“The Marriage Did Not Last”: 80 International Dating Culture Shocks People Never Saw Coming

I'm from Northern Sweden / Sápmi, and culturally a blend of Sami and Swedish due to family upbringing. I married a man from the US.

The weirdest cultural difference I've come across is how much Americans toot their own horns and make grand offers/promises that they don't mean to follow through on.

Like the first time my husband visited my village my husband promised 15 (!!!) different people a bottle of whisky. Then he didn't bring them a bottle of whisky! I rectified that immediately because you don't say you're going to do something and then *not do it*.

I've spoken with a close friend from the US who does a similar behavior, where she invites people she has only just become acquainted with to do things with her, but apparently she "doesn't really mean it". For example: inviting people to attend some event with her, while not actually expecting them to attend, just to pretend they're going to attend. I find this bizarre and would be so hurt if someone invited me to something only to learn they didn't actually want me there!

Australians are the equivalent of American drunken sailors. The [things] that come out of my wife's mouth.

My wife is from SE Asia. On my first trip there, I smelled sewage everywhere I went. It was just awful. She then told me that was just durian, not sewage.

I’m an American woman, dating a Hungarian man, there’s a lot of the stuff that Americans would call traditional or old fashioned, like he is very on top of opening all of the doors for me, and pulling out chairs, always insists on escorting me anywhere, but it’s not a facade or show to impress me, it’s just the way he was brought up.

Dinner time, I am Canadian and dinner time 5:30-6pm. He is Italian and dinner time is 7:30-8pm. We have settled on Italian Senior Citizen Dinner Time of 7pm.

I have a muslim-raised Tanzanian GF. She escaped Islam and Tanzania because she's not a believer anymore. She left her family because there was no reasoning with them when it comes to religion.

It's quite wild to see religion be such a divider. My family are Christians, but I renounced my status as a Christian when I was 14 and while they were a little disappointed, it never changed anything between me and my family. Meanwhile my GFs family are angry and threatening because of her lack of belief.

I love the acceptance of different views in Norway, and I'm glad I live here.

I am married to a Filipino 🇵🇭 . There are loads of small things, like for example:

* Filipinos point with their lips by making a kissy face! It took me so long to get used to it, I kept thinking she wanted a kiss and then she’d be like “no you idiot, I need you to pass me the thing over there 😙”.
* She was very blunt initially. I remember meeting friends one time and her saying “oh you’re a little fat now!”. I was horrified lol.
* Rice with *everything.* She doesn’t have bacon sandwiches in the morning, she has bacon, rice and ketchup.

I was brought up "always clean your plate." Aka eat everything you take. If you are not going to eat it don't take more. Mongolian view an empty plate as you want more and will give you more even if you don't ask.. So image me emptying the plate them keep filling it... i wouldn't walk out, i'd roll..

Giving money as a gift. I'm from Chicago, and was taught as a child giving cash as a gift showed that you didn't think about the person, so lacked sentimentality. My wife is from China and believes cash in a red envelope allows the person to choose what they get, so she prefers cash to gifts that she may not like. When we go to birthday parties for our children's friends, we have to debate whether getting a gift and wrapping it is a waste of time or demonstration of emotional investment. Double that for Christmas.

Meeting the Persian family and experiencing taarof (without warning)

Looking back I feel awful for accepting all the delicious food so quickly. 

AnElectricfEel:

Bro when you go to any store in Iran, you have to beg the cashier to take your money. Theyll say “No please, its on the house” and you gotta say “No I would love to pay, please let me” I love it but it gets exhausting after a while.

South Americans are LOUD. Middle age, middle class white Brits like me are not.

Me: you don't need to shout. I'm sitting right next to you.

Her: I'm just talking.

Over and over for several decades.

Used to date an American. The American attitude towards debt shocked me. When I borrowed money from my parents to cover my slightly overdrawn account I cancelled all of my subscriptions and stopped eating out to pay it back within a month. And he was running around putting the smallest purchases on multiple credits cards and only paying minimums on his existing student debt and consumer debt.

