There is something I would like to share with you: I have been married five times.
OK, to be accurate, four traditional marriages and one common-law-marriage.
I know, you are probably aghast at reading that admission. But then I did get married at 21 and that was over 50 years ago. Is it realistic to expect anyone to be in one marriage for over 50 years? Not nowadays. Not in the age of globalised, online relationships and Tinder.
As you’d expect, I have accumulated loads of relationship experience over the past five or six decades, enough actually to fill a book.* But what I am writing about today is just one aspect of modern relationships – the intercultural marriage; specifically marriages between Asians and Westerners.
By the time I first visited Thailand in 2001 I was already into my third marriage – with another UK academic. We were together for seven years and had two children. We never formally married – just lived together as husband and wife. In 2001 I thought I was experienced in relationships. And then I landed in Thailand. After which I had to ditch most of my Western perceptions about marriage, love, sex and relationships, and start all over again.
Arriving in Thailand and meeting Thai women was a major shock for me. I was in my early 50s but had never encountered the unique femininity of Thai women. There was (and still is) nothing like it in the West. Not surprisingly, I quickly fell in love. 22 years later and I am still in love with a Thai woman – my fifth wife. I met my fourth wife, also Thai, online in early 2002. We married at the end of that year and were together three years. She left Bangkok, came to live with me in Manchester and still lives in the UK. Since 2001, I have met women from across Asia and fallen in love with a few of them. Different countries, slightly different cultures, different women, but all Asian.
I have a PhD in sociology, from a leading UK university.
I also reckon I have a second PhD – in intercultural relationships. Though not one awarded by any university.
So here are a few of the lessons I have learned during that amazing, unforgettable, but sometimes emotionally exhausting 22 years.
You Don’t Know Who You Love
The biggest risk to any relationship is what I call ‘love blindness’. You are seeing only what you want to see and falling in love with that image, that perception. It is not real. It is a mirage, and it is also highly dangerous. This happens in most love relationships but is magnified many times over in intercultural relationships. Westerners (men and women) arrive in Asia blinded so many racial stereotypes and myths. And Asians (men and women) are not much different. They too have minds filled up with mistaken ideas about the West and Westerners; e.g. that they are rich, educated, classy, polite, loving and willing to look after their Asian wife and her family. None of this is necessarily accurate. Well, parts of it might be accurate in some cases but you could spend your life, grow old, looking for the ‘ideal’ Western man and never find him.
Or you will think you’ve found him only to feel desperately let down and emotionally destroyed when it turns out he is not the ‘One’ for you. Similarly, the Western guy arriving in Thailand first falls in love with Thailand and its image and then falls in love with a Thai woman who he mistakenly thinks embodies that image.
TIP: Don’t rush in. Take your time. You cannot know someone in just a few weeks. It can take years. You have to learn not just about your partner but about their culture.
Marriage can be a War Zone
How many happily married couples do you know? I don’t mean newly married, I mean couples who have been together for over 15 years? Now ask yourself how many long-term, happy, intercultural marriages do you know? Not that many, for sure.
My Thai wife and I have been together for over 15 years and I have to tell you we love each other more than ever. We are very happy together. But at times our relationship has been a war zone. We could have parted many times. But we didn’t. We both made mistakes. We both acted badly at times. But we never really gave up on each other – even when we crossed the ‘deal breakers’ Note: Every couple has ‘deal-breakers’ – things they won’t tolerate in a partner and which will trigger separation, divorce.
TIP: Both of you need to be patient, be forgiving, be calm, and not harbour grudges. And not just for one day but do this every day. Also, don’t hold on to ‘deal-breakers’ – when a deal-breaker happens, forgive, at least once.
