Anyone out there with a foreign spouse?

[Nava]

@Iggy

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.

Make it a reminder on the 1st of September to set up the other reminder and to start looking for a gift.

[Last_Glacial_Maximum]

I’m surprised I didn’t read about any Peace Corps marriages in this thread because IME they are somewhat common.
My wife is from Ecuador and she and I met while I was a Volunteer. It was strange for me to get married in Ecuador because that was the last thing that crossed my mind when I joined.
I remember thinking long and hard before making the commitment. We’ve been married almost 29 years now…

The other Peace Corps marriages that I l know of all ended in failure within a year or two. I have my theory as to why.

.

[Chicken_Fingers]

I grew up as a military kid, so a lot of my friends were from multicultural families. The area of the U.S. where I live is jammed with people from all over the world. My partner is Vietnamese. My oldest child is married to a Haitian. I can think of maybe forty intercultural couples off the top of my head. It simply feels normal to me.

For us, the biggest issue can be dealing with differences in family expectations and traditions. We do expect differences, so we give each other extra leeway and are mindful.

[jtur88]

I lived for three years with a German girl friend, who had decades earlier come to rural Kansas as a military bride. She was, well, German, old-school. Conversation was a logical minefield. All information that had ever been imparted to her in the German language was unassailable true.

[drewder]

Almost every Navy sailor I know married an Asian bride.

[Siam_Sam]

@Siam_Sam

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.

Since writing the above, we have returned to Hawaii. So now I’m the one with a foreign spouse and no longer a foreign spouse myself.

@Last_Glacial_Maximum

I’m surprised I didn’t read about any Peace Corps marriages in this thread because IME they are somewhat common.
My wife is from Ecuador and she and I met while I was a Volunteer. It was strange for me to get married in Ecuador because that was the last thing that crossed my mind when I joined.
I remember thinking long and hard before making the commitment. We’ve been married almost 29 years now…

The other Peace Corps marriages that I l know of all ended in failure within a year or two. I have my theory as to why.

In my Peace Corps group in Thailand, two guys married locals, and the marriages remain intact almost 30 years on. Also, two of the Volunteers ended up marrying each other, and they’re still married too.

I heard the marriage rate among the PCVs in the Philippines, back when there was a program there, was something like 25%. Guys mainly.

[China_Guy]

@Ele_the_Stoic

I’m an anthropologist by training, so I admit this is kind of a weird one, but the question yet BURNS: Do you, or someone you know, have a spouse from a foreign country? If so, how did you meet them?

I speak Chinese and was working in Japan. Met a woman in a bar that was Chinese. We started speaking Mandarin, dating and married in 6 months. Then moved to HK for a few years, then her home of Shanghai for 12 years, and finally work and the need for more services for an autistic child brought us to the Seattle area. Ain’t life grand. She still only has a green card and no US passport