A Talk about my Cross-Cultural Relationship
A little over three years after dating my girlfriend, I proposed to her last Christmas Eve, our wedding planned for later this year. We had a few advantages when it came to knowing about each other’s cultures, I spent three years in the Philippines as a Peace Corps Volunteer, the third year spent working with our predominately Filipino staff in working with American volunteers and of course helping train new volunteers in how to work and live in the Philippines. On her end, she was a staff member for the Peace Corps for about three years (after I finished my service), working with Americans every day for a U.S. Government Agency.
This isn’t a blog post about the entirety of our relationship, about our individual personalities, aspirations, struggles, and so on, but instead a focus on what cultural differences both made our relationship easier and more difficult.
A Bad Example
I am not a fan of 90 Day Fiancee. I find the show cringe-worthy and exploitive. However, I can’t deny that it has good examples of what can go wrong with relationships across cultures, and this clip in particular… there’s a lot to breakdown.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X91V5h8VbV8
Part of my work in my third year in the Peace Corps was to help provide the perspective of an American volunteer when a volunteer issue came up. As an example, it was common that volunteers felt their host agency didn’t care about their work. The reason was usually a cultural misunderstanding, we’re very stressed about deadlines, punctuality, and getting things done quickly in the States. In the Philippines most people are more relaxed. Things will get done, it’s not a big deal if it gets delayed. That can come across as ‘not caring’ though a more accurate description is they’re ‘less urgent’. That’s what I’ll be doing here. Of course, as Larry isn’t a Peace Corps Volunteer, hasn’t had any cultural orientation, so my standards will be lower for him.
Objective Information
-Lechon, the roasted pig, is expensive. It is not normal dining but is instead used for special occasions or big events.
-Food is a big part of the Philippines culturally. It’s not just a time to eat, it’s a time to socialize, to bond, people drop what they’re doing when it’s time to eat. It’s something most Filipinos take a lot of pride in.
-Filipinos also tend to be very good at non-verbal communication. One of my own struggles early on during my service was realizing that sometimes people disagreed with me but were too polite to say it straight to my face. I had to learn to better read the subtler hints. Although the family might not have known why Larry had such a problem with the Lechon, they were very aware of his non-verbal clues from his facial expressions, to hand gestures, to overall demeanor.
-Lechon is roasted pork. We eat roasted pork in the States, even if we do it differently.
What I Find Understandable
-The first glimpse of dirt roads, carabao on the side of the road, cinderblock houses, and so on can be an initial culture shock. Things are different, there’s a lot to take in at once. This added with meeting your fiancé’s family for the first time can be stressful.
-In America, we have issues with seeing our meat as the animals they came from. Seeing a head on a cooked animal is something that can be upsetting to the un-initiated.
-He seemingly didn’t know the importance of food culture, nor how expensive the lechon was.
What I Find Wrong
-He didn’t even want to try it and let himself get so weirded out so easily that he didn’t give the food an honest try. As mentioned above, it’s pork, not something a bit more different for us Americans like balot.
-It’s hard to figure out what differences we have culturally until it happens, but I still get the sense that there was very little research or conversations prior to this scene. There didn’t seem to be a lot of effort done beforehand.
-He acted like the family couldn’t tell how he felt, as if they were clueless foreigners who didn’t understand what he was doing. They didn’t get why he was being so childish, but they could see that he was just as clearly as those of us watching the video.
There’s a lot going on from the “Colonial Mindset” of the family, feeling the need to get an expensive meal for the American guest. There’s the perception of cultural obstacles where a simple task like eating lunch can feel like a giant hurdle, which can be both serious and ridiculous (and both at the same time). There’s the power dynamics where the American man feels that being a temporary guest is just as difficult if not more so than the Filipina expected to move to another country. These nuances I feel get lost in the show in favor for the drama of the moment.
A Reputation Earned… and Complications
Before diving into some of the details about Tin and my relationship, I feel it’s important to talk about some of the stereotypes, and other realities when it comes to relationships between Filipinos and foreigners. As a warning, this section will contain some mature and unpleasant topics such as large age gaps between couples and prostitution. If you want to skip this, go to the next section below.
