Predictability and adventure
When I told my aunty the only reservation I had in marrying my Kiwi boyfriend was that he didn’t speak Farsi, she wisely reminded me speaking the same language didn’t guarantee a better understanding.
She was right, of course. Our first experience of love – if we are lucky – is as a child, so it’s easy to mistakenly assume love only speaks in our mother tongue.
The reality is it speaks a universal language of warm smiles and delighted eyes and manifests itself in tolerance and deep respect.
My worry was my husband-to-be would never be able to truly understand my Iranian culture without speaking its language of Farsi.
I wasn’t wrong in thinking that. I still believe language is an important tool with which to unravel deeper layers of a given culture. Where I went wrong was to assume a deep cultural understanding was a prerequisite to a successful relationship.
Having said that, I am not even sure if deep understanding of a given culture is possible. Each of us operates within a cultural microcosm of our own, shaped mainly by our individual experiences. Painting people with a broad cultural brush ignores the unique identity of individuals in a cultural group.
Staying curious and wanting to discover more about someone is a sign of love. Yes, there is comfort in predictability but most of us need predictability and adventure at the same time.
My own 16-year-old interracial marriage with someone I have been in a relationship with for 23 years still feels like an exciting adventure.
The good thing about being in a cross-cultural relationship is the surprise element is always there and you have a chance to discover a different way of living and being. For instance, I owe my love of the hills and hiking to my husband and his Kiwi culture of enjoying the outdoors. Discovering the Iranian love of good food and warm hospitality has been equally enriching for him.
In an interracial marriage, you remain alert to the fact that your interpretations and assumptions about your partner may not hold true. This forces you into the good habit of paying close attention and seeing things from a different perspective.
All of this might make it sound like my husband and I are very different but despite growing up at almost opposite ends of the world with vastly different social and religious practices, we have turned out to be remarkably similar – certainly in our overall values in life.
Of course when people marry it is not just two people, but two different networks of family and friends coming together. And for some in interracial marriages, because of cultural and language barriers, managing the relationship with the wider family can be challenging.
My husband and I were lucky to marry into loving families who welcomed our union with great warmth and understanding. As in all multicultural situations, tolerance and understanding can turn differences into strengths, and what may seem negative into a positive.
For instance, when my husband first visited my mother in Iran, he soon learnt that when she constantly pointed out obvious hazards to him – like slippery pavements on a snowy day (yes, we get snow in Iran) – it was not to infantilise him, but to show him love by treating him as one of her adult children. It is not unusual for Iranian mothers to dote on and treat their adult children as if they are still little kids. Kiwi parents, I know, express their love differently. Many teach their children to quickly become self-sufficient and encourage them to leave the nest as soon as they turn 18.
The good thing about being in a crosscultural relationship is the surprise element is always there and you have a chance to discover a different way of living and being.
With interracial marriages on the rise, many children grow up in multilingual, multicultural households. They are said to be our greatest hope for eradicating racism because intimate contact reduces prejudice and also, research reveals, these children, like minorities, end up supporting policies that eliminate discrimination and inequality.
Children of interracial marriages are more likely themselves to intermarry.
It’s amazing to think that in the US mixed-race marriages were illegal until 1967. In New Zealand they are as old as the early contacts between Europeans and Ma¯ ori. The first official marriage between a Ma¯ ori woman and a Danish whaler took place in 1823. Unfortunately, it wasn’t liberal attitudes that encouraged interracial marriages. The European men were actively encouraged to marry Ma¯ ori women in order to acquire land and make the Ma¯ ori race more ‘civilised’. This supremacist, racist attitude meant marriages between European women and Ma¯ ori men were generally shunned.
I am so grateful to be living in the most culturally progressive period in the history of mankind and for an intermarriage that operates on neutral grounds, allowing me to be who I want to be without the need for conformity.