With intercultural interactions we need to remember that all the stuff that people like to talk about is just the tip of the iceberg. The real test is the issues underneath the surface, which are a lot more difficult, complicated and often get messy.
(My financee is from la Arenosa–we met when I was living there. We spent Semana Santa in San Andres once).
That’s what “mangetout” means? I always thought Doper Mangetout had chosen a user name that must be either scatological or slyly pornographic, or both.
(you know, like I’m picturing a bestial pimp who specializes in mangy dogs? I dunno . . .)
I don’t have a foreign spouse, I am the foreign spouse. 
We met online on BITnet Relay in the fall of 1987, and married in October 1990. We’ve lived in Norway the entire time. Originally the plan was to move to the States for a while to try that out, but somewhere along the line we kinda changed plans. Or life changed them for us. Whatever.
Mange tout, eat all in french. That is how I have always mentally translated it.
My wife is Chinese. Grew up in HK.
I’m an American, the wife is Thai, and we live in Bangkok. We met in graduate school at the University of Hawaii. The wife has a government position, and her office sent her to UH to pick up a second master’s degree, this one in biostatistics, which she uses in her research. (She was sponsored by the East West Center federal research facility at the university.) I naturally gravitated toward the Thai students, because I had already spent some years in Thailand in the 1980s and intended to return after I graduated. I was not an East West student, just a normal grad student, but I worked for the center’s Housing Department, which provided me with a free room, nothing to sneeze at in Hawaii. So we lived in the same building, took many of the same courses – I was not studying biostatistics but something similar and did have to take some statistics anyway.
I’ll tell ya, Hawaii is an ideal setting for a courtship.
Just saw your second question. Since I was never married to anyone before, I don’t know if it’s harder or easier. But I have to say ours has been a pretty easy marriage, and we’re up into the double digits in years. I’ve known a lot of farangs (Westerners) who have had trouble, and it seems much of the problem is financial. I’m not looking down on marrying someone who is poor, but very often the Thai wife’s family, sometimes extended family, will expect the farang husband to take care of them. Or coming from a poor background, the wife gets into difficulties because she’s not used to dealing with financial matters. My wife’s family, on the other hand, is wealthier than I am. At least middle class, probably closer to upper-middle class. Their fortunes waxed and waned over the years, and the wife did know some periods of hard times growing up – at one point, her father and brother had to hide out in Hong Kong for a spell, because police in the pay of business rivals were trying to kill them – and she even did janitorial work in office buildings to help the family as a young girl. But by the time I came along, they had bounced back admirably.
My late father was Puerto Rican and my mom is from the south-eastern USA. They met at University. My youngest brother met his Taiwanese wife at University.
My Pakistani husband grew up in Saudi Arabia. I was friends with one of his sisters-in-law. One day, she, he and I went to a hookah bar to hang out and he and I hit it off really well. We’ve been together for over seven years and married for almost four.
My husband’s brothers are married to, or in long-term relationships with, an Anglo woman from the USA; a Japanese woman; a Mexican woman. His sister is married to an African-American man from the south-eastern USA. Our nephews and nieces comprise a micro-Rainbow Coalition.
I am an American. Mr. Ipsum was born and raised in the UK, then moved to the US as an adult. The move was for his job, but it was a transfer he’d requested as he had always wanted to live in the US (after having visited the country a few times).
We met through a club - the local chapter of Mensa - when he had been living in the US for about 18 months. At the time, he was on a work Visa, but trying to get a green card through the company. Several years later, when we got married, his company was stalling on the green card, so he applied for one through marriage, and later got citizenship. We both plan to stay in the US.
Bumping the zombie thread to admit, in the immortal words of Brittany Spears, Oops I Did it Again!
Dammit! Should have picked up on this. The same hints trickling my way all week. Her casually probing for gift suggestions of things I might want and her offering ideas of things she thinks I should know that she would like.
Thought I had a reasonable excuse, but was not accepted. It’s really depressing so skip it if you’d rather just be bemused by the gringo put on the spot.
Look, its been a truly awful and stressful week for the family on other issues and I was just trying to let my birthday slide by this year.
Hopefully other Dopers are keeping up better with the traditions of their foreign born spouse. And since I finally got a damn smart phone how can I key in an event for once a year, third Saturday of September!?! I need my electronic brain to give me a warning so this doesn’t happen again.
My divorced brother remarried a couple years ago. He’d been making occasional trips to China and brought home a Chinese national on his last trip. AFAIK, she’s an e-mail order bride.
Not I but I’ve known several.
One was a German woman doing a grand tour of the US around 1960. She met and married an American. After they divorced, she married a Chinese living in the US.
Another was an Australian married to an American woman who was a grad student in Sydney. They have spent nearly all their lives since in California.
A Canadian did a PhD in England and married an Australian woman also studying in Cambridge.
A Finn did an AFSC year living with a good friend of mine in Cleveland. Somehow he connected with a Texan. They have lived in Helsinki since (where his family criticizes her for not learning much Finnish).
A South African colleague of mine married an Argentinian. I am not sure how they met.
Another South African colleague studied in Belgium and married a Belgian woman and they ended up in Canada.
I’m still new at this. Met my Filipina wife online June 3, met her in person July 14, married her September 5. We’re still together.
Can somebody explain to me the relative merits of bumping a 15-year old thread to reach a huge audience of newcomers, or opening a new thread 15 years later asking for similar opinions from the same newcomers. Do both sides have a watchdog, self appointed to tsk-tsk such things?
My mother married my Belgian born father in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He immigrated after WW2 to join the US Navy. He ended up in the USAF.
Was “only” 5 years since last post. 
I chose to bump up the old thread since I was specifically mocking myself for not having learned this particular point well enough, a point I had previously shared on this forum.
I should add that Mrs Iggy did remember my birthday today. She and the young uns are doing better with these weird Americanisms I have introduced. Even got them liking barbecue over the intervening years. And yet I totaled spaced out on the Colombian holiday that she and the step kiddos were eager to celebrate. :o oops.
And, of course, Dopers have a few more international relationships in the intervening years. May your journey adapting to all things Filipino be full of happiness! And take pleasure when you can in sharing a bit of American culture with your new in laws.
American with Japanese spouse. I went to Japan as a teacher about 20-odd years ago and met my spouse through work. Culture does create friction at times, mainly through language. She wants me to speak only English at home for our son, but then gets frustrated that my Japanese isn’t so good.
My parents also qualify, as my mother was from America and my father from France. She went to Europe in the late 50s/early 60s to teach elementary school on US bases, and he was teaching French to US soldiers. They got married in the US and lived there the rest of their lives.
My great grandfather sent for a mailorder bride from Holland…they couldn’t even talk to each other …married 2 days after she arrived here…they had nine children…were married nearly 60 years…so apparently they found a way to communicate pretty quickly…my Mother said her grandmama never shut up in her older days…and taught her all the curse words in English and dutch…she was apparently a character…
Was American , now British with a British spouse. Despite the language barrier, we get on all right.
Met through mutual friends when I was working over here at the British Museum some years back.
Well, in the spirit of the original 2012 post, and this zombie bump, my answer is yes. Twice. I did it again. The relationship with my wife-from-Mexico didn’t survive my assignment in China (work and culture issues that had not surfaced in the USA), and so after a few years, I was ready to commit to another foreign wife. What the State Department thinks about me, I have no idea. Luckily #2 seems so much more open minded about cultures.
I’m British, and my wife is American. But I’ve lived in the US since 1996, so if anything I’m the “foreign spouse.” We met in college at a frat party.