There is a reputation of Western men getting Asian trophy wives, and there is truth in it. Spending three years in the Philippines I saw this play out in different ways. I was encouraged to date in my community, people wanted me to be happy and find someone. There was a genuine compliment when I was told by some people in my host community that they wanted me to find a good wife and settle down in the Philippines. It was their way of saying that I’m welcome. There was also a less genuine, less heart-warming compliment when some of the more machisimo-driven men asking me not “if” I had a girlfriend, but “how many” girlfriends I had.
I saw Peace Corps Volunteers or various ages, both men and women, date locals, some leading to marriage and others not. On the other hand I saw male volunteers frustrated by and female volunteers afraid of unwanted attention and advances. I met foreigners who were dating a Filipino or Filipina love the Philippines as a country, and those who dismissed it as ‘third world’ and beneath them. I saw old men with women young enough to be their daughters, even granddaughters. A trio of old men I ran into once it turned out had bought their girlfriends out of prostitution and were putting them through school… and also kept them as their girlfriends. I also saw the men in the red light district of all ages, from different countries, comes to the Philippines for sex. As I walked through that place trying to get from Point A to Point B, I had to ignore or decline the men walking up to with laminated menus saying, “Fresh girls!” as if they were meat at a grocery store.
How much older is too older? What if there is encouragement from the Filipino or Filipina’s family? Is the fact that the trio above was putting the girls through school absolve them of some guilt? If a foreigner is awkward in his or her own country and finds someone in another country who doesn’t care or doesn’t see that awkwardness as harshly, does it cheapen the relationship, make it less sincere? These are not rhetorical questions, they are things that help shape our values, our opinions about this matter, but in many cases the answers aren’t clear.
For Tin and I, we each have insecurities to overcome, to deal with others’ perceptions. For me, I like to include that Tin has her own Masters degree when I talk about her, to include her work with American Volunteers to avoid the stereotype that I went to Asia to find a domestic housewife. For her, she prefers to pay for our meals when out so it doesn’t appear that she’s just in the relationship for the money.
Degrees, Priorities, and Definitions
I’m not on the “we’re all the same deep down” bandwagon except in the most general of terms. We like to be treated well, we don’t like to be treated unwell, money is nice to have for the things we want, things like that I’ll agree are more universal. I urge caution though to how much we assume are the same as degrees, priorities, and definitions can seem small at first, but can play out in very big ways. Below has some examples of how it’s played out for us.
Degrees
What most Americans would call being forward, most Filipinos would call being abrasive. What most Filipinos would call being hospitable, most Americans would see as going above and beyond. Although we feel the same about these two things, we see them as more or less extreme than one another. A good example with Tin and me is my pessimism. Most Americans who know me think I’m a glowing optimist, see me as glass-half-full. I use humor to downplay situations, I try to find the silver lining in most cases. Optimist.
In the Filipino lens my sarcasm is more biting, less about downplaying a situation and instead pointing it out and highlighting it. Same with finding a silver lining, it comes across as having to force myself to find some good when the good should already be apparent. Pessimist. One of the things I had to accept in our relationship was that my own self-perception as being a positive person wasn’t as universally “True” as I thought it was and was instead “true” in my own cultural context.
Priorities
We all would like to have high-paying jobs that are fulfilling while we spend quality time with family, friends, and loved ones. Will you take that next step in your career if it means moving away from your family? Will you accept a job that pays twice as much if it’s boring and not something you’re interested in? If you have a cousin needing a medical surgery, how much would you give? Would it be a gift or a loan? Our more universal wants are rarely so kind as to offer themselves in equal amounts, and so we have to prioritize.
For Tin and I, it plays out in our planning. When I’m listing my top wants, it’s a second Masters, paying off any remaining debt I have. For Tin, though career aspirations are there, there is also more on her list such as helping her family meet their goals. It is not that we Americans don’t care about family, or that Filipinos don’t have career aspirations. It’s just that when making a list the average American is going to put career above family, and vice versa. Part of our relationship has been working through this, and I assume we will continue to as opportunities come our way.
