Sleeping with the Enemy or dating across cultures

this is a personal exploration of crossing over

half self-help. and half help-me-out.

10 years ago, i’d just gotten out of my second marriage but was still not ready to throw in the towel on romance.

the proactive solution was to expand my horizons. so i started on a dating trip across cultures, religions, generations and continents.

and of course, i was whining that nothing could possibly be harder than being a single south asian mother (with three kids) rejoining the meat market in new york city.

wrong. very few people have it easy.

imagine a pakistani gay man trying to find his soulmate without giving his grandfather a heart attack. a sweet vietnamese buddhist with a thing for israeli girls. or nice british lesbian hoping to settle down and have a family.

even dating as single mother puts you in a different place. all this time, you’ve been in mom-world. you start hanging out with a single man who has never been married or was married but never had kids and he takes awhile to realize why you’re wrecked by 9 o’clock. or why you can’t run out and meet him and his friends in the restaurant down the road on the spur of the moment. (hello? the home-alone-kids...)

or even weirder, explaining why facing the disapproval of your kids is even harder than facing the disapproval of your parents when you’re a teenager.

all that later. this is a map from someone who’s been there (at least heterosexually). though, in my mind, it’s all the same.

the idea is a connect-the-dots trip through the key relationship destroying points for you and your significant other. or your s-o to be. the final result should be, at the very least, a happy ending.

here's the premise (or the first one): there is no such thing as a failed relationship.

human beings learn and grow from their deeper connections with others. the farther away another person is from where you grew up, the more you stand to learn from him. or her.

statistically, unions between people of similar backgrounds last longer. however, i’m not convinced that the length of a marriage is a measurement of its success. on the other hand, a relationship in all its permutations, that continues on with two people respecting each other, is probably the best happy ending.

you know that sixties command, “make love, not war”? that’s where the personal gets political.

want to understand the inner workings of a communist, a southern baptist, a muslim, a jew, a midwesterner, a pentacostal? marry one. (oh no, wait – maybe that’s where the “war” part comes in...)

better still, date one. have someone you think you couldn’t possibly relate to as your best friend. suddenly, the gaping cracks in empathy come together.

if all that seems too ambitious, here’s another thought: if you are even thinking of hooking up with anyone else – you are crossing cultures - whether they are from another ethnicity, religion, country, or even gender.

the fact is, even growing up in a different family makes your cultural references alien. forget about the color of your skin or what you call god. or GOD.

the only way to guarantee you’re on the same page culturally is to marry your own sibling. maybe even the same sex sibling.

repulsive as that thought is, it could be the only way to never have arguments about the correct way to react, celebrate, spend your money, spend time with your family or worship.

oh, there’s one other way – stay alone.

scratch that. if we could really be happy, autonomous and single that would mean we were amoebas. and what is the happiness capacity for amoebas?

i’ve been deconstructing the idea of the crosscultural relationship since attending a literary event in with my youngest daughter and my then british husband. an elderly indian woman came up to me and said, “you know, i also have a mixed marriage.”

and i said, “really? is your husband european?”

the poor woman looked totally aghast and said, “oh, no. i mean, i am from north india and he is from south.”