Lost in Translation
Any half-decent marriage guidance counsellor will tell you that healthy communication is at the heart of a healthy marriage. But what if one party speaks mostly Thai and the other only English? Even when both parties speak the same language, communication in marriage is difficult, full of risks and misconceptions. Most intercultural marriages fail because of poor communication – usually words and phrases getting lost in translation, misinterpreted, misunderstood, spoken wrongly, heard wrongly. Language will make or break a marriage. Good actions do, of course, count for a lot, but words count also. Words stay with us. Things we say cannot easily get unsaid.
TIP: An intercultural marriage can survive, thrive even, when just one language is being used between wife and husband. But to achieve this the couple need to listen to each other closely, not jump to conclusions about what is or is not being said. Clarify, ask, question, confirm. Eventually, with patience, something really fascinating will emerge in the marriage – a third language spoken only between the couple, no one else. Unique to them. This is the created language of love and understanding between a couple of different nationalities and culture.
Love is Not Enough
Love itself is not enough to ensure a marriage succeeds. People fall in and out of love all the time, most of them never marry or even consider it. There are also different types of love, differences between being loving and being in love, and as I note above, the problem of falling in love with an image, not the reality. And if all this were not problematic enough, there is the issue of changing love – love changes as we change. The marriage of a 20-something couple is going to change as they get older and so will their love for each other.
So what else needs to be in play along with the love?
Firstly, the relationship needs to be able to function practically. If I am living in London and you are living in Bangkok, how is this going to work if I only visit Thailand for six weeks every year? It might last for a while but there is no long-term future in such a relationship. And what if one party (say the Westerner) is wealthier than the Thai? Will that help or hinder the marriage? For sure, money will help a marriage survive economic problems but money alone won’t be enough to ensure long-term bliss, indeed money can become a problem, e.g. if one partner controls all the income and the other feels like a paid servant, always having to ask for pocket-money.
Secondly, there ideally needs to be an additional ‘glue’ which keeps the couple together. In both my Thai marriages that glue was Buddhism. I became a Buddhist. Even to the point of becoming ordained as a monk in Chiang Mai in 2004. I never learned to speak Thai but I do know the language of Buddhism. My wife and I visit temples together; we have a Buddhist room in our home, we share this love of Buddhism.
Intercultural sex can be a very strong glue. But it can also be a splinter. Make sure that what you desire is the person, not their cultural representation.
TIP: Don’t expect love to conquer all. It won’t. Get the practical details sorted out before you try to spend the rest of your lives together.
Culture Shock
Culture shock happens when all our previous ideas about ‘reality’ get overturned by our first real close encounter with the Other. This you cannot avoid. Whatever you think you know about the ‘Other’, be it Thai, American, British or Chinese, will not be enough to protect you from culture shock. Every intercultural marriage has to go through it. It is part of the learning process.
TIP: Keep your mind open to difference and closed to stereotypes.
Is it Worth It?
Intercultural marriage may not be for you, though it is becoming increasingly common.
But are intercultural relationships/marriages worth the effort?
In my experience, borne of my Asian relationships over the past 20+ years, I would say yes, they are most definitely worth it. But I have had to change over the years. I have had to adapt to Asia and my Thai wife has had to adapt to me and my Western thinking. We’ve both changed. But for the better. If you too decide to embark on this romantic adventure then you too must be prepared to change.
And there is a bigger issue here: The world is a more understanding place, a more tolerant place, and a more inclusive place because of interculturation, multiculturalism, cross-cultural relationships/marriage, and, yes even online love and romance. We cannot and should not live in cultural isolation – that festers isolationism, nationalism, ignorance, fear, racism, and intolerance.
There are eight billion of us and this is a small planet, made a lot smaller by 21st century information technology. Isolationism is not an option and nor should it be. No one culture should dominate. No one people should imagine themselves to be superior. No one language should dominate. No one race should dominate.
In the final reckoning, and after taking into account the obstacles and opportunities, intercultural marriage is in my opinion a positive statement for a world of inclusivity and human togetherness.
*S. Whitehead (2012) ‘The Relationship Manifesto’. AG Books, London.