Definitions
As I’ve stated in other blog posts, often the most important things to us like love, patriotism, and morality can be very broad and diverse in how we define them. This is true within our own culture and is only exacerbated when looking across different cultures. One small example is “flirting” and “teasing” are switched around from American-English and Filipino-English. In America, in general flirting is the more innocent of the two while in the Philippines it’s teasing that is considered the lighter term. Suffice to say that was something we learned when talking about whether another guy or girl was casually flirting or teasing with one of us.
One of the things I had to redefine was holidays. This is one that’s a bit more murky to me on what’s cultural and not, but I do find that at least some holidays are held more important, more sentimental in the Philippines than America. Certainly not the case for all holidays and all people of our respective cultures, but was for the two of us. Before our relationship I had slowly let holidays become “another day of the year”, when for Tin they were times to really put that extra effort, to show our care in celebration. I had to learn to re-define my view of holidays to better match hers.
Socio-Economic, Political, and Techno-Geographical Considerations
We are not isolated islands drifting in the seas of everyday life. We’re all inter-connected, we’re affected by our environments, we play by society’s rules both implicit and explicit (or struggle against said rules). Here are a few things that I found affected our relationship beyond our control.
Socio-Economic
The Philippines has a weak currency compared to the U.S. You can live in the Philippines for a lot, lot cheaper than you can in the United States if you compare things by the exchange rate. My fiancée as a Peace Corps staff member made less than minimum wage in America, but not only was she able to live well in the Philippines, but also was able to save money, invest, and help send a little to support her family.
When I was unemployed for the whole of 2017, the conversation came up that maybe I should move to the Philippines, find a job there, and let Tin be the breadwinner. The biggest hurdle to that financially were my student loan payments. What I pay monthly for my loans is maybe a fifth or sixth of the money I take home each month (after taxes), but would’ve been either everything or more than everything I earned from some of the job prospects I saw over there, earning a Filipino wage.
We know an Australian and Filipina couple who ultimately decided to live in Australia for at least awhile because it is so much easier to save in a country with a strong currency and move to the country with a weaker currency down the road than the other way around. It’s the situation we find ourselves in as well.
Political
Thank goodness the U.S. and Philippines gets along, I’d rather not imagine the hoops and hurdles that couples from less-friendly countries have to go through. Still, there are legal hurdles and barriers. One hurdle of course is immigration paperwork. As of now, Tin can stay in America up to six months at a time as a tourist. However, she can’t work in the States until we get through the proper legal channels. One barrier is that whereas she can get a dual citizenship eventually (three years after getting the green card I believe), I cannot get a Filipino citizenship without renouncing my own.
Depending on the countries, the situations, etc. it can make everything easier or harder, shorter or longer, open up certain doors and close others.
Techno-Geographic
I’m pretty sure I’m making this term up, but I find it fitting to include technology and geography together as in our relationship they are intertwined. We didn’t date until about a year after I left the Philippines. She was attending a training in Washington D.C. on how to be a “Sexual Assault Response Liaison” as part of the Peace Corps’ attempts to better handle the prevention of and support for assault cases, and Tin asked if I’d meet her there as it was her first time in the States. In the end I didn’t meet her there, I had my own Masters class to go to, it was a long, expensive trip from Colorado, and I wouldn’t see her all that much. Instead, I invited her to come to Colorado sometime and she took me up on it.
We’ve been in a long-distance relationship, but with technology from Skype, to Facebook, to Viber we were able to talk almost every day. We’ve been together in person several times over three years, yet we’ve never had an anniversary together. Instead we found a meal we could both cook and cooked it “together”. It’s not the same as cooking together in person (which we’ve done on other days), but with technology we can get closer, to share moments in ways that people couldn’t before the technological innovations we have today.
Conclusions and Part Two
Much of this post is generalized as depending on the cultures we come from, and what aspects of our respective cultures we adhere to more than not, will affect what the specific barriers and doors between us there are. That is the point though, that what has worked for us, will not be the same that will work for others. Part Two will focus on a list of tips for cross-cultural relationships with explanations and examples.
