Mixed Marriages
The term 'Mixed Marriage' normally refers to marriage between people belonging to different religions or nationalities. (In the future, when same-sex marriages become commonplace, 'mixed marriage' may also mean 'opposite-sex marriage')
This pages looks briefly at the problems, and pleasures, of interracial and intercultural marriages. (See also Western weddings in Japan and weddings in the Phillipines.)
Anyone who's been married for a while knows very well that marriage can be quite a challenge. Sometimes things go awry and the marriage fails.
Try to imagine then, the additional challenges faced by couples from different cultures; especially those as diverse as Eastern and Western. The failure rate is significantly higher for these couples. They are, of course, fully aware of this before they make the commitment to each other. They are aware of the culture shock and racial discrimination they will probably encounter, the difficulties of acclimatizing to different language, food, climate, customs, and all the other elements of culture. When one moves to another country, the intimate contact of family and friends, and even relatively small things like food, favourite TV programmes, newspapers and so on, are missed.
We must remember also that, like married couples, governments often fall out with each other. Where two countries are on friendly terms now, decades later they may be at war. At that time, the multi-cultural couple may find their advancing age makes internment camp life intolerable.
On the plus side, however, the couple can enjoy the benefit of experiencing another culture in a way denied to the rest of us who just visit these places as tourists. Multi-culturalism helps spread understanding and through such understanding, wars can be avoided.
Nevertheless, the challenges are still great and we must keep these couples in our prayers.
The couple, before making that commitment, owe it to each other to plan for the worse-case scenario.
