I am not sure why this quote from Tim Ferriss has had such an effect on me over the years, but it has:

“There have been several points in my life… at which I saw my future as another fat man in a midlife-crisis BMW.  I simply looked at those who were 15-20 years ahead of me on the same (professional) track… and it scared the hell out of me.”

This passage from “The 4-Hour Workweek” is one of the most motivating I have come across in current lifestyle lit.

Whenever I feel like my priorities are off or I am making bad long-term decisions I try to project out 20 years or so and think about what will happen if I continue life like this:

Boring Job – Will I be stuck in a mind-numbing job?  A close friend of mine just graduated from law school last weekend.  We had some downtime after the commencement ceremony and were talking about what motivated our generation relative to what motivated that of our parents.

We decided (perhaps unfairly) that whereas our parents’ generation had money as their main motivator when it came to professional life, our motivators were more lifestyle driven.

For example, if you wanted to recruit our parents’ generation when they were young professionals you could lock them in by promising to double their income.  That, while still attractive, would not go as far with our generation which would likely prefer a 50% increase in income, two weeks of additional paid vacation and the option to work from home.

More importantly, Gen Y professionals crave meaning in their work lives.  THAT is why the bald, fat man in the red BMW scares the crap out of us.  We don’t want to be corporate automatons.

Ridiculous Mortgage – As the options of mobile living and worldwide travel/work become more and more of a reality today, home ownership (with the recent memory of home values plummeting insanely) is less and less of a draw.  Why tie yourself down to one location?  Why sign yourself up for the golden handcuffs of an awful (yet well-paid) job just to pay the mortgage for a house that you have long-since come to resent despite its square footage?

Estranged Spouse and Kids – If there were ever a thing that the boomers proved conclusively, it is the fact that their obsession with work and materialism ruined families.  Time away from home skewed priorities and the Western epidemic of workaholism has added up to a lifestyle where relationships that should matter, don’t.  The result is the most dysfunctional set of family dynamics on record.

Overworked – Allow me to continue on the subject of workaholism. An entrepreneur friend of mine with a lot of physician friends says that he hears the same thing over and over:  “How do I get out of the rat race?  I want out!”  These doctors, while well paid, fully realize that if they stop working their 12 hour days, shuttling patients in and out of their offices, the game is over, no moolah.  So they are trapped.  And they hate it.

Obese – When you take on boomer work values you also take on their tendency to be obese.  Part of what’s so scary about the guy in the red BMW is that, despite his status symbol, he is a chunkster.  Nobody is impressed.  And worse yet, the rat race is only going to make it worse.  The downward spiral of horrible lifestyle decisions, fueled by comfort food, late hours, terrible relationship and anti-depressants is a heart attack waiting to happen.  We need something new.

Savvy, global do-gooding

We each have an opportunity to define this “new” lifestyle.  My goals behind CultureMutt are to help contribute to this conversation about a healthier, more compassionate, more exciting, more globally-minded lifestyle.  We need to get intentional about savvy, global do-gooding.  What is the cost of a little experimentation when the “norm” is the rat race and nobody healthy enjoys it?

Another Tim Ferriss quote:

“Gold is getting old.  The New Rich (NR) are those who abandon the deferred-life plan and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the New Rich: time and mobility.  This is an art and a science we will refer to as Lifestyle Design (LD).”

Stay tuned, the next couple posts will be about Lifestyle Design.

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman

The happy couple

Last week I flew to England to be the Best Brother (Maid of Honor) in my sister Karin’s wedding.

Almost exactly a year ago she had been Best Sister in my own wedding in LA so it was fun to have the role reversal.

I was a little nervous about my speaking role in the wedding because I hadn’t lived in Britain for a while and there are some definite cultural differences between California and the UK.  In addition to the Best Brother role, I was Emcee for the reception and I was concerned that I would mess up my speech or the transitions between different program elements.

In the end things worked out for the most part.  Here are some things I learned along the way:

1)  Mirror what is going on around you.

