Remaining resilient in romantic relationships: How to balance culture and commitment for Asian-Americans
Contents
Why is finding love so hard? Romantic relationships through a culturally-responsive lens
Young love: when dating is often discouraged
Staying positive while Intentionally dating as an Asian American
Learning how to love yourself and your partner in a committed relationship
Tying the knot while loosening your grip for the long-run (e.g. marriage, domestic partnership)
Facing break-ups
When dating isn’t a priority
The effects of dating as a minority
Three Support Options for Asian-American relationships
Why is finding love so hard? Romantic relationships through a culturally-responsive lens
Humans are social creatures. We are wired to crave connection based on biology and the neuroscience of our brains.
For those of us lucky enough to find romantic partners with ease, we celebrate their good fortune! Sometimes people are simply dealt a great hand in life. But oftentimes the journey to finding love is full of twists and turns. Ironically, trying to find love can make us feel more lonely.
We seek chemistry, compatibility, commitment…. and when we can’t find it, we can feel worse about ourselves.
It’s common for intrusive thoughts to creep into your brain, like “am I not good enough? Am I unlovable? Is something wrong with me?
Romantic relationships are complex, and can be influenced by various factors including cultural background. For Asian Americans, navigating the world of dating and relationships can present unique challenges that are rooted in cultural expectations, familial dynamics, and the intersection of multiple identities. When these cultural values and practices are placed in the broader American socio-cultural landscape, we begin to see a special set of experiences that are worth acknowledging in a tailored way.
Understanding the intersectional lens through which you view and experience romantic relationships is crucial to contextualizing what you’re going through and the distinct challenges you’re facing.Plus, each phase of finding a romantic connection and love brings its own challenges. In this article, we explore the impact of cultural influences on dating, relationships, and the challenges that arise from trying to balance different cultural identities and expectations.
Young love: when dating is often discouraged
It’s already hard enough to be a teenager and figure out one’s own identity. On top of that, if you were raised in an Asian household, you may have heard the “no dating until college” mantra. This influences your views on:
What risks are worth taking
What love looks like
When, where and how we should flirt (if we should even flirt at all!)
How self-discovery unfolds
And a whole host of other ideas and concepts!
As we grow up, we learn to separate our distinct identity from that of our caregivers. This process may be altered or delayed if caregivers actively make key decisions on behalf of children without their personalized input or consideration to socio-emotional needs.
A research study with Filipino American and Korean American youth showed that the cultural emphasis on collectivism, interdependency, obligation to elders and duty to the family could contribute to a style of “disempowering parenting.” This type of parenting used strict tactics to make decisions framed around personal sacrifice and parental authority, which led adolescents to experience a “lack of self-agency, fractured identity, and culturally disjointed mental health issues.”
Therefore, one of the first challenges that many Asian Americans face in their romantic lives is navigating the timeline for dating laid out by their parents’ cultural expectations.
In many Asian cultures, dating is not encouraged during high school or even early college years, as academic achievement and personal development are prioritized, instead. This can create a sense of alienation for you as an Asian American teenager, if you see your peers dating and exploring romantic relationships while you’re expected to focus solely on your studies.
You may feel guilty if you have a crush. You could end up feeling left out or different, feeling judged or misunderstood by your peers who tease you about not having a girlfriend or boyfriend. You might feel embarassed about not having dates to school events, or even end up boycotting social functions entirely.
What happens when all of this is bottled up without us realizing it? This could result in feelings of inadequacy or prompt rebellious behavior to assert your independence. At the end of the day, you’re likely to experience an internal conflict between your own desires, the expectations of your peers, and those of your family/culture. When you move out of the household, these tensions may come more to the forefront and begin to date intentionally.
Staying Positive while Intentionally Dating as an Asian American
Once you do find yourself intentionally wanting to date, perhaps even sanctioned by your parents, you might feel like you’ve been dropped in the deep end of an ocean others have been swimming in for a while. You could feel like you’re behind your peers, starting from scratch. Cue the imposter syndrome!
Adding to this pressure is the naturally difficult landscape of modern dating. 30% of adults in the US say they have used a dating website or app, yet dating apps have been proven to increase burnout. According to the Pew Research Center, approximately 70% of online daters say it’s very common for people to lie on their profile to appear more desirable, and more users said the apps left them feeling more frustrated (45%) than hopeful (28%).
If you come from a background with little experience of advocating for yourself and communicating boundaries, you could feel this is something you learn through baptism by fire. How do you take photos which make you feel attractive? What do you say to have cute banter with someone? But you will find your feet and learn to know what you want and need, and how to communicate this effectively with the people you are dating.