My Chinese wife's favourite drink is hot water. It's a thing in China, really. Not tea, or any hot drink, just boiled and slightly chilled water. Goes at any season and any temperature.

seanmonaghan1968:

My wife is Taiwanese and does the same. I would order iced water at restaurants in Taiwan and get very strange looks.

I once dated a spanish girl as a german.

She brought her friends to the town we both studied in for visit and they were soooo loud. I made the rookie mistake to pick a german restaurant to have dinner and they were that loud, all the other guests and staff looked at us and were annoyed for 2 hours.

The spanish folks couldnt read the room at all, they were oblivious. And in the end, they all wanted to pay seperatly and none tipped the waiter (the look on the guys face was priceless), as tipping isnt a thing in spain I learned that night.
I ended up tipping him good and apologized for the people, when I was the last one to pay and all the others went outside.

From USA. Ex-wife is Colombian. We used to live there.

For me, was random family showing up unannounced at our apartment. My first week there, I got out of the shower and walked into the hallway completely bare, only to find my ex’s aunt standing in the hallway as if she were waiting for my ex.

I felt so embarrassed, was my first time meeting this person in my life and she saw me bare!

Fortunately, she was a physician so she was used to seeing people bare. That made it less awkward. Still, took awhile for me to get over, LOL….

Had a relationship with a korean.

The biggest issue for me was the communication: When I'm upset or something is bothering me, I just directly explain what's going on and express my emotions. He on the other side was never really telling me how he feels, I think he wanted me to read the room - that's not a big strength of mine.

After a while I found out that he was REALLY upset when he blinked a few times, smiled a creepy smile and said in a really calm polite tone something like 'please do/don't do this'.

I think the biggest culture shock for him (outside the relationship) that the streets in the bigger cities (Germany) are dirty and the littering. For me it was in Korea that many school kids are outside with their uniform in the late evening because they are doing extra classes for school.

My mexican girlfriend thought it was weird that I (American) only saw my parents and siblings like every other month even though they live fairly close by. She would always ask if we were fighting or mad at each other and struggled to understand that we just had our own lives and werent really dependent on each other for anything but we still had a good relationship.

Vacation.

I visited my Korean bf family once and stayed three weeks to visit the country (my bf was a student in France at the time so we had room to do so).

My bf's mom was SHOCKED that I was staying three weeks, asked me "does your employer knows and do they agree?" to which I replied that I was nearly forced to take these vacation. She talked about it for days.

Koreans gets a legal minimum of 11 days on first year of employment, then 15 average, that most doesn't take fully because of corporate and social pressure.
Legal minimum here (France) is 25 days, my employer offered 40, and shouted at me to get that trip asap.

Venezuelan here, migrated to Australia 15 years ago.

Unfortunately, my most significant cultural difference with my ex partner (Canadian) came down to expectations around assisting family: She was never happy about me helping out my aging parents financially as the Venezuelan economy collapsed. She accepted it begrudgingly, but then complained recurrently.

Not the main reason why we separated in the end, but a contributing factor. I think it was a mixture of personal and cultural views.

When it’s meal time I like to cook a meal, exactly how much we intend to eat and nothing more, then when it’s ready, eat it while it’s hot. Conversation goes quiet because everyone is eating and enjoying the meal. Things are orderly and efficient.

Now my partner is from the Philippines…. they make huge amounts of food and then when it’s time to eat, it takes them about 20 minutes to sit down and stop fussing around, and then I’m still not allowed to eat yet because they need group photos around it first, followed by video calls to relatives on precariously perched iPads on the dinner table. The food has long gone cold or lukewarm by this point but they seem to prefer it like that. This is where all the most important conversations of the day seem to be scheduled for, right when my mouth is full and I’m having to multi task between eating, listening (a lot) and trying to formulate a reply.

Love them, but it’s difficult sometimes.