One of the things I was hyper-aware of was the fact that because I am a naturally loud person I could very easily be perceived as the brash American.  I’ve heard it said that Americans communicate through overstatement and the English through understatement.  I did my best to “tone down” my remarks accordingly.  I only partially succeeded in the end.

2)  Say less than is necessary.

I freaked out when, ON THE DAY OF THE WEDDING, I timed my Best Brother speech and it was over three times longer than it was supposed to be.  I kept trimming away at it and luckily it did not end up being the longest speech at the wedding.  Especially when communicating in cross-cultural context, less is more.  Going too long may be perceived as cultural insensitivity or imperialistic bullishness, especially if you have an American accent.  If your remarks are being translated in real time it is even more important to cut the length down drastically.

3)  Find a local sounding board

Luckily I had several English friends at the wedding that were willing to give me pointers on my speech prep and tell me how the emceeing was going day-of. They mocked my nasal American accent to bits but also offered very helpful advice on what kind of material would go down well with the crowd.  I will confess to stealing a joke or two and passing it off as original material…

4)  Dig for dirt tastefully

Luckily for me, Britain has a very developed “piss-taking” culture where outright insults aimed at friends are an accepted expression of camaraderie.  So it was fairly easy to cobble together enough dirt on the groom (based on restaurant chatter the night before) to spice up my Best Brother speech.  I will say, however, that when I have tried to use the same piss-taking approach in the United States, some Americans have been offended at what they deem unnecessary trash talk.  Know your audience.  What works here may not work there.

5)  If you have a foreign-sounding accent…

I mentioned this earlier but this bears repeating: accents are significant.  They can be a barrier or a facilitator in cross-cultural communication.  To get around anti-American sentiment in Europe, I often joke about my American accent and issue fake apologies for it.  This typically goes down well.  Whether or not you decide to point out your different accent, be sure to proceed confidently with your material.

Me and my pal Kayla, the flower girl

You are who you are and they can deal with it.

6)  Piggyback

If at all possible, try to build common ground with an international audience as fast as possible.  If you can open your remarks with something funny someone else said at the wedding or if you can reference a popular point that a prior speaker made, do it.  Come across as the “reasonable” foreigner who gets it.  Even the staunchest nationalists will appreciate a “good” American/Brit/Swede – one that is not pushing a competing agenda and instead appreciates the local scene.

There’s a lot more that can be said but in the end commonsense and cool heads prevail.  International weddings are a lot of fun.  Don’t let the complexity of the intercultural dynamics scare you off.  There is all kinds of common ground to celebrate.  And in the end it’s not your day anyway, so relax.

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman

On April 3 I will have been married a year.  My sister is getting married this week.  Neither of us chose Swedes for life-mates.  So we have both done of a lot of work making sure we pull off international weddings right.  Here are the 10 Commandments that have emerged:

1)  Decide on Scale  - This one is on every wedding planning checklist.  Just how big is your wedding going to be?  This is especially critical when you are trying to pull off an international wedding.  If I had married another Swede I would have been looking at a guest list of 100 or less.  In Filipino terms, our 300-strong wedding guest list was still a little conservative.  Discussion over this kind of things can get tense quickly since finances and logistics become major considerations the bigger the wedding gets.

2)  Establish basic DOs and DON’Ts upfront – Cultural preferences and rules may have caused tensions while you were dating.  Expect any drama you experienced to balloon exponentially as soon as the pressure of a wedding date is applied.  Wedding event planning is stressful in and of itself.  The fact that you have to remember cultural rules just adds to the fun.  Here’s a fun one to start off with: Who is going to pay?  In traditional Filipino culture, for example, the groom’s parents pay for the whole shindig.  How’s that going to fly?

3)  Offend people early in the process… not close to the date – What do I mean by this?  Well, obviously I agree that it is best not to offend people at all.  But that is not realistic.  Try to anticipate the sensitive issues and tackle them early on.  I talked to a friend who married a girl from a very different culture.  The two families had dodged some of the big financial conversations for so long that when they became critical right before the wedding the two sides were so angry they could hardly talk to each other.  Don’t procrastinate on conversations just because they are tough!!

