It’s challenging to navigate dating anyone, regardless of whether they share your color, religion, or culture. It might be slightly more difficult for some people than usual when race is included in the equation (depending on your specific situation). While cultural shock may play a huge role in this, racism may not even be a factor.
When you date someone of a different race, they bring their own customs, morals, and even religion with them, all of which may be similar to or even in opposition to your own. Both of these things—this and your relationship—are presumably fascinating and novel at first. You’ll both be exposed to different languages, music, foods, traditions, holidays, and basically all aspects of culture. In contrast, over time, these fun quirks can become challenging to deal with at time on a daily basis.
So, how can you make these intercultural relationships work? Here are a few tips for you courtesy of Our Relationship.
Develop an appreciation for your partner’s culture, even though it is different from your own.
You both must be willing to embrace and value your own diversity and cultural backgrounds.
You and your spouse should invest time, effort, and energy into enjoying each other’s cultures and learning about the traditions, practices, and languages that go along with them in order to achieve this. You and your spouse may attend each other’s cultural events and festivities, try to learn each other’s native languages, and even, if it were possible, go to each other’s places of origin.
Surround yourselves with people who support and accept your relationship.
When interracial couples feel stigmatized or marginalized because of who they are as a couple, this causes them to feel as though they shouldn’t be together, which puts further strain on the relationship. Additionally, this increases the likelihood that they will see their cultural identity and their couple identity as distinct, which might occasionally make them feel as though they must choose between the two. Having a social network that supports your relationship and prevents you and your spouse from experiencing strong feelings of stigmatization or marginalization should therefore be a top priority.
Don’t consistently complain about each others families or about being a part of each others’ customs
It’s vital that you don’t begrudge your partner and the things that are really important to them. Likewise, your partner shouldn’t act like respecting your spiritual, religious, or customary needs is burdensome or inconvenient. Practice empathy and be enthusiastic to indulge them.
Develop and maintain a “we” mentality
It has been found to be a useful strategy for fostering success in international and interracial relationships to adopt a “we” mentality, which refers to a mentality of oneness amongst the partners in a love relationship. Despite the disparities in your racial and cultural heritages, you and your partner should forge a strong sense of shared identity through qualities like devotion, commitment, friendship, and finding common ground.
