At a Crossroads: Navigating Culture In a Relationship

Feel-good Romcoms and self-help Pinterest feeds tell us that love can break down any obstacle. Love can run laps around anything in its way. On the other hand, what if the “obstacle” is culture, a symbolic communication sewn into our bones from one generation to the next? Even though we’ve grown from Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 case banning interracial marriage, Hinge, the modern “dating app meant to be deleted,” allows users to screen by race (and many do). Truth is, crossing cultures, in the scope of a romantic relationship, has the potential to serve as both a bridge and a barrier.  

Crossing cultures is a bridge. Licensed marriage and family therapist Dr. Michelle Zarowitz studied relationships between two very different groups of people: people who identified as Jewish and who identified as Arab. Dr. Zarowitz noted that what brought couples together were “cultural rituals that cohere people together—that was more important than ethnic [or religious] groups with which they identified.” In cross-cultural psychology, “an individualistic culture is a community that prioritizes the individual over the collective.” For example, a couple, coming from Christian and Buddhist backgrounds may find common ground in their individual pursuits to discover atheism.

Abbigale Tran, a 25-year-old Vietnamese-American female, and Josh Moore, a 32-year-old white male grew up and still reside in the deep South. Together, they find common ground. When speaking to Moore for the first time his Southern accent comes out thick like smoke, but when digging beneath the surface the truth is that his grandfather who played a large role in influencing him during his childhood was born in Minnesota.

Moore reveals, “A lot of the [Southern] things like going hunting on the weekends…I didn’t do…and my dad is to a degree Southern, but not like a good, classy Southerner. More like a Redneck.” Tran also felt as if she did not belong to the Southern landscape during her adolescent years. After meeting Moore, she was open to exploring more facets of the Southern culture she despised. “Josh helped me to experience a whole other side of life. I used to say…God, something about the Rednecks…the only things they enjoy are going fast…mud riding, four-wheel riding…boating…tubing…Why? It’s just driving fast…And then I did them.”

As Doctor Zarowitz noted in her observational study of Jewish and Arab individuals, seemingly different cultures share a common thread. With the magnifying glass on Tran and Moore’s cross-cultural relationship, there are many lines of similarities between Vietnamese and specifically “Redneck” Southern culture including themes within music, long, drawn-out tonal dialects within the two languages, utilizing shared meals to connect with others, as well as the immigration to warmer temperatures and climates.

Crossing cultures is a barrier. A paper by Cornell Researchers, titled Addressing Bias and Discrimination on Intimate Platforms, claims mobile dating apps allowing users to filter by race—or use algorithms pairing people of the same race together are reinforcing racial and cultural barriers. The paper quotes author Lauren Berlant, “Intimacy builds worlds” as a lens to their claim. Intimacy, from their perspective, can be and should be shared between every one of all races and backgrounds. Sounds sweet.

However, the authors fail to give the perspectives of minorities existing in the real world aka a world that exists prejudices. These authors lack nuanced reasons as to why users turn on these features and who exactly is turning them on. Dating within your own race is not a preference set only by the white majority. “Preferences have different meanings depending on where you are located in a racial and gender hierarchy, a desirability hierarchy, as well as within online dating,” said Celeste Curington, co-author of The Dating Divide.

Tehila Soleimani is a Jewish-Persian member of the Jewish Student Association at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and prefers to date within her own culture. While Soleimani grew up with friends across the whole spectrum between “super religious” and “less religious,” she was grounded by these traditional values. She keeps to the Sabbath, the OG dopamine detox. Every Friday night to Saturday evening, Soleimani puts down her phone and avoids electricity usage. As well, Within Soleimani’s culture, women adopt their husband’s cultural identification and practices. Wanting to uphold this value, Soleimani respectfully does not want to give up a pillar of her life she has known and will always know. Simply, “I love my culture, so I want to see my culture. I want to keep my cultural values—that’s certain.”

Soleimani is not the only one who prefers to date within certain cultural boundaries. When Charlize Chiu, content creator and Fashion Business Management (FBM) student at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) scrolls through Hinge, she tends to “heart” individuals of the same race as her. The reason for this is because, “I’ve experienced Asian fetishization a lot, especially after moving to New York…which is why I tend to date within my own race—because I’m more comfortable,” says Chiu. Self-segregation is not unknown in the dating world. Arguably, in some cases, it is understandable. 

Toni Morrison, in her New York Times article titled, It is Like Growing Up Black One More Time,” remembers a “white man comment on the Vietnam war with much grief for the Vietnamese” where he remarks, “It all the more horrible to me because they are such beautiful people.” Yes, because physical beauty grants sympathy for the dead?  Morrison critiques, “when the focus is on how one looks rather than what one is, we are in trouble.” This social awareness is necessary when forming a romantic union because if a relationship’s foundation is on a fetish, just save the heartbreak. 

Konrad Brzoska, a 24-year-old electrical engineer and Natasha (Tasha) Petereit, a 23-year-old marketing coordinator have been together for five years. From a bird’s eye view, Brzoska and Petereit come from similar, White-American backgrounds. However, their relationship is the amalgamation of two separate worlds dancing to their own unique beat.

 Crossing cultures is a barrier, but sometimes worth it. Brzoska comes from a Catholic and Polish family that practices Catholicism and has intentions of keeping the Polish traditions alive from generation to generation. Petereit explains, “I’m one of these people that doesn’t really have a strong culture,” yet really admires Brzoska’s family for their cultural preservation. At the same time, she admits that the crossing of cultures is still a barrier to overcome.  A big importance to Brzoska’s family is knowing the Polish language. Petereit knows a few greetings in Polish. “When Tasha comes over and says hello to Babcia [Grandmother], she becomes very happy…but that’s a barrier nonetheless…if you don’t [fluently] speak my language, how are you going to communicate with my family, you know?” The cultural barriers set up a maze that Bzorska and Petereit willingly journey through with their care, connection, and communication being their catalysts.

Screening by race and religion, to some degree, is not “reinforcing race divisions.” Each relationship is nuanced. Each individual is nuanced. As Dr. Zarowitz noted, beyond culture, each person, depending on their external and internal experiences, has different wants, needs, and ways of communication. A relationship, one of the most complicated aspects of humanity can not be boiled down to an algorithm or blueprint. Culture holds both, at once, the capacity to be like glue, holding a relationship together, and the ability to push others away from each other like a toddler forcing two positive magnets to stick.