those of u in intercultural relationship, how does it work for u?

[Rasulis]

The weirdness comes in with roles. She is from that older generation and she seriously likes to pamper me. It is like I found myself in with the D/S crowd, with a June Cleaver cosplayer as dom. That, coupled with the really hot 20 year old actually being 45, is melting my brain. Because of the difference in background, her 1970s would come closer to my 1950s. She's June Cleaver-ish, but I grew up in the wake of a non June-Cleaver-ish social shift. Being pampered like that (pampered, not fawned over) is a kink I'm not used to.

Remind me of when I went out to dinner with my aunt (not by blood), his son and his new Caucasian girlfriend. On the way back to the hotel after dinner, it was just the two of us in my car, my aunt complained about his girlfriend. She did not like her because during dinner she did not keep his cup of tea full at all time.

[d00mGuArD]

what troubles do u experience or did experience that comes from cultural differences? if u are not in intercultural relationship would u consider it?

Definitely!
I have dated girls from Spain, Italy, Sweden, France, Greece, UK, no complains, was fine!
I visited 3 new countries and learned many many things about the local culture and customs
Never any from Thailand though! Should I consider it you think?

[Wyrt]

I could never date an Australian because they call chicken sandwiches burgers and sprite lemonade.

[Boricha]

I haven't but I'm always open to it. There's a lot of intercultural relationships in my extended family. I'm big into world history, so I'm always interested in other cultures.

[shadowmouse]

On the way back to the hotel after dinner, it was just the two of us in my car, my aunt complained about his girlfriend. She did not like her because during dinner she did not keep his cup of tea full at all time.

Yep! May would pass with flying colors. She would quietly take control of the tea pot and coax me into letting her keep my cup topped off with a reasonable statement like "Let me, dear. You just talk to your aunt." Nor would she stop with that, she would dump out tea that she thought had gotten too cold and the spout of the teapot would always be politely aligned. The part I am having trouble dealing with is that she would be happy about it, pampering me right down to things like topping up the tea are things she simple takes in stride and they're fun for her.

As far as teaching me new kinks, May is the first woman in 20 years to successfully pull of sajiao with me. Normally it is done with the fake little girl voice and whining, and as soon as it starts I get a headache. There are two culture differences that I discuss early on in dating Chinese women: 1) I just don't get sajiao and don't play the game well, so please don't, and 2) I wasn't born and raised in China, I don't have anything like an in depth understanding of mianzi, and although I will try my best I'm going to screw up on that one regularly.

Right now I am dating a girl from China

I would guess she is a good bit younger than May, many of the things I mention about May are things that I'm having to adjust to because they are quite different from the way the younger generations act.

Hopefully you'll excuse some well intended comments.

Two of the big things that could cause problems are what I just mentioned -- sajiao and mianzi. I won't try to link references because I'm here behind the Great Fire Wall and if the available search engines get any worse I'll time travel and be using physical card indexes. Google 'em and keep a bottle of strong booze handy.

If she was raised in China, rather than being raised abroad, you might benefit from finding out about her home province and maybe even home town.

If she is younger than 25 or so she may not associate so strongly with the animal sign associated with her birth year, but I've met many young women in years past who did. May is from an older generation and she just takes it as fact that she is a Cow and has certain characteristics. The last four women I've dated for any length of time saw things similarly.

The Chinese love an excuse for a celebration and she'll probably appreciate it if you pay attention to their dates. A big one, Qixi falls on August 7 this year. Like other traditional holidays, it is based on the lunar calendar. There are also a slew of modern commercial holidays that have been dreamed up, often using an X sounds like Y, so it means 3 pattern (What? You expected sequential logic? No, it is 3!). For example 5/20 if spoken as Chinese for five-two-oh is supposed to sound like the Chinese for I love you. I guess if you have a very active imagination, a traumatic head injury, and you are blind drunk, it sort of might, but any excuse to celebrate works here.

