Can cross-cultural relationships work?

phoenix2ligh (US)

My husband is Chinese and I'm a "westerner". We live in China now with our 5-month-old son. Our relationship has been ... very difficult, but we really wanted to be together, so we've had to make it work. We've been together now for a little more then 3 years. We met in Canada while he was in school and at first wow ... it was all about boundaries! We continuously stepped on each others toes when we moved in together and fought like cats and dogs. We fought so much we had to come up with 100 different ways to figure out how when we got to the point we'd fight we could calm down and so far NONE of them work. We find it best to just say "ok, I don't want to talk anymore" and leave the room no matter if you're in mid sentence or what and come back a few hours later.

The cultural differences have been huge also. Like religion for example, and how each of us were raised by our parents, and the things we learned in school even! Time and hope are the only things that can really make it work, the time to realize you're going to have to take to sort out and work through to better understand each other's differences as well as hope that it will eventually happen. Oh, loving each other like crazy also helps.