4)  Do as much as possible online - My preference is to only have the first save-the-date be on paper and then coordinate the rest of the wedding announcement / logistics online.  We did this and it worked pretty well.  Everyone got a fairly ornate invite which was also magnetic (and we hoped would therefore be stuck to fridges) and then we had everyone register on a site that we paid about $5/month for.  Everyone could register here AND there was a link to registries.  This worked for 95% of guests.  The exceptionally computer illiterate called us and we signed them up ourselves.

5)  Find low hanging fruit – What I mean about this is that there are some easy wins that are easy to get right from the get go.  Does aunty so and so have a huge ego / insatiable appetite for attention?  Tell her immediately that she can own the coordination of the games for the guests between the ceremony and the reception.  (Incidentally, if you opt for a piñata like the one above, pick a plastic bat… kids have a way of getting in range easily (see the above pic) and Jammie has a gruesome story of how an ambulance had to be called at one event she went to.)  This job will give aunty a focus and will feed her ego in a way that will hopefully keep her out of something more critical like speech giving during the reception.

6)  If meeting parents for the first time. – Jammie met my mom for the first time right before the wedding.  They were both nervous about this.  When your parents are thousands of miles away this kind of a scenario is not unusual.  Realize that it WILL be a little awkward and try to make it as smooth as possible by Skyping ahead of time as much as you can.  Go the extra mile in trying to connect with your in-laws.  It is nearly always a great idea.

7)  Pick the right translators – One of my most embarrassing moments was one in which I had to translate a wedding from English to French in real time.  At one point I messed it up so bad that the bride had to intervene and say that I had gotten something wrong.  I wanted to disappear.  Don’t ask me to translate your wedding into French.  It’s best to audition translators ahead of time.  Also, pick translators that will translate into their native tongue.  If, for example they are English but they speak decent Spanish it is fine to ask them to translate Spanish into English.  Don’t have them do the reverse though unless you want some awkward moments.

8)  Use your people right – This one is particularly critical if you or your other half comes from a long-winded culture that is prone to really drawn-out speech making.  If you know that a particular family member (who MUST be given a speaking role in the wedding) is likely to talk for too long, get around it by giving them something like a prayer or a reading.  DO NOT give them an open-ended piece because that will bore and frustrate the crowd and while this may be OK at other occasions, you don’t want that at your wedding.

9)  Stop being so sensitive – Your wedding is your wedding.  It will hopefully only happen once.  The problem with this is that there is so much pressure to get it right that it is easy to get over-sensitive.  It is not uncommon for fights to erupt over foolishness.  Decide ahead of time that, while you can do nothing about how others behave, you can and will control yourself.  Shut off the part of you that is easily offended and hurt by deciding to be Teflon for a while.

10)  Celebrate Chaos – Have some fun with it all.  No matter how well you plan, something will go wrong.  Case in point: the day before my wedding I took my Swedish family to my old neighborhood in Hollywood to grab some frozen yoghurt.  This was definitely NOT the ritzy part of Hollywood and as we were parking a bunch of guys came up to our vehicle asking for money.  This scared certain family members to the point of near hysteria.  I told them to cool it and we drove to a different parking lot instead before grabbing our frozen treats.  Stuff like this WILL happen.  See the humor in it.  And don’t have your wedding in Los Angeles…

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman

Thanks to the help of the truly horrifying iPhone AgingBooth app (and an effect from Instagram), I’ve taken a sneak peak at my future (opposite).  It’s wrinkled.

As much as this is a total gag app, it actually made me think.  Maybe it isn’t too far off.  Maybe that actually is how I will look at 65.

“Seeing” myself at 65 made me think of what I would want other parts of my life to look like.  Here’s a working list:

1)  Jammie and I have two kids: Boy and girl.  Hopefully some grandkids… but that is unlikely given the fact that WE don’t even have kids yet.

2)  Homeless:  We don’t live anywhere full-time.  Instead we have favorite hubs where we kick it.  Here’s a sublist of those places:  London, Los Angeles, Butte County (CA), Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Manila.