Sigh, give me my damned soapbox guys, I'm going to commit bungeebungee. You are probably both speaking the same language, but you aren't necessarily using similar filters. At least look up and get a vague understanding of high context, low context and the Lewis Model. Consider me to have beaten that horse enough for this thread.

Cultural expectations may be different, jokes and sarcasm may be interpreted differently etc. Especially if there's a language difference.

Good points and a good example of why I keep harping on communication models. Sarcasm, irony, and memes are to clear cross culture communication what break dancing is to safely traversing a minefield.

Never any from Thailand though! Should I consider it you think?

Do you ever sleep after a wild night? Do you know the phrase "to feed the ducks"? Do you know that Thai surgeons are world leaders in penis reattachment surgery?

@Stelio Kontos @LS I mean, what could go wrong dating a Thai girl?

[Stelio Kontos]

Never any from Thailand though! Should I consider it you think?

Humans are generally more alike than culture makes us think they are, so I can't speak for ALL Thai women. But I dated one for 7 years, and I won't do it again. Take that for what it's worth. I can go into specifics, but it would really only apply to her for the most part; not all Thai women.

- - - Updated - - -

Do you ever sleep after a wild night? Do you know the phrase "to feed the ducks"? Do you know that Thai surgeons are world leaders in penis reattachment surgery?

@Stelio Kontos @LS I mean, what could go wrong dating a Thai girl?

Bruh, any time you bring that up I sit funny in my chair and grimace. She even jokingly threatened me with that. Here this 6'3 big dude cringing from a threat made by a 5'5 girl.

And I'll because I looked up from my food while eating out and a buxom blonde happened to walk by at that time.

[Michh]

My wife is Trinidadian and I’m a white southern American. We met 3 days after I arrived to work in Trinidad in Feb ‘03. I was trying to stay tax free so I had to stay gone 330 days out of a fiscal year, but we made a few trips home, and I think the culture shock was worse for her than me. I was born and raised in south Ms and in the country to boot. Before I went to Trinidad at age 32, I had worked in Nigeria, Angola, Russia and Aruba for long periods of time, so I was fairly well rounded for a country boy from Ms.

She’s 10 years younger than me, so she was 22 when we met. We hit it off fairly well, but dated and hung out for months before anything really happened. At 32 my life revolved around working out and working.

I think the main thing for us was I really love the culture of Trinidad, the food is awesome and the people are awesome. Her mom and dad are in the US with us now, we live in Houston now. Keep in mind at this point in my life I had seen a few shit holes, so Trinidad wasn’t bad. After a couple years we were living together. I was invited to another job in Punta Arenas, Chile. I accepted the 1 year stint and we went together. Shortly after arriving back in Trinidad after that we got married. She actually went to the states to stay with my mom and start college while I finished my 3rd year tax free. Hurricane Katrina hit and devistated our area, schools were closed and she came back. A few months after that we moved to the US in ‘06, and just celebrated our 14 year anniversary. Have a 12 y/o boy.

Eh, I think when you meet someone you jive with it doesn’t matter what culture they’re from. Marriage and relationships is A LOT of give and take.

[shadowmouse]

because I looked up from my food while eating out and a buxom blonde happened to walk by at that time

At least the Thai women I know tend to run curvier than the Han. Here, a lot of women who aren't plus sized run strongly towards A cups, B is quite possibly false advertising, and legitimate C cups are considered to have bragging rights. If she had been built like Pink (145 cm, willowy, and AA), she'd might as well have just given you a pair of scissors and asked you to just make life simpler. Luckily, May is not Thai, probably doesn't even own ducks, and has bragging rights for more than just youthful looks.

Yours isn't the only tale of its sort. This leads to an important rule of survival -- bungeebungee Survival Tip: be wary of Thai women who might own ducks! Or have friends that might. Or even those who have a love of trips to the countryside. In fact, if one is determined to date women from Thailand it might be better to move to an area that just doesn't have any ducks at all!