And while your family may encourage looking for a partner as you get older, they may not bring the same guidance and openness to the subject as the parents of your peers. They want you to find someone and get married, yes, but they perhaps don’t have the habit of sitting you down to share wisdom, advice, or their own experience to act as a blueprint. If you feel a little disoriented by the swing from no dating at all to the sudden pressure from your family to find “the one”, you’re not alone.
Try to remember that you can take your time, and dating can be fun and playful. You are the star of the show! When you feel frustrated, think about what you’ve discovered either about yourself or what you’re looking for. If you don’t feel like someone is a good match, it doesn’t need to reflect badly on you or your sense of self-worth. Invest in bringing the best version of you to life.
Learning How to Love Yourself and Your Partner In a Committed Relationship
When you find yourself in a relationship, you will likely find it a further opportunity to learn more about yourself and how your culture influences your interactions with others. As you learn to be in partnership with another individual, differences in communication styles, conflict resolution strategies, and family dynamics can become more pronounced. These nuances can be enhanced if you’re in an interracial relationship.
For example, a romantic relationship can highlight your own communication tendencies, as well as what you expect of others. Having grown up in an Asian American household, confrontation was probably discouraged, and you might have developed a more passive approach to handling conflict. This could cause friction if your partner comes from a background that values open and direct communication. Perhaps they feel you’re avoiding the problem or not wanting to work on things with them, while you feel misunderstood and/or “attacked” when they express themselves.
At first, it can be easy to think there’s a fundamental difference between you two, like maybe you just don’t “get” each other, but framing these interactions with their cultural context and sharing this with your partner can, in fact, help you move towards a more holistic understanding of one another that facilitates smoother communication and a stronger bond.
In addition to behavioral differences, the impact of any concrete cultural differences may begin to reveal itself. Whether your partner is white, mixed, or even also Asian but from a different part of the continent, you’ll probably notice that there’s an interplay between the traditions and expectations passed down to you by each of your families. Depending on your partner’s religion and ethnicity, perhaps their family doesn't want you sharing a bed or even a room on family trips. In tougher cases, maybe they don’t even approve of you due to cultural differences.
From the big to the small, you will find your culture can mold your relationship, and the two of you together can choose to actively make sure it’s for the better. You can both learn how to each protect your own buttons and set boundaries in a compassionate way that respects each others’ limits.
Tying the Knot while Loosening Your Grip for the Long-Run (e.g. marriage, domestic partnership)
Once you commit to a partner for life, the challenges don’t necessarily disappear. The difficulties you face may transform as you navigate bigger life milestones together and officially become a part of one another’s families.
Planning a wedding, for example, can be an opportunity to delineate your own personal agency and set boundaries with your family. Asian cultures often have a playbook per se of what a wedding should be and look like – what your budget should be, who you should invite, how long it should last, how the ceremony will go etc. However, this may not be what you or your partner want. Maybe you want to blend your two cultures together, maybe you want a small civil wedding, or maybe you do want to go the traditional route, but want to make decisions for yourself rather than having your parents as involved as they’d like to be. Whatever your choice may be, this is a chance to set the tone for your relationship with your parents as you enter a marriage, making it clear that you still value their insight, yet would like to balance it with your own independence.
As you move into your years together with your partner, you’ll find that in many Asian cultures, family plays a central role in our lives, and this extends into your life together as a couple. You may face pressure from your family to conform to certain traditional values, like prioritizing the family unit, maintaining financial stability, and adhering to cultural practices – some of which may be foreign or frustrating to your partner.
For instance, you may feel an obligation to care for aging parents, which can impact financial decisions and even your living arrangements. Similarly, expectations around how children should be raised, should that be something you’re planning for, including an emphasis on education and discipline, can become points of contention if there’s a cultural difference between you and your partner.
The broader socio-political landscape can also inform your romantic relationship. Take rise in anti-Asian sentiment, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, that brought issues of racism and discrimination to the forefront for many Asian Americans. These experiences can be deeply distressing and you’ll likely fare better if your partner is open-heart and -minded, supporting you through your experience as an Asian American, from microaggressions at work through to broader social issues.
Facing break ups
Part of loving, as much as we may turn away from it, is the risk of losing. Many people go through a break up at some point in their lives, and as an Asian-American you may find there are extra layers to processing this difficult time.
