This morning I stumbled across BBC World Service’s Outlook programme, which was talking about interracial dating. The programme was part of a series on Internet love stories.
Many of those featured found love with someone from another country. One of them is James, who has been married for eight years:
I met my husband when I was still an American diplomat and posted to Islamabad, Pakistan. He was also in Pakistan with his respective employer. Our courtship ended up spanning over several years and five different countries before we made the decision to merge our separate lives together into one. During the courting and “getting to know one another” period I have wonderful memories of horsebacking riding in the wild mountains of Pakistan with my (then) future husband, riding elephants together in India and enjoying a desert safari in the UAE for starters…
My husband says he realized relatively quickly that he wanted our lives to merge together. Honestly, I knew it too but it took me much longer to be able to acknowledge that fact to myself. When I met him I was very happily single, immersed in my career, had a great job, beautiful supporting family and some wonderful friends. I had to think good and hard about whether I was ready and willing to totally change my life around for an individual from a differing country, different culture and traditions different from my own. I knew that when I said “I do” my life as I knew it would never be the same. I would have to leave my career and to a degree, give up a lot of the independence I was accustomed to.
We took our time and both made sure that we understood how each other thought; what were our respective values and equally important, were they compatible? Unlike many American women and Saudi men who get together we did not meet each other earlier in our lives and in the States or while attending University. We met after having each experienced a number of varying life-changing experiences and very clear on not only what we wanted from life but what we could or could not accept.
Life continues to be a learning experience in communication, cultural distinctions and a deepening of the relationship. On the lighter side, I’ve learned that when he says “shoes-less” he really means barefoot and when I’m stumbling in trying to find the right Arabic words to express myself to my husband or his family, he knows exactly when to step in and save me from making an embarrassing faux pas.
We look out for each other and are constant teachers and examples to each other when it comes to any cultural differences or distinctions. We are both cognizant and always want to step with the right foot forward with each other and with our families. Of course we had to face the usual “What? You’re marrying an American?? Are you going to become an American citizen now?” Or, “How can you think of marrying a Saudi? He’s going to put you in a burka in a palace somewhere and we’ll never see you again!” We’ve learned when to overlook or ignore the skeptics and troublemakers and how to best reassure family members on both sides of customs and cultures that are new and different to them. I’ve learned when it is prudent to be more “Saudi” and in turn he knows when it’s best to be more “American.” Daily we make that transition between East and West and feel like we have adapted the best of each others cultures and customs.
Our life is a continuing love story as well as each day an ongoing chapter. On the political front the US-Saudi relationship may have its ups and downs but on the personal front, I like to believe my husband and I illustrate that US-Saudi relations can be very good indeed!
Thanks to Carol for sharing her story, originally published on her blog here. Carol writes more about life in Saudi Arabia in her blog American Bedu.
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Read more stories of cross-cultural relationships from My Partner is a Foreigner
More about Carol’s blog in Blogs of the World: an Insider’s view of Saudi Arabia
Maria (Catalunya) and Fuat (Turkey)
I met Fuat in Germany, in a course of the Goethe Institute, I was coming from Catalunya and he was coming from Turkey. The first week we were in the same class, sitting side by side, but his level of German was higher so the teacher told him she would send him to a higher level. However, he insisted that his level was not that good and that he’d rather stay in the current class in order to be in the same class than me. Well, I didn’t learn this until later, so we were in the same class for a month, afternoons and week-ends we might also coincide as all the students were doing more or less the same kind of activities. The course finished and we bid goodbye.
Internet use was starting to be common in those years so we kept contact through email and ICQ (similar to Messenger). The following year Easter he invited me and another friend I had gone with to Germany to Turkey so we went there for a week, and September the same year he came to Catalunya. And that was the beginning of it, we kept seeing each other at whatever opportunity we had, for business reasons he was travelling couple or more times every year to Europe and I would join him in the weekend whatever city he was going to or he would make a stop over in Barcelona. After 8 years, however, he decided we could not go on like this and we had to make a decision. So after weighting all the possibilities we decided I was moving to Turkey, and after a year of living together and seeing I could live in Turkey we got married.
