Relationship Realities
Overcoming cultural differences in interracial relationships
Story by Maddy Redman
Josh Lease and Mae Thungc have been in a committed relationship for nearly two years. Lease graduated from Western in 2016 and now works for Christ the King, a local church in Bellingham, Washington. Thungc is currently in the MBA program at Western and will graduate in August 2020. The couple met through mutual friends and remained close friends for about 3 years until the summer of 2018 when they worked together at Ray of Hope camp. They ended up spending a lot of time together and Lease confessed his feelings for Thungc. She took a couple of months before she reciprocated those feelings.
Thungc is Asian-American, Mien specifically and Lease is white. According to The Peoples of the World Foundation, the Mien minority tribe is also known as “Yao” and they became one of the largest ethnic groups in Asia. Thungc sometimes fears that her culture will be lost in pursuing an interracial relationship. In the early stages of their relationship, she feared that Lease wasn’t interested in her culture because he didn’t ask much about it, but through further communication, they realized he just didn’t know what questions to ask. “Another fear I typically have in the back of my head is if we were to get married and have kids, our kids would marry other people, and I fear my culture would be lost,” Thungc said.
For couples with different cultural backgrounds, setting aside your own pride for your partner can be especially difficult when navigating how your cultures can come together seamlessly. An interview with Anita Chipala from the Chicago Tribune revealed common challenges interracial couples face. Chipala, a relationship therapist based in Chicago, said she’s counseled couples who come from different cultural backgrounds as well as couples with very similar backgrounds. “The biggest challenge I see in couples is their inability to accept, honor and respect what is important to their spouse,” Chlipala said in the Chicago Tribune article, “Love Essentially: Do cultural differences affect the odds of a marriage lasting?”
Baozhen Luo, a sociology professor at Western, wrote her master’s thesis on the topic of dating. A small portion of her thesis touches on interracial dating. Luo interviewed a Chinese woman named Jenny. Jenny told Luo that she had recently had a big fight with her mother because she was dating a second-generation Korean man rather than a Chinese person. “Although most of the parents claimed that they were okay with interracial dating, most of the female respondents reported that their parents always indirectly implied that they would like them to date someone who had a Chinese background or more specifically, a Taiwanese or Mainland Chinese background,” Luo said in her thesis. Not every interracial couple struggles with their parents’ acceptance of their partner but, from Luo’s research, it can be a concern.
Thungc made it clear the positives overshadow the hardships that come with being in an interracial relationship. Dating Lease has made her more motivated to dive into her culture and learn about her background in order to preserve it. She’s even learning more about the language. “Josh is super embracing of my culture, especially going back to my parents’ house and just being super excited to eat the food that my parents give him. We eat a lot of spicy food and he’s been doing really good with that,” Thungc said.
Thungc explained how growing up in a conservative, passive, non-confrontational household has shaped the way she functions and communicates in a relationship. Pride plays a role in her communication style with Lease. At the beginning of their relationship if they had an argument or disagreement, her natural response was to shut down. “I personally do not like being vulnerable because it just feels like you’re giving up the power that you do have. In general people like having the power or being in control and knowing they’re safe,” Thungc said.
“It has definitely been difficult to try to explain to someone why being black has not been easy, even though I was raised in a white community.”
Pride has positively impacted Taryn Harris and Tyler Legault’s relationship. The couple pride themselves in striving to work on their relationship and continue learning more about each other, even after dating for six and a half years. “We’ve both put in a lot of emotional work to better ourselves and have continued to push each other to become the people we want to be,” Harris said. “I think I pride myself on where our relationship has gone and where it continues to go because we work so hard on our relationship continually.”
Harris was raised in an interracial family with black and white parents, and Legault is white. Harris said she never really thought about her and Legault being an interracial couple until he moved to Bellingham. Harris has noticed in the past year that being an interracial couple has really affected their relationship, especially with the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement, but she feels it’s been for the better.
Although Harris and Legault both grew up in white communities and attended the same high school, they still have different social experiences. “It has definitely been difficult to try to explain to someone why being black has not been easy, even though I was raised in a white community,” Harris said. “Part of the relationship work that sometimes feels the hardest is reminding Tyler that the way that he acts and responds, specifically in situations of tension over skin color, is a representation of how he loves people ‘like me.’” They’ve had to learn from each other and sometimes that can take setting aside your pride and letting yourself be humbled to honor your partner.
Lease admitted he didn’t think being an interracial couple would affect their relationship before he started dating Thungc. “I don’t think I recognized how much culture clash occurs and I think that ties into pride,” Lease said. He views pride as an opportunity to be selfless for the sake of your partner.
Pride is deeply rooted in the human experience. It’s something everyone is exposed to in one way or another. Pride allows us to be proud of our accomplishments and creations, but it can also get in the way of being vulnerable and building relationships. If someone sees what we’re really like, it takes away our ability to control. It’s impossible to dictate how someone else will react to you. Inviting someone else into the messy parts of your life is a scary thing to do but necessary for close relationships.