Are most intercultural relationships in Taiwan doomed?

Life Dating & Relationships
#25

I mean that mixed couples from my country of origin and Taiwanese have all gone kaput. Yep, 100% failure. Most of them are women, as I said before. Most of my male friends are from USUK/SA/etc Western.

As to the rest of nationalities/colors/creeds and preferences… actually the gays have the best sucess rate so far. I think it is becaus ether is a consensus of “us against the world” or rather “the world is against us, better stick together as united front”. However, I also know from my gay pals that that side of the aile is also plagued with the same communication problems, misguided expectations, and other mafans that can be found in any and at marriages all over the world. it is not all clouds and unicorns and candy canes. For instance, I hear singles complain that" most gays are too superficial, they have unrealistic expectations in body metrics, bla bla bla…"

As one pal was reeeling over from his epic divorce, he said “that’s it, I swear off women! I wil become gay!”. One of our 100% homosexual pal retorted: darling, we also have problems here, don’t bring such expectations.

#26

I do notice Taiwanese men who are with non Taiwanese women to be more successful vs Taiwanese women with non Taiwanese men.

#27

i can understand problems from western womens point of view. i’ve heard some real horror storys of having to help out the TW husbands family and the husband siding with the family for everything.

shouldn’t have to be that way with western guys though. traditionally the girl will leave her family to join the guys family. so western guys getting swamped with their TW girls family really need to get a clue.

1 Like
#28

That’s exactly what we did except we spent about four months on a honeymoon. We rode the train down the west coast of America to Mexico and then spent a month or so backpacking through Mexico. Then we rode the train back up to Toronto and then drove across Canada.

Marriage has been great so far (16 years) with no sign of it getting worse.

1 Like
#29

Do yourboersinalitiesgo well together? What’s the key to your marriages
success?

#30

[quote=“VOT, post:24, topic:161284, full:true”]
OP has made a false statistical association.[/quote]

Actually I wrote the title of the thread (split from a thread in the Legal forum).

It’s enough of an issue to have its own sub-forum. One thread has 198 replies so far, dealing with multiple cases.
http://tw.forumosa.com/c/legal/divorce

#31

I do get your point. Which is why this time (as I have stupidly done this before), I am not running home to my family in the US to fix everything. I am fortunately UNABLE to do this. I know that having to go it on my own sucks a whole hell of a lot…but in the end I will become the stronger person out of all of this. She, will not.

At this point, marriage is going to take a back seat to getting what I want out of life. Sure, dating is OK…but I am not going to give up ALL I am for a woman as I have in the past. I do thank you so very much for your console. You have been a very kind person and it has helped me move forward.

1 Like
#32

Do the taiwanese young people have the same rush for marriage that one can observe over on the mainland? For us Germans it is totally not necessary to marry in order to have a nice fulfilling relationship and nowadays there is no pressure to do so. One can live happily together with someone for years and that’s just fine. I was seriously shocked when my first mainland girlfriend came up with the topic of wedding about 4 weeks after we started dating (of course she mentioned it even earlier, but the first time she asked me for a concrete plan it was within this four weeks… of course exptecting a wedding in the first year of our relationship). We have been just around 25 at that time, I tried to take it with a smile but ultimately the relationship was doomed to fail with such different expectations.
Giving in too much is also a nice point. I think I did that mistake in that relationship. I sacrificed a lot of my own lifestyle and culture in order to move together with a very very very traditional girl. I remember just three weeks into dating her she came to my flat at that time, looked around and said ‘this is a shithole’, started immediately to tell me which things I have to remove, get rid off, after a couple of days finally coming to the conclusion that we have to move together because there is no hope for me living a decent life under these conditions, as she believed that there where some evil spirits around that place. Looking back I can hardly believe how I could accept such bullshit. But anyway, those problems have been obvious from the beginning, just a little bit of common sense and such a mess can be avoided.

1 Like
#33

This is a very good point.

#34

nope, its not as mad as in china. it seems to be more up to personal choice whether people marry and have kids young here. in china pretty much everyone has huge pressure from their family about that.

#35

There’s still a lot of pressure in Taiwan for that, especially having a male grandchild. Sex selection is very common.

Most women solve this by not getting married at all.

#36

Happily married 11 years. The foreigners I know tend to be similarly situated.

Divorce rates are pretty high even when the couple comes from the same culture, so we should not wonder that so many mixed-culture couples experience it. Yes, multiple cultures bring certain stresses, but so do multiple genders! The differences are important, but they are not all-important.