//s// bungee, who gets nervous traveling further south than Jiangsu because it is closer to Thailand and is mighty careful even walking by the local Thai restaurant

[Stelio Kontos]

At least the Thai women I know tend to run curvier than the Han. Here, a lot of women who aren't plus sized run strongly towards A cups, B is quite possibly false advertising, and legitimate C cups are considered to have bragging rights. If she had been built like Pink (145 cm, willowy, and AA), she'd might as well have just given you a pair of scissors and asked you to just make life simpler. Luckily, May is not Thai, probably doesn't even own ducks, and has bragging rights for more than just youthful looks.

Yours isn't the only tale of its sort. This leads to an important rule of survival -- bungeebungee Survival Tip: be wary of Thai women who might own ducks! Or have friends that might. Or even those who have a love of trips to the countryside. In fact, if one is determined to date women from Thailand it might be better to move to an area that just doesn't have any ducks at all!

//s// bungee, who gets nervous traveling further south than Jiangsu because it is closer to Thailand and is mighty careful even walking by the local Thai restaurant

When the Thai ex left me, I was single for about 2 years. Depression set in. We had been planning out getting married and all that, and we had been together most of our 20s, so finding myself in my 30s and having to figure things out again sucked. Since then I guess I've preferred women with more up top. Realized what I had been missing out on for almost 10 years.

[shadowmouse]

Since then I guess I've preferred women with more up top.

When Pink and I broke up it wasn't quite as rough, but my goals were that if I went back to dating I was shooting to avoid Southern Chinese women, wherever they were from they had to be relatively tall (at least more than 150 cm), and must not be capable of being mistaken for being 12 years old coming out of the shower. May and I discussed that early on and that's when she invoked her bragging rights by stretching and noting: "twelve year olds don't have C cups".

[Astalnar]

Define intercultural. Are we talking different race, ethnicity, nationality or just different dialect?

[Thirza]

Dated a Korean for 2 years, it was very very serious in spite of her family hating me and constantly trying to split us. They won in the end by telling her they had decided as a group to never speak to her again if she chose me.

So it was shit and heartbreaking I guess.

[Muzjhath]

Define intercultural. Are we talking different race, ethnicity, nationality or just different dialect?

I'd say, personally, any would be worth talking about.
Just imagine how much hell protestant - catholic relationships have suffered through the ages. A thing that you'd think wouldn't still in this day be an issue yet tends to be huge issues if families are particularly devout/crazy.
Then just add layers. Since culture just has far to many aspects to peal it down anyone ought to matter since anyone can cause issues.
In Sweden the word (more slang, but well) "Grina", which in the north east of Sweden is "cry" and the south west of Sweden is "laugh". And just that, in the same country, can cause minor issues to the unaware. Because what sick fuck would laugh when their dog died?

So I'd say any can matter and cause issues. So can bloody fucking social backgrounds to a degree as well.

[shadowmouse]

I'd say, personally, any would be worth talking about.

It probably would (subject to the limits on certain topics), but look at his recent post history. It was a +1 post to keep his blog link visible and little more.

They won in the end by telling her they had decided as a group to never speak to her again if she chose me.

Rough, sorry to hear that.

[ParanoiD84]

Not been in a intercultural relationship yet but alot of one nights etc and that works great. Asians, arabs, africans, sri lankans, serbs and what not.

[shadowmouse]

@Natta Lmo You're off investing in ducks, aren't you?

OK, what about you? Having posted questions, how would you answer them?

[Calfredd]

I probably never will be with someone who is too different culturally from swedish or thai.

From the way you describe it, surprised you would bother with swedish men since everyone treats you like garbage.

[Themius]

This is such a word topic to me... I don't meet many people that are firstly the same culture as me so most interactions are indeed of me interacting with another culture. I am very much a British person with Caribbean and Latin ties. The idea that another culture can be so odd in a relationship just seems utterly funny to me.

[XangXu]

Culture is not, and never has been your friend.

As a species, we should only have 1 culture. Human culture.

But no, each of us has to indulge because we all think we’re special.

[enigma77]

I live in Dalarna and have always known it as crying.

If I lived in Dalaran I'd be crying too.