3)  We see those closest to us a LOT:  One of my key complaints about life now is that, at best, Jammie and I see those closest to us a few times a year.  In the case of my family, it is like once or twice a year.  That isn’t good enough.  We have GOT to be more mobile.

3)  Jammie and I speak: Mandarin.  (To keep up with the kids who will have had a Mandarin-speaking nanny.)

4)  I’m looking back at a career that: Meant something and helped people.  Internationally.

5)  I’m still blogging for CultureMutt:  And I hope YOU are still reading and commenting:)

6)  I’m not scared of my age:  I work with a woman who volunteers in my office and is one of the sharpest, most elegantly dressed people I know.  Dorothy is 97.  I want to be her.

7)  I’m in marathon runner shape:  I have started running again and my goal is to get in shape for several marathons a year.  And keep it up.

8)  I am volunteering for something that requires inordinate amounts of public speaking:  Maybe it is because I joined Toastmasters (a truly superb, international, Public Speaking society with over a quarter million members worldwide) but I LOVE public speaking and take every opportunity I can get to get better at it.  Volunteer work involving public speaking would be great.

9)  I’m enrolled in a top-notch culinary institute:  I would love to go back to school at 65.  Something practical like chef’s credentials would be ideal.

I am sure I’ll add to the list but this is fine for now.  How would your list look?  Tell me in the comments.

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman

Two More Things…

1) We’ll be looking at the aging process from a multicultural perspective this week so be sure to check back in.

2)  At my last weigh-in, I had lost approx 13 lbs since I started my First Monthly Challenge.  This will be my last week of the juice / smoothie diet so I am looking for a strong finish and will keep you posted.

Have any FOBS in your life?  “FOB” stands for Fresh Off The Boat and basically refers to a very recent immigrant.  Today’s post, comes at the end of a week dealing with friendships so what more fitting a way to finish up than to tackle the topic of FOB friends?  Here’s how you pick one out in a crowd:

1)  They are making a peace sign at the camera in every photo – OK so this definitely holds for Asian FOBS… don’t hate me for pointing it out.  My wife did it as a joke sometimes when we first started dating.  Then she went to work in Korea for 6 months and it is now her permanent pic pose.

2)  They will gladly tell you that you are fat. – Especially FOB parents your parents age have no problem hitting you straight.  For more on FOB parents, click here.

3)  They can be super polite and then super blunt – Typical lines from FOBS:  “Excuse me, Bjorn, but do you mind if I tell you something?  You are such a nice boy and this makes me “embarrass”.  But your hair looks no good.”  WOW.

4)  They seriously think Vicks can fix EVERYTHING – When I lived in the Philippines they had something like Vicks that was believed to have all kinds of powers.  You could use it for any ailment, just rub it on where it hurts… I used it for a stomach ache once when I was 11.  It worked.

5)  They are SUPER cheap in everyday life and then they throw the BIGGEST BIRTHDAY PARTIES you have EVER SEEN – FOBS can be NEXT LEVEL cheap.  Check out the Happy Slip video above of the mom sawing the paper towel roll in half.  This is TYPICAL.  But then you go to a bday bash and they have rented out a hot venue, there is a band, tons of food and the place is packed. HUH??!!

6)  They’ve got plastic on the furniture they bought years ago. – How this is supposed to help their living rooms I DO NOT KNOW but I have seen this quite a bit.  And the plastic is getting ratty…

7)  They are VERY superstitious – My grandma, an otherwise intelligent, grounded woman would swear up and down that there were “little people” that lived in the forest in Sweden.  She would defend this belief to anyone.  I have FOB friends that you would never want to take camping because they could tell you ghost stories that would make you wet yourself.

I know you’ve got your own FOB spotting tips.  Hit me with them in the comments.

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman

your posse?

On Sunday I posted about friends that need dumping.  Although today’s post title suggests yet another demographic to avoid, I want to go one step further and talk about the friends with which we should surround ourselves.  In our quest for savvy, global do-gooding one our biggest priorities has to be finding the right friends.

