Why do our different cultures keep turning into fights?

Why does something so small feel like an insult?

Each of you reads the other through a rulebook absorbed in childhood, and the interpretation happens quicker than any thought. Your partner falls silent halfway through a disagreement. Hurt comes first, then heat rising in your chest and the impulse to say something sharper, and only after that the thought: they have shut me out. In your childhood home, silence meant exactly that. In theirs it meant someone needed quiet to work out what they felt. One of you reached out, the other paused, and both of you had already decided what the pause meant.

What stings most is that you chose this. Their calm, the way nobody in their family shouts or gushes, felt like rest when you first met. At the kitchen table it now feels like distance. So you catch yourself wanting them warmer, the way the people you left were warm, even though their steadiness is exactly what set them apart.

Which differences cause the real trouble?

Seldom the food or the festivals, and almost always the unwritten rules about punctuality, parents, quarrels and money.

• Time. What counts as late, how far ahead you invite people, and whether a plan is a promise or a rough idea.
• Family. How often you see them, who hears news first, and whether a parent is sharing an opinion or giving an order.
• Conflict. Whether raised voices are normal or alarming, and whether going quiet means thinking or punishing.
• Money. What belongs to whom, what is pooled, and what silently counts as owing someone.

Nobody ever agreed these rules. You soaked them up as children, which is why a broken one feels like a slight rather than a small nuisance, and why the argument that follows ends up being about respect.

How do we tell culture from character?

Culture can explain the shape of a habit, but it cannot explain why your partner refuses to look at that habit with you. Describing the habit aloud usually shows you which it is. A habit someone has simply never questioned can bear being named: they are surprised, perhaps intrigued, and willing to explore it. Something they are guarding gets defended, and the topic shuts. If their siblings and friends all do the same without a second thought, you are probably looking at a norm, not something aimed at you.

Then comes the line that ends every conversation: that is just how people are where I come from. It turns up once things get uncomfortable, and either of you can use it, to close the subject or to explain away something that hurt. A nationality is a thin explanation for why one person stops talking to another. I would keep the question open rather than answer it too quickly, because the same behaviour can be a cultural habit one month and a way of holding you at arm’s length the next.

Why does one of us carry more of the weight?

The partner who left home pays with language, career and friendships, while the partner who stayed usually keeps all three.

• Language. Every appointment, every joke and every row happens in one partner’s second language.
• Career. Work often restarts a step or two below where it was, among employers who do not recognise the old achievements.
• Friendship. One of you still has childhood friends nearby, and the other starts from zero somewhere friendships take years.

This imbalance is built into the situation and is nobody’s fault, which is exactly why it stays unspoken. Left unspoken, it builds up: resentment in one of you, confusion in the other. Being counted is hard in itself, because needing care can feel worse than being exhausted, so the partner who moved tends to downplay the cost while still paying it. Name it anyway, together, and then deliberately give something back: an evening in the other language, a trip to the other country, a weekend with the other family. I offer that from clinical experience, not from a study.

What happens when people treat us as unusual?

Being treated as a curiosity teaches couples to keep their relationship and their cultures in separate compartments, and the relationship pays for that split. It begins with small things. Being asked yet again where you are really from. A relative addressing you while your partner stands right there. People assuming you must be the exotic one in your own marriage. The feeling is tiredness more than anger, and tiredness is easy to leave unsaid, so you become one couple at home and a subtly altered one when your parents are around.

Research on couples who feel marginalised in this way suggests they tend to keep their identity as a couple apart from their cultural identity, or feel they must pick one, and that this goes with both partners rating the relationship less well¹. Those are associations, so they cannot show what causes what. Even so, the partner who never gets questioned loses out too, as much as the one who is always asked, and tends to be the last to notice.

How do we make a cross cultural relationship work?

Stop debating the behaviour and start naming the rule underneath it, one rule at a time.

• Name your own rule first. “Where I grew up, you always call before visiting.” Each of you says yours, and nobody argues for it yet.
• Choose the rule for your own home. Not a grand treaty, just a decision about this one, made somewhere you will both remember it.
• Give something back to the partner who moved. Their language, their cooking, their people. A suggestion for each week, not a duty.
• Agree between you before either family hears. Then you tell them as a pair.
• Revisit a rule when life changes. A baby, a new job or an ill parent tends to reset most of them.

Nothing here requires either of you to give way more than you already do. A review of research on intercultural couples found that open communication and flexibility were the strategies they leaned on most, and that differences in language could make feelings harder to share². Most of those studies were qualitative, so I hold them as a description of what couples report rather than a recipe. Giving way without being understood tends to build a silent ledger rather than any real change.

These steps will not reach the problem if one of you will not say what their rule is, or quietly tracks whether the other is complying. When the same disagreement has survived everything you have both tried, working on it together with a therapist usually helps more. Emotion-Focused Therapy for couples, as Leslie Greenberg developed it, is designed for exactly this: getting beneath what each of you does in the moment you feel out of reach. What often remains open is how much of the distance is about culture and how much is a far older dread of letting someone see you fully.

Questions people ask

Should we come together, or should one of us start alone?

Either can work, and the better choice depends on whether the trouble sits between you or mainly inside one of you. If the same row keeps repeating, start together; if you want to understand what the move has cost you, start alone.

Can we do couples therapy by video from different countries?

Yes, sessions are by video, so you can join from the same room or from two places. Many couples living apart for a while still find it useful to keep the work going.

Can a therapist who shares neither of our backgrounds understand us?

The real test is whether your difference is treated as something to understand rather than as the answer to everything. Ask in a first call how they work with couples from two cultures, and listen for a considered reply.

Does it work if English is not my first language?

Yes, and it helps to say so early, because a second language can slow you down and flatten what you feel. I keep the pace gentle and check what a word means to you rather than assuming.

What if my partner thinks therapy is only for couples in crisis?

Invite them to a single conversation with one question they want answered, rather than a whole course. A free 30-minute call asks little of them, and the next step stays their choice.

When your different backgrounds keep straining the relationship, you can bring that to online couples therapy, with both of you joining by video.

Sources

1. Yampolsky, West, Zhou, Muise and Lalonde. Divided together: how marginalization of intercultural relationships is associated with identity integration and relationship quality. Two studies, one including both partners of couples. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2021.
2. Yurtaeva and Charura. Comprehensive scoping review of research on intercultural love and romantic relationships. Review of 46 studies. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 2024.

How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.