Unbalanced relationships are rough
Q I’m a 28-year-old male who’s fallen in love with a woman, 27, who is beautiful and smart. She is also from a different culture. She still lives with her parents and the whole family from grandparents down to babies.
As soon as she recognized the threat of the coronavirus, she insisted I move into the large family home with her.
After living together for more than six months, my girlfriend and her relatives are asking questions about our plans to marry.
I quickly realized that they expected us, like their older daughter, her husband and young kids, to always live with them. When I told my girlfriend that I want us to have our own home, but that we’d still be close with her family, visit often, celebrate special occasions with them, etc., she cried and said that I don’t understand her or her background.
She said that I’d be insulting her family, and that I’m being racist if I can’t accept that theirs is a happier, healthier way to raise children. Can people with very mixed backgrounds live happily ever after? The Outsider
AI have great faith in the positive ability of so-called “mixed marriages” to create the interesting, culturally-enriching experience that we know as diversity.
In communities, it can bring greater understanding and empathy for the “other.”
But in marriage, it requires a willingness to compromise from both partners and respect for each other’s differences.
If only one side has the all the power, with little consideration for the other partner’s wants/ needs, it breeds resentment.
Your wanting a marriage that considers both your backgrounds — living in your own home but maintaining a close relationship with her family — is neither racist nor an insult.
Tell her how much you appreciate her family’s closeness but that you also believe in important values: Such as respecting others’ needs as much as their own, and trusting that your partner wants a bond together beyond family ties … of deep love as a unit of your own, with willingness to compromise towards that.
If she still insists that you must accept the entire family lifestyle that’s being offered to you, without any accommodation to your personal preferences/needs, then you should take a break to re-examine this unbalanced relationship.
Read Ellie Monday to Saturday.