A good 80% of my job as a professional fundraiser involves networking and relationship building.  I have found that applying lessons of professional networking to my personal friendships pays off. Before you get too worked up, I am not preaching being fake or manipulative.  I am talking about being productive and being intentional.

As lifestyle guru Tim Ferriss says, “surround yourself with smiling, positive people who have absolutely nothing to do with work.”

Why Not to Pick Work People  - Where to find good friends?  For starters, a good general rule is that you should avoid the workplace.  Not that everyone you work with is a complete moron.  But you do need a break from reminders of work… even if they come in the form of cool colleagues.

Easier Said Than Done – The question of how to make good friends gets tougher when it is over-analyzed.  Letting it happen organically is the best way to go.  The catch is that, even if it needs to happen naturally, you DO have to make an almost unnatural effort if you want to connect with the right people.  Average efforts result in average networks.  Chemistry is a mystery but without lots of activity, chemistry won’t have a chance to do its magic.  So make the effort to go to where people are.  Meet, interact, connect over things held in common.  You’ll find some great people.

How to Attract Them – There is something about positive energy that attracts more of the same.  Fun people don’t hang out with downers and vice versa.  If you want smiling, happy friends, then develop a spring in your step.  There is something irresistible about positivity.  Regardless of your culture or nationality, positive energy transcends barriers and multiplies.

The Difference Between Energy and Cheese – There’s a little caveat that I would like to add to my last point, however.  As this is CultureMutt I do want to point out that it is important to study a culture before trying to win friends in it.  As an example, I am going to pick on Americans.  American warmth and “excitement” often looks like unmitigated, goofy cheese when it is taken abroad.  Tone it right down.  Be yourself minus a few notches.  A little homework on how to convey your energy goes a long way.

How do you attract the people that you want in your inner circle?  Let me know in the comments….

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman

It’s not you it is them.  Stop making excuses for the following sorts of “friends” and get to dumping them:

1)  The closet bigot:  Dumping someone is never easy but, by all means, start with the closet bigot.  There are too many of them still around.  They poison their conversations with barely closeted intolerance and animosity.  Outright hate is no longer fashionable but beware of the passive aggressive racial or cultural jabs and call people on them.

2)  The chronic critic:  Getting over getting dumped by “friends” that are chronic critics might be easier than dumping them.  So object to their constant negativity.  If they stop their negativity, then great.  If not, then let them dump you for someone else that will listen to their crap.  It’s OK.

3)  The hopeless gossip:  Relationships end.  It’s a fact of life.  Let your relationship with the hopeless gossip end.  Pull that plug.  Read “How to get over a breakup” posts if you need to but realize that the hopeless gossip will talk about you the second you turn your back.  You’ll get over this type quick. 

4)  The old school snob:  This is CultureMutt so you were right to expect a cultural spin on this friend dumping post.  The “old school snob” for the purposes of this post, is the kind that hides their intolerance of other cultures and people behind a veneer of “concern for society” and “patriotism”.  There is nothing responsible or patriotic about racism or intolerance.  Dump him.

5)  The snooty capitalist:  The opposite of savvy, global do-gooding is snooty hoarding.  If you are around people that never express an interest or any concern for those less fortunate, you know you have a problem.  Don’t let them infect you with their talk of “lazy poor people” or “every man for himself”.  There is ALWAYS place for compassion and smart policy. 

Does all this sound a little harsh?  Maybe it is.  Certainly there is room for commonsense and compassion – even for offenders in all the above categories.  Patience and concerned conversation have a place and if someone is open to some quality introspection, give them the benefit of the doubt.  But rest assured that if you surround yourself with determined degenerates, you too will become one.

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman

This past Saturday, my wife, Jammie and I were driving to Redding, a little town north of where we live in Northern California. We were listening to a radio station that is popular locally and on came a “thought of the day” type of segment.  The host said that as a newly wed she had despaired because she didn’t feel she could be the perfect wife.  She had finally gone to her husband and asked him to list the top three things that she should do to be a good wife.  I was shocked at how old school the list sounded.  It was something like:

1)  Be nice

2)  Look presentable

3)  Keep the house tidy

It sounded like the kind of checklist that the post war housewife obsessed over in those vintage ads for extra-efficient vacuum cleaners… “anything to have the house ready for my hubby when he comes home!!”  But there was not a hint of irony in this little radio segment. If anything, the wife presenter agreed to the list and pledged her level best to making it happen.  I couldn’t believe it!

