Cross-Cultural Marriage

I love that I am in a cross-cultural marriage, with a cross-cultural family. It is also hard to deal with the 5 different cultures that we balance on the daily:

American, American-Brazilian, Jamaican, Jamaican-American, Jamaican-Brazilian-American.

I’ve had quite a few conversations with friends who are also in cross-cultural marriages about things we wished:

• We wish people understood how great…and yet hard it is

• We wish there were more resources about cross-cultural marriages/relationships/families

• We wish we were more prepared beforehand

I do have my own ideas on a book to fix this (called something like “5 cultures, 4 people, 3 languages, 2 continents, 1 family”), but that is still a long time coming, as I am just getting the first 7 years of that under my belt. But I wanted to collect and share, ESPECIALLY FOR PRE-MARITAL COUNSELING, ideas for others who haven’t yet started, or are starting this journey.

My husband and I did not get much marriage counseling at all. We were traveling, away from all our family…we mostly just worked through “The First 90 days of Marriage.” It was a lovely book, and great—but not about anything around cross-cultural issues. We didn’t even realize we were that different when we got married (Thank God for marriage counseling!!!).

One of my friends found a couple that was also cross-cultural to counsel them—this, I think, would be optimal. For those of us who don’t have that option, one friend suggested “Things I Wish I’d Known Before I got Married.” Then the missionary ladies from our home church gave me the rest of these ideas, even though I haven’t had a chance to check them out:

What would you add?