Thanks very much to Maria for sending this story. If you would like to post your story on My Partner is a Foreigner, please send to info@pocketcultures.com
It’s a question he’d had dozens of times: Why on earth would you move from sunny friendly Sydney to cold dreary London?? Are you insane?
But finally, he had an answer.
Their meeting was uneventful, a casual hello at church one evening. Not long after however, Gezza was thoroughly missing his aussie barbecues (“barbies”) and decided to host one, and even though he hadn’t invited Alice, a mutual friend told her to come along. Alice thought she’d better check whether that was ok, so asked him and of course received a positive response.
And so appropriately, the pair had their first proper conversation over a bbq. The problem was, Alice was a vegetarian… how the heck was that going to work with an aussie bbq?
She arrived with her vegetarian sausages, “Would you like me to use a different pair of tongs?” Gezza asked, jokingly, trying to show his good aussie sense of humour. “Yes please” came the reply from an oblivious Alice, thinking to herself, “what a thoughtful, sensitive guy!”. Gezza swallowed his surprise and went inside in search of an extra pair of tongs. It was obvious that these two were made for each other.
So they got married and are still living in cold dreary London… (what happened there?)
Is your friend / husband / wife or partner from another country? Send your story to info@pocketcultures.com
The story of Aldo (Netherlands) and Elena (Spain). By Nivja de Jong.
Once upon a time there was a very ambitious Spanish dragonfly. Spain was too small for her ambition, so she flew to another land. A small and far away land. It was a country of constant rain, but where all the mosquitos were very big. Even bigger than Spanish dragonflies. It was a country where the mosquitos always ate bread for lunch, bread with yellow cheese. Sometimes they ate ham with their bread, or sometimes a bit of salad.
The Spanish dragonfly tried to settle in, but it wasn´t so easy to feel at home in a foreign country. When she got home in the evening she felt hungry enough to eat a horse because the lunches were so small! And it was often so cold that her wings turned blue, although she wore three coats in winter. Luckly she met many other Spanish dragonflies in the town where she was staying. Sometimes when it was not raining so much she even forgot that she was not in Spain.
One evening our dragonfly found herself flying to the party of a mosquito born in this small, cold country. The party seemed very Spanish. There was tapas and sangria, and all the insects were dancing. The dragonfly studied this mosquito very carefully. Could he also be a dragonfly? He was the same height as a Spanish dragonfly, he made the same noise as a Spanish dragonfly, his eyes were like those of a Spanish dragonfly, but when he danced he did not look Spanish, because he danced like a mosquito.
Another night, there was another party and this time the two insects danced together. All the insects who watched this dance could tell this was love. From the way the mosquito was swinging the dragonfly, and the dragonfly floated so surely in his arms, everyone present could tell that these two insects belonged together.
Where would they live? Would they live in this small country where it rained constantly? Or should they fly to another country? They decided it was better to fly to Barcelona. Not because the dragonfly was missing her country, but because the mosquito felt he could be more comfortable in Barcelona than in the Netherlands, because it would rain less often. Happily the mosquito adapted well to life in Barcelona: he learned to wear flip flops, like the dragonflies; he ate huge lunches, like the dragonflies; and he learned to speak like the dragonflies.
The two insects threw a huge party for their wedding in the South of Spain, and they danced all night. Afterwards, they moved to their new home in Barcelona, which had a swimming pool. In the following years they filled the swimming pool with dragonfliquitos and mosquiflies and they all lived happily ever after.
Do you have a story? Please send it to info@pocketcultures.com.
Ok, well we had to start somewhere! But we´d love to hear from you for future posts.
Are you married to / dating someone who comes from a different country? What was the most surprising, funny, even uncomfortable event linked to your different backgrounds? Did you grow up worlds apart, or are your cultures pretty similar? If you don´t have a foreign partner, you could still contribute if you have ever had a friend of a different nationality.
Anyway, back to the post. Where better to start than the great Michael Caine. He fell in love with his wife Shakira after seeing her on the tv, in a coffee advertisement. As the advertisement was set in Brazil, he assumed she was Brazilian and he managed to persuade his friend to go to Brazil with him so he could meet the girl he wanted to marry…
…Luckily he thought to check with the company making the commercial before leaving, Shakira was Indian (born in Guyana) and lived only one mile away from his house in London! He called her the next day and the two have been together ever since.
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