Is Cross-Cultural Marriage Good?

Along with the development of globalization and transportation, a great amount of people have the opportunity to go abroad or make foreign friends, which broadens their horizon on one hand and provides them with more opportunities to get to know a new world on the other hand, such as some website about international marriage links, for example. Choosing a foreigner as a partner is getting more and more popular. As a result, it is becoming a social issue which has also caused some public concern, an expert called Dugan Romano analyses this public phenomenon from his point of view, another engineer Joseph L. Larabell also puts on an article in his blog with a title of "sobering advice on cross-cultural marriage"from his side . Every coin has two sides. On the one hand, some people think it can be successful as long as a couple can work well together based on some points. Take my roommate as an example, she is a Chinese girl and marries an American man when she was in US 4 years ago, she always conveys happiness and pleasure to me, she even suggests me to marry someone with different culture as well. She tells me that staying with a foreigner and share everything different with your own culture is an amazing thing! You can find lots of surprises and unknown stuff in life, you can also feel different passion and feeling from time to time. However, she also admits that there is always something unexpected happen in real life, such as culture conflicts, different life habits, and so on. All I know is that now she is still happy with her foreign husband.On the other hand, Some people even think cross-cultural marriage is a dangerous behavior, which can also be known in Ampbreia's personal blog. There is a real tragic story about a cross-cultural marriage, it talks about a Chinese girl falling in love with an English man from the beginning to the end, she was cheated by that person and lost all her money and property, at last, still divorced due to culture conflicts.

From my point of view, I hold a negative attitude to the issue of crosscultural marriage. The reasons are as following:

In the first place, I think international marriage is not always happy. A cross-culture marriage is hard to satisfy the basic requirements in the long run, try to imagine, if both sides don't understand and accept each other, how can they communicate and share their minds in future? It is like a potential bomb and will be harmful in the future if is triggered by some trivial things. According to a recent survey by USA TODAY, " The share of Hispanics and Asians married to whites dropped between 1990 and 2000 after two decades of steady growth." And also, people are from different places with different religious beliefs and habits. You can't deny the fact that when a couple starts a relationship, they are attracted by mysterious, exciting and unknown forces. However, once they settle down, both sides may start to feel bored and tired, some may get homesick, etc. How can they deal with family issues caused by different beliefs, different habits, How can they make a living from different points of view, Can they really compromise each other because of "real love"?


In the second place, a cross-culture marriage may bring two families a heavy burden resulting in much misunderstanding and unhappiness. For instance, if parents from one side comes to visit, who's customs and traditions should they follow, how to find the source and deal with the conflict? Especially when an educated man from a high developed country marries a woman from a developing country, who can guarantee there is no race discrimination in their family?


In the third place, if they have children in the future, once their marriage has problems and they get divorced in the end, how to arrange their children? As the victims of a marriage, which culture should they adapt to? How can they face two different cultures in the future and how can they survive in a totally different environment after their parents' divorce?


In summary, a happy marriage is based on understanding and comprehension from both sides. A couple may share everything in life and construct their happy marriage, they may take same responsibility and take care each other. In this way, it may reduce the divorce rate in the near future. But, crosscultural marriage takes a big risk in constructing happy marriage, of course, it is only my own opinion, no matter it is a good or bad thing, will be proved by more facts and investigation in the future.

So, from what has been discussed above, what is your opinion of crosscultural marriage?