“That couple is straight out of the ’50s!” I said to Jammie.  She agreed.  We started dissecting the man’s list for his wife.  We live in a rural and very Evangelical corner of California with fairly traditional values so, as shocking as the list of requests was from an urban gender politics standpoint, it made sense given our cultural context.  THEN, Jammie turned to me and said, “You know his list for her is basically my list for you!”

I wasn’t sure how to react.  I come from Sweden, a bastion of trendy gender equality and Jammie from a pretty progressive pocket of Southern California.  In these parts of the world the tables have turned.  Whereas men should never articulate any of the above demands if they value their own lives, increasingly, women can.  Jammie looked over at me and said in no uncertain terms, “I am a 1950s husband.”

And so it is.  In future posts, look for my favorite recipes, home ec tips and other gems of savvy, domestic housekeeping.

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman

Photo Courtesy of Peniel Eya

One of the friends that I am in touch with from childhood is Peniel Eya, a Cameroonian that I met when we were both about seven, growing up in a rural corner of the Philippines, about an hour from Manila.  In the picture opposite, we respectively make up the back left and right.  We were as close as early grade schoolers could get and shared a lot of experiences in school, sports and overall rabble rousing. As Peniel was one of my first close friends I remember being extra bummed when his family left the Philippines after a few years to go back to Cameroon.  Friendship, even back then, was a huge deal to me.

International Posse

I’ve made a lot of other close friends in the years since but I am really glad that Peniel and I are still in touch (and that he posts good pics on Facebook so I can illustrate my posts:)).  Being able to look back at the 20+ years that we have been friends I like to reflect on how friends impact me.  Peniel gave me insight into his Cameroonian/Francaphone culture and I learned a lot from this exposure.  Other closest friends were Filipino, Korean, Ghanian and Singaporian.  Although this kind of international exposure didn’t exactly solidify anything about my Swedish identity, I feel like it gave me a good start in becoming more of a world citizen.

Your Influencers

Several months ago I wrote a post titled Choose Your Friends Carefully… Building Your International Think Tank.  In it I made a case for having a strong accountability group of positive friends who push you towards becoming a better person.  I want to develop on that.  I really believe that, whether or not it is immediately obvious, we more often than not end up being the average of the handful of people that we hang around the most.  I mean this in the broader sense of environment – both online and day-to-day in-person interaction. Because this is reality, it makes a lot of sense to be proactive about the kinds of friendships you create.

Choose Friends that are Different

Does your network bring out the best in you?  Do your friends make you a generous world citizen?  Do they exert positive peer pressure on you?  Do they make you want to give of yourself more, to be more open-minded?  I have often found that developing friendships with people from vastly different backgrounds from me can really help me grow.  For example, moving up to to Northern California I was initially very nervous about the transition from ultra urban LA living and the accompanying lifestyle and political norms, to the exact opposite up north. For non-Californian CultureMutt readers, Northern and Southern California may as well be two different states.  There is no love lost between the two parts of the state.  ”You’ll stick out like a sore thumb”, I was warned as I announced I was leaving LA for a little Norcal mountain town.  And I did.  But more than three years later I am really grateful for my friends up here that have helped me grow.

The Challenge

As we start another week, let’s pause and be grateful for the friendships we do have.  Let’s also give some thought to how we can grow our circles to become more open-minded, better rounded and more generous.

