Multicultural relationships: To have or not to have?
Multicultural relationships can be lots of fun, but aren’t always easy. The fun part is that you learn a lot from each other, each others cultures, countries and so on. The difficult part is that it can be a source of miscommunication and misunderstanding. What it takes to go well is a lot of adaptation with the risk of adapting too much and losing yourself in that process.
My case is as follows. My husband is Dutch, was born in Canada and lived there until he was 6. I am from Surinam, South America, which was a former colony of Holland. So our main language is the same: Dutch.
But my mother is Javanese, her parents emigrated from Java, Indonesia. So she speaks Javanese and I just a little bit. She didn’t teach me Javanese, because she was afraid that it would ruin my Dutch and with that a good eduation and chances of a good future job. Although the official language in Surinam is Dutch, there’s another main language which is Surinamese. So me and my family speak three languages: Dutch, Surinamese and Javanese. And to make things worse or interesting is that we often mix 2 or 3 languages within a conversation. To my husband it was some kind of torture to follow what we were saying. I sometimes even had to translate it for him. Then there is also the difference between his Dutch and mine. My Dutch is in fact Surinamese Dutch which means that some of the words we use have different meanings or are used in different ways, which sometimes led to miscommunication. It’s like the way Spanish in Spain differs from Spanish in Latin-America. Then there was also the difference in pronunciation. He couldn’t understand some of my relatives and I couldn’t understand some of his, which was tiresome.
Another big difference between us is the way we look at food. To the Dutch food is just something you use to fill your stomache. To us food is a passion. We love to eat, cook and talk about it a lot. To us food is also a way to connect with each other, especially when sharing the food itself. So while I’m often busy with food, my husband doesn’t care about it. The only thing we had in common about food was visiting different restaurants in different countries. He then wasn’t interested in the way the food was prepared and what it consisted of as long as it tasted good, while I analyzed it completely in case I wanted to prepare it myself.
These were the two most important differences we had to overcome. What helped us most of the time was patience, explaining what we meant, accepting what we didn’t understand, translating for the other and sometimes just keeping quiet and listening. My passion for food I shared with others, like Debbie.
The fun part of my multicultural relationship was that we could laugh about not understanding each others family and that my husband ate food he had never eaten before which he sometimes liked and other times disliked. He also learned new words in the different languages, which he couldn’t pronounce well or used them in a wrong way which was sometimes hilarious.
So being in a multicultural relationship is like a regular relationship with an extra dimension. Even though our cultural differences aren’t the reason why we’re in a divorce right now, I think it’s easier to have a relationship with someone of your own culture, because then you have less bridges to build. You speak the same language, have the same cultural habits and so on. Although I have learned a lot from this relationship, it made me realize that it isn’t something I want to do again. The next time I’ll stick to someone from my own culture or a culture which has more similarities with ours.
This is my experience with multicultural relationships. How is yours?