From what I’ve read and heard, a lot of people make the mistake of marrying someone crazy, manipulative, irresponsible, etc. What is there to say? Don’t do this, and don’t be such a person either. Thoroughly get to know each other’s character. I’m not thinking only of cross-cultural couples here. In fact I have in mind one local couple who spent upwards of a million NT on their wedding, only to divorce less than a year later because of (surprise!) immaturity. (The bride apparently missed her hard-partying single days.) Maybe it’s a generational thing, I dunno. Anyway, be sure both of you know what you want, and that you want roughly compatible (and positive) things.

Once the choice has been made, the big thing is being committed, and willing to work together, sacrifice for one another, care about each other’s happiness, etc. If you both do this, then you’ve got a marriage. But it has to be mutual, or it doesn’t work.

In my opinion, spending time in one another’s cultures, and learning one another’s languages, are big plusses. A certain stability is also desirable, so don’t get married during a gap year or something.

Yes, Chinese family life takes some getting used to, but for those who can accept it, it can be a very positive and enriching experience. Extended family pressures may break up some marriages, but probably hold others together. (It’s a lot like religion in that respect.) Anyway, there doesn’t have to be one rule about this. Do what works for you and your partner, and be selective about what cultural influences you absorb.

My two cents. Here endeth the lesson!

3 Likes
#37

Interestingly, there are studies that reveal that there is a correlation with spending ginormeous amounts of money in your wedding… and higher rates of divorce.

#38

Is that based on your personal experience?

#39

Nope. Some Ivy League study if I recall. Though even before i read that, I suspected deep in my heart that they were overcompensating. Like guys in flashy lamborginis on Taipei streets. Those are the ones most probabloy in debt and less likely to have real money.

I have stopped going to weddings altogether. It is depressing. People who have loved each other so much, have the warmest, loeveliest wedding of all… kaput in less than 5 years. Those are painful, but at least you can go there and root for hope. And have your heart broken. But you never know. Anyways, I’d rather buy my 2500 ntd red envelope in lottery tickets. Better odds.

Then there are the ones you and everyone knows that it is either green card/JFVR card/gold digging from any of the sides/etc… and they expect you to sit there with a poker face and stuff your pie hole with all the food you can cram in 45 minutes? My doctor is against that kind of thing.

#40

There’s a way to deal with this… Don’t get invited to weddings :grin:,easier said than done.

I had to do the big wedding for the in laws , I mean I didn’t have to but it was right thing to do in that circumstance.

Anyway 10 years in and less divorce talk over the last 2 years hehe.

#41

We have a joke in Spanish: that between husband and wife the word divorce has not been used… murder yes, but not divorce.

2 Likes
#42

haha no thanks. Also, the diamond ring thing de Beers set up decades ago, not buying into that crap either.

#43

You will be thrilled, no doubt, to learn that the case I described above was actually a “shotgun wedding.” That is, the bride got pregnant from some man she didn’t care that much about, then succumbed to family pressure to marry him and have the baby. I guess she saw all this an an opportunity to take some killer selfies. (They had not one, but two wedding photography shoots.)

Meanwhile, a young (mid-20s) in-law of mine is about to marry his long-time girlfriend. They have been together since their freshman year of university. She seems nice. A few weeks ago, they–and I guess, their families–got into a big row over details of the venue, in the course of which she apparently threatened to cancel the whole thing unless the wedding hall had a window in it (which costs more moolah). (Sigh) May all beings be happy.

Another in-law married her equally long-time boyfriend. They’re still happily married. He is generally an okay guy, but has done things that other people would consider deal-breakers. For instance, he overrode his then-fiancee’s objections and bought a house (with a mortgage) that she didn’t like. There are issues with his family (whose paterfamilias seems to have lost all his money).

So what are the odds? You can’t go just by the raw divorce rate. Even if we could somehow get the numbers for mixed-nationality marriages, most of these would involve Vietnamese brides or something, and wouldn’t be comparable to the situation of a Western foreigner who marries a Taiwanese. In fact, intermarried couples probably fall into a number of sociologically-distinct groupings. Clustering probably also explains why I mostly perceive successful “mixed” marriages, while Icon (for example) mostly perceives failed ones. Other factors such as age should probably also be factored in, as actuaries do.

I doubt that there are very many foreigners marrying for the sake of a JFVR (I mean, how hard can it be to get residency some other way?), and suspect that even the fabled Green Card has lost some of its luster. But it is probably foolish of me to underestimate humanity’s potential for shallow behavior.

1 Like
#44

I guess that as a woman I am really jaded. And TBH, the stuff I have witnessed in my 20 years on this Island…Shiver, shiver…

I think it gets better with younger generations, but I still believe the ones that seem to have a better chance are the ones that look for neutral ground…neither Taiwan nor their countries of origin.