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman

Could the principles of this post apply to any romantic relationship?  Of course.  But I am especially writing it for my friends in international dating relationships.  If you are dating someone of a different nationality or a different culture there are some things that are sure-fire fight starters.  I’m going to outline four of the biggies.  They aren’t complicated or that hard to avoid necessarily but they DO make a difference and if you indulge in them too much you can expect a lot of drama and some lonely nights at the every least.  The upside is that, if you avoid these international relationship faux pas, you can navigate some exceptionally delicate territory and enjoy the diversity and fun that can especially be found in love of the borderless variety…

Think that just because your beau/belle jokes about her culture, you can too

Just like with jokes about family members, you have to leave this kind of humor to “insiders”.  If your boyfriend jokes about his mom’s quirky conversational style for example, common sense dictates that while he can do that because he is her son, you should shut your mouth the moment you are tempted to fire off some cracks about the woman.  You aren’t a bloodline family member and thus you don’t have the right to comment.  That’s exactly how it works with cultures and countries.   She may think that her exaggerated imitation of her country peoples’ handling of the English Language is hilarious but beware of coming up with your own version.  This may sound like common sense but in the moment, when everyone is laughing with your hilarious girlfriend, it may be tempting to strut your stuff with a few of your own choice lines at the family New Year’s get together.  DON’T.

Get too complacent about leaving all the “cultural” stuff to your significant other

This one is also tempting.  Your boyfriend’s culture has so many complicated rules and nuances that you decide to leave all that complicated “cultural stuff” to him.  Why learn all the rules when you can just copy him, right?  WRONG.  Family members (ESPECIALLY those in the 55+ age category) are great at sniffing out this kind of complacency.  They can tell if you are bluffing.  They know if you haven’t done your homework.  They know what you think of their culture and are better judges than you of your own efforts to discover their culture.  If you slack off, be prepared for a very unimpressed reception at family gatherings.  You will quickly be relegated to the “girl he’s seeing now” category and will have to work twice as hard to win their approval.

A quick word about the positive flip side:  If you make an effort to learn some customs and some of the native tongue they will think you are ADORABLE.  Instead of being obstacles family members will often fall over themselves advocating for you.  All kinds of goodwill is generated by a little effort.  So be smart.

Be a cultural crusader

There is something weird about culture, language and tradition.  It is so close to our hearts and our natural rhythms that we often overreact to the slightest disruptions.  Is your Brazilian girlfriend getting a little too boisterous around your elderly anglo relatives?  Has your Asian boyfriend said something about “giving kids a good spanking” as your over-sensitive Scandinavian family collectively prays that you will never have children?  Has your All-American girlfriend just turned up in jeggings to your ultra-conservative church service?  Stuff like this can flip the switch and, under enough pressure, very regrettable things can be said.  You may be tempted to launch into a hysterical lecture:  “What were you thinking?  Are you really that clueless?  How do you EVER expect to be accepted if you behave like a total moron?!”

Patience goes a long way in times like these.  Decide AHEAD of time that when these things happen (because they for sure will), you will calmly work to resolve the situation.  Often some humor and and subtle maneuvering defuses the tension.  Explain that your anglo grandparents only understand “library voices”, that talk of spanking kids gives Swedes ulcers or that, it’s your fault for not prepping her and that its OK to change and come a little late to church today instead of having to endure angry looks from elderly parishioners whose pacemakers have been sent into overdrive by your girl’s wardrobe.

Get a big head about your progress

As soon as you make a little progress it is easy to pat yourself on the back.  Beware of doing this to excess.  There’s a fine balance between gaining the respect of your girlfriend’s fellow nationals by being culturally sensitive and acting like the know-it-all.  Everyone likes someone that shows some effort but you can definitely go too far.  I think of this German guy that I once heard speak to a large crowd.  He had married a West Indian girl and somehow now felt that he was a black preacher.   MAN it backfired.  Don’t get me wrong.  People enjoyed it.  But for all the wrong reasons.  Something about Wolfgang trying to be the Jamaican Jesse Jackson had everyone smiling a little too broadly.

Summing it up

Everyone screws up while dating.  There’s no avoiding it.  ESPECIALLY not when different cultures are a factor.  But being self-aware and cognizant of some of the more common traps gives us a good head start.  Good luck everyone.

LEAVE A COMMENT

LIKE CULTUREMUTT ON FACEBOOK

Bjorn Karlman