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INTERNATIONAL LOVE: choices and consequences

 

*commentary*              
                      International LOVE: choices and consequences.

       

       When my older sister got out of college, she went to Germany to visit a girlfriend who was an exchange student here in our high school.  Enamored with European differences, my sister never returned home. She eventually moved to Sweden, and for fifty years only returned to our family in the USA for visits. She was two years older than me, and my best friend growing up. She was attractive, popular and could make friends with everyone. I was shy, overprotected and a nerd. Through the years and zillions of our heart to heart talks, on the back steps, in the car, and while walking along quiet streets, she taught me how to dance, how to dress and how to ask for a date. She always seemed to land on her feet and to live an adventurous life. I envied her for moving to Europe, though because five thousand miles separating us, I only heard about the thrills and excitement. It wasn't until years later that I began to realize the price in emotional and intellectual stress she paid trying to start a new life in a foreign country alone. The loneliness, the long language learning curve, and the pressures of being an "outsider," forever different, did not initially reveal themselves to me, due to the geographical distance between us. 
       Several years later, I attempted to copy her adventure, first in England, then France and Sweden. I was not running away from anything, but also didn't have a clear goal to run to. Even back in the '70's it was difficult to find work in Europe, not being a citizen there. Menial jobs paid little and risked deportation. With no foreign language skill, my communication as it was, was minimal and reduced to sign language, paper notes and smiles. My college education was worthless in Europe. Money ran out and I returned home to the USA to find work and direction. Several trips later I began to see this downward spiral repeating itself. I soon realized that it was so much easier to earn money and gain career advancement in my home country. Earn money in America and spend it in Europe. That became my pattern since. I still admire my sister's sense of adventure, determination and pure hard work. 
       As I look back at our lives now, more than fifty years later, I realize that we were not prepared for the price we would pay in stress on family and self by falling in love and moving to a new country. Trying to communicate with loved ones is difficult in the best of situations; moving halfway around the world increases the difficulty. Our lives on different continents moved at different paces under different influences. When so far away it is difficult to read between the lines, and we often missed real understanding of important issues. We did not hear the struggles and pain.
       My sister and I eventually formed new families on our own, children born... but seldom seen. Sicknesses and divorces occurred leaving us struggling for direction and feeling unsupported by the other. The best-laid plans of trips and family reunions were rare due to the expense and interruptions by the pressures of daily life. When parents got sick and old it was difficult to be supportive of them from far away and when they passed, mourning alone was incomplete.
       While the lure of romances in exotic places can seem worth pursuing in our innocence of youth, marriage in the best of situations has a 50% failure rate. Add cultural, language and social differences and the odds of success in family-building are reduced even further. Who gives up the most, the native spouse or the foreigner? How do you decide which country to live in. What about the usefulness of our education back home if it isn't transferable? While it was not an issue in our family, racial differences when moving to new societies can add increased stresses to a relationship.
       All relationships are ideally a process of give and take. But the balance is more difficult when blending international love. Two people, two cultures struggling to bond, but often pulled apart by separate upbringings and roots. Usually, immediate location determines dominance resulting in an uneven balance where one spouse sacrifices more than the other. Do you stay in the husband's homeland and language, or the wife's. Who gives up their heritage and education that is less valuable in the new location? What if that doesn't work? Will the dominant spouse be willing to move to the other's culture with required language and employment changes? Highly educated and intelligent new immigrants are reduced to childlike dependency, sometimes for years, until they can completely relearn their new requirements in their new country.
       My sister once complained:  "I've lived in Sweden for 50 years, look like a Swede and speak the language fluently, yet everywhere I go I am still known as the American. I want to be part of something, not always on the outside looking in."
       The irony is that as we grow up, before we are fully mature, we often make life-changing decisions that were never planned. The spirit of adventure is encouraged when we are young but can lead to unforeseen consequences later on in life. I still dream of world travel and living elsewhere, but wonder if I would really be willing to sacrifice my family and roots back home.
       Of course, we can say that things have changed, better transportation, cheap cell phones, Skype, and email. However, the cultural stresses, loneliness, and distance from family roots remains the same. 
       The romantic in me recognizes that for most of us, the emotions of our heart rule over the intelligence of our heads. We usually do what we want rather than what we should. The reckless part of me would say go for it... follow your heart, make mistakes, fall down, learn from it and get up and try again. For this is the usual way we live.
       I am not saying that love in a foreign country isn't possible. It is more complicated Many happy couples have made the blending adjustments required. I think few realized in the beginning the difficulty and personal costs of that journey over their life time.     t.d. /                                                                    8102