Cultures Apart

If you are in a relationship with someone from a different culture, you might have realised that this can be a problem or a blessing.

I married my Albanian husband five years ago. My eyes were sparkly and my heart full of hope for a great future together. I nearly backtracked on our wedding day. My husband comes from a culture where they don’t kiss anyone besides their partner on the mouth.

As a South African, we kiss parents and kids, uncles and aunts, and even people we don’t know but whom we are introduced to on the lips.

My husband used to make fun of that before we married. Since it was such a huge deal to him, I agreed that I would only kiss him, my family and our future offspring on the lips.

Then, at our wedding, a friend’s husband kissed me to congratulate me. I was so caught up in the moment that I didn’t think twice. My husband instantly blew up like a puffer fish and was grumpy through our entire photo session. Every time the photographer looked away, we had words. My husband saw this as cheating and I saw his behaviour as childish and unacceptable. How could this be cheating?

We couldn’t find a way to agree on this and we couldn’t find a way to agree to disagree on this. Five years later we are still avoiding the subject because we just cannot see it from the other’s point of view.

I soon realised that every day of our marriage would be shared with family who lived abroad. Like an alarm that cannot be cancelled, the in-laws called every SINGLE day. Two or three times a day on a weekend. I thought this was inappropriate and bringing that up in conversation led to my other half stating that he thought my family didn’t care enough about me to call me more often. I thought one or two conversations a week with parents were enough. After all, we were all busy adults and I didn’t need my parents to know what was in the menu for every meal.

My parents, on the other hand, thought it was normal to call us as soon as they woke up at 7 AM in a time zone where they are one hour ahead of us and 6 AM wake up calls to a newly wed couple wasn’t great either.

We got pregnant on honeymoon and since we lived in separate countries before we married, we didn’t end up having much time alone until two became three.

At first I thought that he had a great mix of culture since he had moved to the USA as a teenager. What was an attraction when we dated, soon became a massive obstacle. He wasn’t fully American and he wasn’t fully Albanian. Sometimes he thought like an Albanian and sometimes like an American. This could lead to him unpredictable. This was also true for me. I left South Africa in my early twenties to move to the U.K. and sometimes I thought like a Brit and sometimes like a South African. I was neither one nor both. It felt just as confusing as it sounds. So we had four cultures that barely overlapped. Problem!

I felt the pressure from in-laws to have boys. I didn’t care if we had a boy or a girl and when we found out the gender of our baby I thought they didn’t deserve to know because I felt that their love was conditional. We both felt in over our heads and neither of us felt particularly in love anymore and we hadn’t even been married for six months! We did end up telling them because we couldn’t really keep it a secret but I still regretted it.

Then our son was born and had to go into emergency care immediately for breathing difficulties. He ended up in the NICU for a few days under a heated lamp and since the staff needed to keep an eye on his colour he was only wearing a nappy. We sent photos to both families. My parents were visiting and had a clear understanding of what was going on. The in-laws, however, thought I was a terrible mother for not dressing my winter born baby in sheep wool!

I was still in shock from the birth before I became inundated with emails and messages about why our baby wasn’t dressed. Hell hath no fury like a new mother who has just been through a trauma. I refused to speak to my in-laws for a long time. Did they really think they were able to look after my son better than me?

I was the one who carried him safely past due date and I would gladly give my life for him if I had to. How dared they? Then my mother-in-law asked if my son could live with her. I actually couldn’t believe that my husband dared to even translate that for me. I soon felt bitter and resentful towards them and I felt that no one understood.

My family told me to be nice to my in-laws when I could have gone on and lived the rest of my life without ever speaking to them again.

But then things changed. I saw what a fantastic dad husband was and I saw how torn he felt by this situation. Somehow I felt love for him again and in love with him again and when he was hurting, I felt hurt too. We started to talk more and decided to fight for what we had. We decided that our dream for our family was bigger than all of the arguments and that the health of our son meant more to us than anything in the world. We owed it to him to make our marriage work.

The best gift parents can give their children is a healthy marriage.

I decided to speak to his family again. The resentment towards his mum didn’t go immediately but I decided to forgive her.

We decided to put better boundaries in place. My parents were kindly asked to call at a more appropriate time or to wait until we called them. If this meant that they had already gone out for the day, then we could all safely assume that we could all survive that. They understood. My in-laws were kindly asked not to Skype three times a day, and informed that they weren’t automatically entitled to see every bath in a video. They were also politely told that advice was unwanted unless specifically asked for.

Five years later and both sets of parents give unwanted advice, but we have become masters in brushing it off like crumbs on the couch.

When they call at inappropriate times we both sometimes answer but only as an exception and not as a rule. Mostly we ignore the calls. Choosing not to answer is ok. We are our own family now.

We decided to take the best of each culture and ditch the things we did not like.

When we are in South Africa we eat with cutlery; when we are in Albania we eat with our hands. When we are at home in England, we eat however we want to eat.

What is bad etiquette in one culture, is good etiquette in another.

Our children are neither Albanian, nor South African. They are both, even if slightly less than us. I feel that Ian in some sense Albanian and my husband feels slightly South African.

Although our difference in culture can still bring up problems, we don’t see it as a problem anymore. We have something that many people don’t. We are culturally and linguistically rich. Our children speak three languages fluently.

The only way to survive a culturally mixed relationship is to embrace the differences. Don’t try to change each other. We are never going to agree on politics. We have made some compromises and on other issues we can only agree to disagree.

We love our family and we love shaping our own culture using the diverse backgrounds we have at our disposal.