Should You Do Something You're Uncomfortable With In A Relationship?

I recently did a post discussing my decision to be open to what my elders have to say. I've struggled a lot with this while married to my husband. I am a very strong headed person and saw listening to elders as stifling what I wanted. After a lot of discussion with my husband, we’ve decided to be open to what our elders tell us or ask us to do. This doesn’t mean we blindly do everything they say. We hear what they say, discuss it together, and make our decision as a family.I've received a lot of feedback from this one. Some people understand why we've decided to do this and agree. Others say elders have no place in our relationship, so why would we listen to what they have to say. It's made me think about all of the different situations where this can come up and I realized there isn’t one way that works for every relationship.When you face a decision in a relationship, you have to make a decision together. You have to do what’s best for your family, not just one of you.In any relationship, you will be faced with decisions that affect your family. In an interracial relationship, you'll have to decide where you live, what religion your family will practice, what language is spoken in the house, how to discipline your children, how involved extended family will be, etc.What do you do when you’re asked to do something you’re uncomfortable with?What if your spouse wants you to move to their home country, but you don’t want to?What if your partner wants you to practice a joint family, but you don’t want your in-laws raising your children?What if you want to share your country with your spouse, but he/she won’t give it a chance?You both grew up with different ways of doing things. Each of your cultures tells you what’s normal and what’s not. When you begin an interracial relationship, you have to find a new normal for your family. This means coming together and figuring out what you’ll do together.

The biggest thing you have to keep in mind is that you both have to be happy with your decision.

A few years ago, my husband and I moved our family closer to his side of the family. This meant we moved 36 hours away from my family. It was a really big decision for us. If I wasn’t a part of the decision to move here, it could have caused a lot of issues in our marriage. It would have been easy for this to cause a rift between us. However, we made this decision when we first got married. We discussed where we wanted to settle down and agreed we would settle by his family. There are so many factors that helped us to make this decision.However, timing changed. Every few years we would talk about making the big move. To be honest, I wasn’t ready until a few years ago. I knew I wanted to do it, but it was hard for me to move so far from my family. I had to be fully ready and my husband patiently waited.Now, we’re here and our family is so happy. Sure, we all miss my family, but our reasons for moving here makes it worth it. Indian culture is present in our children’s lives every day. It’s much easier to put them in the middle of this vibrant culture when we’re around my husband’s family. By living closer to my in-laws, it also means my kids are around Telugu more often.

My husband and I made this decision for our family.

We made it together and did what we think is best for our family. You can’t look at other multiracial families and do exactly what they do or concede to the pressure from loved ones to run your family the exact same way they did. They have seen what works for them and try to push you to do the same thing.All you can do is listen to their advice, see how their family functions, and see what you can take from it. Chances are you will be able to take a few things and change other things to fit your family better. There is no right way to have a multiracial family or interracial relationship.You have to communicate with each other every day and constantly reevaluate. You can make a decision that works for a while, but you need to see how those decisions work as your family grows and changes.

5 Steps For An Intercultural Relationship

Whether your brand new to your intercultural relationship of you've been around the block a few times, I have 5 steps for you. These steps will help you to get closer to your loved one, understand who they are, develop a plan to blend cultures, and make sure your improving where you can.Haven't you ever said to yourself, "If only I had a guide for all of this!?"Well, today I'm giving you that guide and I know you'll love it!

5 Steps For YOUR Intercultural Relationship

 

Get To Know Each Other

If you want to figure out how to blend cultures and start your family together, you need to know each other. Take time to get to know who you're together with. I don't just mean their favorite color and what they like to watch on tv.You need to understand their culture. Their culture has shaped who they are and the decisions they'll instinctively make. Ask them questions about how they grew up, what they value from their culture, what they've struggled with in their culture, etc. All of this will help you to understand each other.

Develop A Family Culture

Now, it's time to develop a family culture. When you and your loved one start your relationship, you're starting a family. It doesn't matter if you have kids or not, you're a family. When you start a family, you have to develop your own family culture and identity.The best part is this culture will be from both of you. You need to sit down and talk about what's important from both of your cultures and decide how you can bring them together in one family. The best part is you don't have to worry about making the absolute best plan ever!While making a plan is vital, you can change it up when you need to. The idea behind the plan is to know before hand what's important and you can be more intentional in bringing it into your family.

Communicate

The lines of communication need to be open at all times. As you get to know each other, you'll feel more comfortable talking and discussing how your relationship is doing. Conflict is natural and will come up through your relationship. It will come up when trying to figure out how to blend cultures, when dealing with culture shock, and pretty much any time during your relationship. It's normal.The most important thing is that you learn how to communicate with each other so you can learn how to use your conflict to get closer.You also need to be able to discuss how you feel about blending cultures. Are you comfortable with how the blending is happening? Do you feel like one culture is taking over? These are important things you need to talk about through out your relationship.

Re-evaluate

While the plan you develop may work great right now, you need to be prepared that it will change. You and your loved one have to constantly re-evaluate how your plan is working. If it's not working like you thought or you'd like something to change, tweak it.It's going to change naturally over time because the longer you're together, you'll notice you're both changing. You're growing together and getting closer and your circumstances may change as well.You should be scheduling time to talk about all of these things at least once a month.

Give Each Other Grace

Grace. Your relationship needs to be filled with grace. You are bound to mess up or hurt your loved one's feelings and the other way around. The biggest thing is to remember you need to give each other grace. Blending cultures takes time. Even if you're been together for years, you aren't mind readers and things just happen.All you can do is be sure to talk about it, let them know how you feel, and give each other grace. Let your loved one know they have room to mess up and you'll still love them.--Intercultural relationships are beautiful, but they take a lot of patience and grace for each other. I can promise you one thing, it's always worth it. The more you and your loved one work at your relationship, the better it will be.

How do you make an intercultural relationship work...

I’ve been getting emails from some of you lately on your struggles with the cultural differences in an intercultural relationship. Let’s be honest with each other. When you get into a relationship with anyone, expect cultural differences and all of the struggles that follow. Either way, you and your partner grew up in different families and different ways. Two different cultures if you may.It doesn’t matter what kind of relationship you are in, you will always deal with compromise and communication. If you want a perfectly easy relationship, stick to fiction. If you want a real relationship with anyone, remember there will be struggles, compromise, you will often not know what to do or who is right, you will challenge each other, grow together, and your relationship will reap all the blessings of your hard work.I love my husband more today than I did when we got married. Why you ask? I love him more now because we have worked hard for our relationship and always strive to make our marriage stronger. If you have ever been around us, you know that we fight, bicker, I’m always trying to convince him I’m right about everything, he thinks laughing while we fight is necessary, and we usually have no idea what we’re doing.We often come up to a crossroads in our marriage. Do we do what Indian culture says to do or do we do what Western culture says to do? There is no perfect answer to this question. It changes with every situation. I walked into my marriage with Joel knowing he’s Indian and I’m a whitey. We have to respect each other’s cultures, which means a lot of compromise. There are times when we do what Indian culture says to do and there are times when we do what Western culture says to do. We decide what works best for our little family.Give yourself a break. There is no perfect relationship. Try your best to listen to your partner, compromise, lovingly encourage one another when you don’t know what to do, be willing to hear their side, and remember just because you grew up doing it one way doesn’t mean it’s the only way.Love your partner for who they are, be proud of your marriage and all of it’s little imperfections, and know it’s all worth it.