear all the cars starting up and the headlights heading out of the neighborhood. We eventually relocated the party at someone else’s house… the electricity didn’t come back on until halftime!
30. October 2009 at 12:36 pm
And our good friend “D” is a HUGE Chelsea fan, so although I’m sure P will be disappointed to here about Aditya and your football team choices, we can still be blogging buddies.
4. November 2009 at 7:52 pm
ladies, it’s the ENGLISH premier league…
*shakes head in disappointment*
31. October 2009 at 1:48 am
This is great advice, for sure. But one downside to this is that unless we have an anthropological type mind, we are not ‘experts’ on our own cultures or good at explaining why we do things. And we often have strong cultural biases towards our own culture. So if someone asked me, “Why does Texas have such a strong BBQ culture?” I might not know. I might not say “It is connected to our history with Mexico and the culinary connections which we have there…there was a South Western cowboy culture and blah blah blah…” I might just say “Oh it’s cuz us Texan like beef.” And that would be it. One answer would be a true reason, and one answer would be “folk-knowledge” so to speak. So when we do ask our guys, we have to remember this and not use the info to generalize (All Texans like beef) or rule out other possible answers. I dunno. Am I making sense? Maybe the beef BBQ thing is just a bad example.
Both of my husband’s grandmothers are from India and wore sarees every day of their married lives…they were from a part of India in which married women tend to wear saris. Women do wear sarees in Pakistan, especially at formal evens and when they come in to fashion. And there are a lot of Pakistanis who are recent immigrants from India and you see a lot of sarees as daily wear in Karachi on those type of women. Once I asked something about sarees to my husband and he told me “Oh, it is mostly the Punjabis who wear sarees.” Totally, utterly wrong. I didn’t argue with him. No point in doing that. But I knew he was wrong about that. But you get my point. He doesn’t automatically know everything about every aspect of Pakistani culture.
1. November 2009 at 1:43 pm
Yes, certainly – thus the caveat I wrote about above: your partner is not all-knowing.
When I ask a question, I’ll often first inquire with Aditya how much he knows/has studied about a subject. Often, actually, we don’t quite believe each other. What’ll end up happening is that one person will assert a fact, the other won’t believe it, and a bet will be made. (two cents, a million dollars, or some chore, like walking the dog, will often be the forfeit of the loser.) We’ll wikipedia it later, if we remember the disagreement. I think I currently owe Aditya eight thousand dollars, on the basis of a poor bet made a few weeks ago (I thought he was bluffing!).
A lot of people have told us we bicker more than any other couple they know.
31. October 2009 at 9:25 am
My husband is OBSESSED with American football (and bought the Madden game for Diwali). I’m not a fan at all, but I will occasionally watch with him now. (He’s pretty good about not watching excessively, except during the playoffs.) We really only had to follow cricket when my now-FIL was here over the summer – we watched a few IPL highlights. He’ll also watch tennis and basketball, but those are sports I watched anyway.
1. November 2009 at 1:44 pm
What team(s) does he follow, sistergh?
3. November 2009 at 11:28 pm
He mostly follows the Colts, not because of geography, but because of Peyton Manning and the no-huddle offense.
4. November 2009 at 7:52 pm
yea colts!
21. January 2010 at 8:02 am
HI.. I remembered this post today while creating a post on cross-cultural success! Thank you for sharing your wisdom and experience with us!!
http://alaivani.com/Blog/tabid/56/EntryID/437/Default.aspx