have any of you had a problem in your relationship because you were from different areas?

Question

My wife is from Germany, and she is having a hard time adjusting to living in the USA. She went back for six weeks, and I talked to her on the phone today. She didn't sound excited about coming back in a week and a half.
I am worried that sometimes love is not enough to keep a marriage together. Advice please!

Answer 1

I'm a romantic, but I don't think that love is enough to keep a marriage together. It takes a lot of work to get to know what moves and shakes your partner. The marriage reseacher and therapist John Gottman, Ph.D., talks about this in terms of getting to know your partner's "love map." The more you know about your partner, the better you are able to understand her, love her, appreciate the stresses she experiences, and deal with the stresses of the marriage. You can find detailed information about love maps and other strategies that really do make the difference between a marriage that succeeds and one that fails in Gottman's book The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.

I also suggest that in every marriage there are two people from "different areas." Sometimes the differences are obvious, as in your case. However, everyone comes from a family that is different in some way from the family that their spouse comes from. In my case, for example, I come from a family in which teasing is the way we let others know that we love them. However, my wife comes from a family in which teasing is considered extremely hostile. As a result, to this day, if I forget to think about it, we can have cultural differences that are very problematic even though we were both born in the US. I suspect that the problem isn't that the two of you come from different countries, but rather how much you understand about the expectations the two of you bring to your marriage and how you both manage those expectations.

Whether or not you have already talked to your wife about your concerns regarding your marriage and asked her how she is adjusting to being away from her family of origin and homeland, now is a good time to do so. And I wouldn't stop talking about those issues in some form as long as you're interested in making your marriage work for the two of you.

Answer 2

well did you think maybe you should now try germany? well its worth the try. why does it have to be here you are ??? i mean it can go both ways and you may like it there. so why not try there and maybe it can work better or you may see split sometimes its hard for some to adjust and mabye if you try you maybe one that can be ok there.