Marriage Has Made Me Realise How Strange British People Are

I spent most of my life assuming British behaviour was reasonably normal.

Then I married Arrah.

She's Filipina, I'm British, and somewhere in the process of combining two cultures into one marriage I've discovered that quite a lot of the things I considered perfectly ordinary are, apparently, not.

This works both ways, of course. There are plenty of Filipino customs and expectations that took me some time to understand. But it's much more entertaining to discover that the strange foreign culture you've been observing your entire life is actually your own.

British people, it turns out, are weird.

We just have excellent branding.

"You alright?"

This is not a medical enquiry.

Every British person knows this.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, you?"

"Yeah."

At no point during this exchange is either participant expected to provide an accurate assessment of their wellbeing.

If you respond with details, you've misunderstood the question.

Explaining this to somebody from another culture makes you realise how ridiculous it is. We've taken what appears to be an expression of concern and turned it into a noise we make when encountering another human being.

British English is full of this.

"Not bad" can mean good.

"Quite good" can mean disappointing.

"That's interesting" can mean almost anything, but there's a reasonable chance you should be worried.

And "I'll have a think about it" frequently means that whatever you've suggested is never going to happen.

Arrah has had to learn not just English, but the peculiar layer of indirect communication we've built on top of it.

I, meanwhile, have had to realise that sometimes people simply say what they mean.

Frankly, it's unsettling.

Family Means Something Slightly Different

One of the more substantial differences I've encountered is the role of family.

Britain isn't a country without strong families, obviously. But we tend to have fairly defined boundaries around the immediate family unit.

Filipino family life can feel much broader.

The distinction between immediate family, extended family and people who seem to have become family somewhere along the way isn't always as important.

Initially, that can take some adjustment.

But I've grown to appreciate it.

There's something appealing about the assumption that life is something you participate in together. Celebrations become larger. Food becomes communal. People remain involved in one another's lives.

It isn't inherently better than the British way. There are advantages to independence and boundaries too.

But being exposed to another way of doing things forces you to examine which parts of your own culture you've actively chosen and which you've simply inherited.

That's probably been one of the most interesting things about being in a cross-cultural marriage.

Neither of us arrived with a blank sheet of paper.

We both brought an entire culture into the relationship.

We Don't Always Know Which Differences Are Cultural

There's a danger in talking about cross-cultural relationships that every disagreement suddenly becomes anthropology.

Arrah does something one way.

I do it another.

Clearly, this must reveal something profound about the differences between British and Filipino society.

Or perhaps she's just Arrah and I'm just me.

That's an important distinction.

We're two people who happen to have grown up thousands of miles apart. Culture influences us, but so do our families, personalities, experiences and preferences.

Not every difference needs a flag attached to it.

Sometimes your wife disagrees with you because you're wrong.

This has apparently been known to happen.

Food Is Never Just Food

Food is one of the places where culture becomes particularly visible because it's woven into everyday life.

What you eat, when you eat it, how much you prepare and who you expect to share it with all carry assumptions you rarely notice until you live with somebody whose assumptions are different.

Food can be comfort, hospitality, celebration and connection.

It can also lead to two people staring into a cupboard with completely different definitions of what constitutes a meal.

Neither of us had to abandon the food we grew up with.

Instead, our home has gradually accumulated both.

That's probably a reasonable metaphor for the marriage as a whole, although I'm reluctant to stretch it too far because this is how articles end up describing relationships as curries.

You Start Seeing Your Own Culture From the Outside

This is the part I've found most interesting.

Living with somebody from another culture gives you an observer inside your own.

Things you've never questioned suddenly require explanation.

Why do British people apologise when somebody else bumps into them?

Why are we so uncomfortable discussing money?

Why can offering somebody a cup of tea apparently resolve situations that have nothing whatsoever to do with tea?

And why do we insist we're fine when we're very clearly not?

I don't always have a good answer.

Sometimes the answer is history or social convention.

Sometimes it's class.

Sometimes it's just what my family did.

And occasionally the only available explanation is, "That's just what we do."

Once you've had to say that aloud a few times, you start questioning things.

We're Building Our Own Version

I don't think the interesting part of a cross-cultural marriage is deciding which culture wins.

Ours isn't British with some Filipino bits added to it, nor is it Filipino life transplanted to Britain.

It's becoming its own thing.

Some traditions stay.

Others change.

New ones appear without either of us deliberately creating them.

And I suspect that will become even more apparent as our family grows, because we'll have decisions to make about which parts of both cultures we want to pass on.

That's something I value enormously.

Being married to Arrah hasn't just taught me more about Filipino culture.

It's made me notice my own.

After nearly four decades of being British, I've finally started reading the documentation.

As an engineer, I probably should have done that first.