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Compromise, key to marriage trap

By Kerry Xie (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-10 08:03

When I told my Chinese friends I was marrying a foreigner, two out of three friends advised against it.

We were too different, they advised; when the romance ended, so would the relationship. But I don't agree that a Chinese/Western marriage is more likely to fail, not with divorce rates among Chinese couples being what they are.

All marriages, no matter how swoony and sexy in the beginning, face the inevitable test: can each spouse compromise? Truly compromise, as in sacrificing ego in the name of your partner's well-being.

Unless we can do that, we're all foreigners to each other, no matter our background. With a Chinese/Western marriage, however, that test comes sooner rather than later.

The test comes quicker because of cultural differences.

When I married, how was I to know that to my husband, an American, marriage certainly mattered, but not in the way it did to me? Make no mistake, Americans also value family first, but their Yankee independence makes filial relationships much less codependent, and from a Chinese point of view, less loyal. If mom and dad don't approve of your lifestyle, move out, and only visit them on the odd holiday. If your spouse can't keep it hot in the bedroom and full in the bank account, then hey, it's just not working out. Thank god for that pre-nup.

Back to hubby, who, thanks to his Catholic upbringing, had far too much guilt to end a relationship as soon as it stopped playing out like the first fifteen minutes of a romantic comedy. Even so, I soon deciphered that his concept of marriage lacked a certain bedrock foundation.

Chinese see marriage as sacred, something bigger than the trivial day-to-day desires of the couple involved. Never mind that we make no vows in front of a priest, the sanctity of marriage is ingrained: marriage, children, grandchildren, death, altar, repeat cycle.

It's a basic distinction, with many ramifications. Why, for instance, did he insist on going out with the boys on Friday night, without me? When my father wasn't working, he was home with his family, unless he was outside with the family. Why did my husband need to participate in an extra-marital fraternity, with all the ridiculous weekend softball games and expensive bar tabs? He would babble about "relieving stress", but it didn't add up. I could remedy that with a hot footbath while we watched our evening programs together.

I know everyone needs some social stimulation besides wife and colleagues, that's what bi-monthly dinners with other married couples are for. We sit around a huge round table and discuss the prices of things, and when we'll have kids. Until, of course, we actually have kids, then we'll talk about the cost of raising them. Maybe we'll even get together for a Sunday summer morning badminton game, or get really adventurous and organize a group tour to Guilin. Until we have the kids, of course. Then we'll be too busy on weekends taking them to extra lessons and McDonald's.

That rift in values inevitably pulled us further and further apart.

I couldn't imagine that his free time could mean "free of me", and he refused to raise marriage a rank above the triumvirate of work, home, and play. I made a show of needing plenty of personal space, too, but my girls' nights felt like a farce. What was I doing at a nightclub? I was married!

I gained the upper hand when we moved to China. Bye, bye, old cave-buddies! Now my husband could learn from the example of my married Chinese friends: free time is family time, and carousing until all hours is for rich men. But China had changed as much as I had during my time in the US. Half of my married friends were now divorced, and half of those had got divorced because they had become rich.

The couples that were still together were faring on average about as well as I had been doing in America - plenty to love about their partners and plenty to work on.

In these crazy multicultural times, it's impossible to know what to blame, or how to unravel cause and effect. But I'm still married. Some call it maturity. Others call it getting old. I call it compromise.