Love agreement: when romance crosses cultures
Are you in a cross-cultural relationship, finding you’re not synced in the level of commitment? You aren’t alone because many of my friends also have this struggle, and the pain is real. Here are some perspectives on this topic.
Born in southern China, I was raised by my grandmother. Like most women at her age, she was born in the countryside and didn’t get any education. Farming was the only life skill she learned. She is also very good at taking care of babies. I was the first grandchild she took care of and after she tirelessly took care of my five younger cousins. That’s the general expectation in China: grandparents would take care of the grandchildren so parents can go to work without feeling scrambled by nursing work. She considers me her favorite grandchild. When I was about to start college, she gave me a marriage present — a pair of gold bangles. She handed the bangles to me very carefully, saying that she wished me to find a good husband very soon. I didn’t know what to think about at that moment because I was still single and marriage seemed to be very far away, so I just accepted the gift awkwardly.
Years have passed since I received the bangles and I am still single, which has been a big concern for my grandma. In her world, women wouldn’t feel happy until they get married. In her world, love isn’t a premise for a marriage. In her world, commitment is followed through and a relationship would stick for life. She once tried to persuade me, “When your grandpa proposed to me, we didn’t know each other very much. But then we have spent a big part of our life together. Marriage is not as complex as you think it to be.” For her, commitment is the beginning of a journey, and her love exists in forms such as responsibility, nurturing, and hope for the next generations.
Then I left home and traveled to the West. Living in San Francisco, one of the most liberal cities in the world, I have been exposed to more diverse love concepts. Stories go by that many people are open to experimenting with different kinds of love agreements based on individual needs: open relationship, open marriage, polyamory, etc. In a New Year party near Berkeley, a boy shared a highlight of the year was walking his girlfriend down the wedding aisle towards her future husband, someone that isn’t him.
These are two extreme versions of love agreements: my grandma style vs. Berkeley boy style. My grandma signed a pretty vague agreement, with content along the line with “Let’s get married and see how it goes”, while I couldn’t imagine the complexity of the agreement signed by the Berkley boy. Most of us are in between these two extremes exploring our needs and options, but I wonder if culture affects people’s attitudes to romance. After all, romantic concepts have existed in the West longer than in the East. I set off to find some insights from my friend group.
The main question I used to understand the attitudes was their expected compatibility from future partners. Expected compatibility would show how they envision an ideal relationship between the self and the one. I asked this question to some Chinese and American friends and found two patterns.
Some friends’ answers are relatively vague, high-level, and undescriptive. When speaking about compatibility, they mentioned dimensions such as core values, lifestyle, and family goals (e.g., how to raise kids, etc.). Here is one narrative: “As long as we listened to the opinions from each other, we would eventually get through all the incompatibilities”. I would call this group Satisficer. Satisficer show a high level of flexibility in their love agreement.
On the other hand, other friends’ answers are by comparison more detailed, descriptive, and specific on different dimensions, such as family, finance, intellectual, lifestyle, etc. Here are some narratives: “I want a woman who is strong enough to make life decisions for us because I am bad at making decisions”; “If she didn’t like camping, that would be a deal-breaker for me”; “We should have separate lives, such as different friends and relationships”; “Long-term compatibility, like shared interests, we both like outdoors, have similar tastes about how we dress, a shared sense of humor, etc”. I would call this group Optimizer. Optimizer seem to be more detail-oriented in their love agreement.
Satisficer demands compatibility on very high-level dimensions and shows a flexible vision of a relationship. Optimizer, on the other hand, demand compatibility on lower-level details and show reluctance to sacrifice the specifics. In real life, Satisficer tend to make commitments early to see where the journey leads them, while Optimizer tend to make experiments to engineer a well-tailored agreement that meets individual needs before making any commitment. Satisficer tend to be less hopeful about finding the perfect match, while Optimizer tend to be the champion of the soulmate concept. This caused the difference in paces.
What are your speculations? Do you think that a culture leans towards a certain attitude? To reveal, my Asian friends gave more high-level answers and my American friends gave very detailed answers. But I wouldn’t generalize the results to culture since it’s a small sample size. The most important thing is what we can learn from these results? Are there any implications for people who venture into a cross-cultural romantic relationship?
If you found yourself in a relationship where you are in different places on the spectrum, like the Satisficer wants a commitment while the Optimizer is indecisive, maybe it’s worth discussing what both can do to shorten this distance. Love should make you open-minded to each other’s perspectives on this subject. There are strengths and limitations to each style. For Satisficer, they focus on growing a relationship, but it might be worth thinking if there are any unnoticed needs that they didn’t take care of before signing any agreement. For Optimizer, they focus on finding the person to optimize the relationship with, but it might be worth contemplating, is everything in the agreement so indispensable that you should let go of a less “perfect” person that might potentially bring happiness to you from other aspects of life? Of course, it would be easier to say than actually change an attitude, and I don’t want the challenges to be unrecognized. When it’s difficult, love is a powerful ingredient to help you in the relationship. After all, you cannot manage a relationship like a project and simply base decisions on principles.
I thought about my grandma when I was writing this article. I was reflecting on the day when my grandmother gave me the gold bangles. She must be giving me the best wish that she could think of from her world.