If you experience pressure from your family to find “the one” and do “the right thing”, you may feel extra anxiety and a fear of failure around your relationship ending. You could feel like others are judging you, perhaps wondering if it’s your own fault that things ended or what you did wrong. When you factor in the added pressure of a timeline imposed on you for your culture, you could even feel like you “wasted” time on the wrong person, and now are even further away from meeting the expectations of your family.
The truth is, separation as a natural part of life and evolving relationship dynamics. Breaking up can be a brave and bold thing to do when you know it’s the right thing for you, even if it defies what others are demanding from you.
When Dating Isn’t a Priority
It could be that dating isn’t something you’re interested in. Whether you’re choosing to focus on career or other life goals, or you identify as asexual or aromantic, your reasons are valid for deciding not to pursue dating.
Still, you may face resistance, swatting away the expectations, opinions and false perceptions of your family and/or peers. Asian American families often place a strong emphasis on marriage and starting a family, viewing it as a major marker of success and fulfillment. If you choose not to date, you may be subject to pressure to conform to these expectations, and wind up feeling guilty, or inadequate.
Through developing a steadfast sense of self and surrounding yourself with a support system that cheers you on your own unique path, you can hold strong in what you want and need and learn to communicate this with those around you in a culturally sensitive way.
The effects of dating as a minority
Imposter Syndrome
As you step into the dating world, you may experience imposter syndrome, the psychological name for doubting your own abilities, feeling like a fraud, and questioning if you belong in a certain environment.
This could develop from entering the dating pool late, or stem from dating as a minority in a majority culture, wondering where exactly your place is when all the media you consumed and the role models that were offered to you as a young person didn’t look like you or share your cultural background. Fortunately, as global beauty standards are developing, there is less pressure for Asian Americans to look attractive according to conventional Western standards.
Guilt and Shame
Guilt and shame could emerge as you navigate the expectations of your family and culture, as well as the society you are living in. You may feel like you’re caught in a catch 22 and either way you’re disappointing somebody.
When your romantic choices diverge from expectations, say by dating someone outside your race or conversely getting married at a relatively early age, you might experience deep guilt, which can be compounded by a fear of disappointing your family.
Meanwhile, if you’ve internalized certain expectations of yourself, you may experience profound shame. If you’ve been raised to believe that sex and intimacy are off-limits, yet choose to engage in these acts as they are very normalized in your society, for example, you might feel shame for what you’ve done. Equally, if you prioritize your family’s expectations and get married early, in a society that’s telling you this is “old-fashioned” you could experience shame the other way round and fear being ostracized from your social circle.
The good news is these stressors can be overcome. One exercise you can do is ask yourself, “if I raised a small child using tone of my inner voice, would that child grow up to be healthy?” If the answer is “no,” then perhaps you’re being too harsh on yourself. Each time you show yourself compassion and forgive yourself, you ease the tension that comes with guilt and shame.
People-Pleasing
The desire to please others, especially your family, can be a big factor in your approach to relationships. Growing up in an environment where respect for elders and conformity to family expectations are emphasized, you might develop a tendency to prioritize the needs and desires of others over your own.
In the context of dating, this can manifest as a reluctance to assert your own needs and boundaries. You might go along with what your partner or family wants, even when it doesn’t align with your own desires. This can lead to a pattern of people-pleasing, where you continually put others’ happiness before your own.
While this might create a temporary sense of harmony, it can also lead to resentment and burnout. Over time, suppressing your own needs can damage your sense of self-worth and create imbalances in your relationship. You might find yourself feeling unfulfilled or trapped, unable to express your true self within the confines of your cultural and relational obligations.
With the help of professionals, you can implement practical techniques to manage these people-pleasing tendencies. So, where can you turn to look for help?
Three Support Options for Asian-American relationships
Friends & Family Who Understand
Never underestimate the power of mutual aid. While it may be scary, do your best to open up to those around you who you imagine have been through similar things. Whether it’s fellow Asian-American friends, or cousins who may share your family struggles, take stock of the support system you already have on hand and tap into it.
Peer Support Groups
Sometimes, a little anonymity can help you open up, and also broaden the scope of advice and opinions you receive. Joining a support of peers can help you feel less alone and learn from the hardships and experiences of others. Anise run several support groups for Asian Americans that you can check out!
Culturally competent Care
If getting together in a group setting isn’t your thing, or you’re looking for more professional assistance, seeking culturally competent care can help you understand your own experience as it relates to your culture. Your therapist and coach can help you frame your experiences as an Asian American and provide effective tools for navigating your relationship that acknowledge and respect your heritage, rather than dismissing it.
Join Anise today to experience culturally competent care.
