What's Love Got to Do with It: Race, Gender and Culture

We met during lunch at a weekend workshop on racial conflict in Oakland. I was looking for the cafeteria when I turned a corner and almost ran into him. He was a charming looking man with the most incredible smile and two laughing eyes in the middle of a dark face. I asked him if he wanted to go to lunch with me. At that point I had no idea that three years later we would be married; me, a white Swiss woman and him, a black American man, learning about our differences not just for a weekend but as part of our daily lives. While we were eating lunch in a little cafe in Berkeley, he got excited when I told him that my accent was Swiss. He asked me all kinds of questions about Europe and what it was like being Swiss in the United States.

While we were looking deeper into each others' eyes, stereotypes were written all over us. Looking at him, I saw deep black skin and fleshy lips that gave way to white teeth when he smiled. I was hopelessly charmed. I saw something so different from myself, and I freely and unconsciously projected stereotypes onto him. I saw earthiness, wildness, sexiness, adventure, eroticism, self-assurance, cheerfulness, breeziness—all things I missed and longed for in my life. I adored his little ears and it felt so good to put my hands into his coarse and wiry hair that felt so different from mine. I indulged and feasted in the dream of exotic adventure. He too had all kinds of preconceived ideas about a woman from Switzerland. He saw my "Swissness" as something special. In a way, I liked this and let him have his fantasies.

As I write about our experience, I'm ashamed about how unaware and stereotypical my projections were. But then I remind myself that people,

especially when falling in love, often do not see the truth about each other. We all know how quickly we can form opinions based on the first couple of seconds with a person. The state of being in love often is based on superficial details such as a certain movement, the shape of a neck, a way of talking, or skin color. We wildly project our unconscious material into these aspects of the other. This kind of dreaming is the psyche's attempt to become complete. It looks on the outside for qualities which are not accessible in ourselves. Strong negative or positive feelings about someone often have a lot to do with us, sometimes even more than with the other person. Therefore, stereotypes and prejudices about the other can reveal a lot about their carrier.

It takes a long time to get to know someone deeply; sometimes we are disappointed and find that the person doesn't live up to our dreaming about them. Other times we are lucky: a real relationship develops and we like who the other person turns out to be. In that sense, David and I were no different from everybody else, except that our fantasies reached across bigger racial and cultural barriers.

As we were getting closer, I started to feel more awkward around him. I was afraid of my own naivete; I didn't want to be caught in a racist act and hardly dared to look at him for fear of staring. I tried to pretend that we were the same. It was obvious that he had more experience in interacting with white mainstream society then I had with people from his community. This is not surprising, since a black man growing up in white America needs to know about the customs, communication and fears of the white main-

stream to survive. I didn't need to know; I got along in life without knowing anything about his culture. My knowledge stemmed almost exclusively from books about and from the African American community, which I had been reading obsessively since my arrival in America two years before meeting David. As if he could read my feelings, he reached out to me in the most wonderful way and made me feel comfortable by allowing our differences to be a topic. I always remember how, on our first night together, he invited me over to the full size mirror and let me, made me, look at us. Black and white couples are so rare that I am still shocked to see them. It was startling to see how white I was next to him, and I still can't comprehend how dark he is. We allowed ourselves to say the cliches and stereotypes, and we played with and laughed about them. Finally, I was allowed to ask, "Is it true that African Americans...?'' And David would come back, "I always thought Swiss women...."

He made me feel free to see our differences. Comparing and voicing preconceived ideas became part of the craziness of falling in love and celebrating each other. In our privacy, we didn't fear political incorrectness. His openness made it possible for me to go beyond stereotypes and cliches so we could begin to find out who we really are.

Race: "man's most dangerous myth" (Montagu, 1958)

As a couple we don't just interact with each other, but with friends, colleagues, extended families, and all kinds of public situations. Whenever we deal with public situations, our difference in appearance suddenly becomes predominantly important. It is the first thing people notice about us. As an interracial couple, we are an anomaly.

Our friends have been very supportive, and we felt welcomed by family on both sides. I was especially touched by the unexpected and warm welcome from David's mother. I knew my mother would be concerned, and his sister's original mistrust was hard on me, but the hesitations disappeared after people got to know us as a couple. There are some memorable incidents, like the man whose jaw literally dropped when he saw us walking down the aisle of an Alabama grocery store holding hands. Then there was the neighbor who went behind our backs to inquire about us, and the night in the Jazz club where a group of black women stared me down for "stealing a

black brother." The most painful mirror of society was when our daughter didn't want to be seen with her white mother at McDonald's because she had been made fun of. Having an interracial family put a heavy burden on her and pulled her out of innocence at a very young age.

If I tell people that my husband is African American, or if we meet somebody new, there is often a sense of awkwardness. In these moments my mind runs through a battery of possibilities. I am afraid that blacks, especially black women, will judge David as not wanting to be black anymore, as betraying his community. Being with me means that he doesn't value blackness. Because of me he is no longer "down" enough and he becomes an outcast. Often I'm not even addressed. If the people are white I see critical eyes trying to discover what flaw would make me marry "under my status." White people also often check us or David for signs of criminality. Whites usually don't know why they feel we shouldn't be a couple, but they know it makes them uncomfortable.1

Nobody has ever said anything directly, because that would unmask them as racist. Since mainstream people don't dare to admit then-thoughts, the painful inner experiences of non-mainstream people are never confirmed. People's unconsciousness about their deep inner fears and fantasies or unwillingness to own their prejudices make it impossible to validate these perceptions. Instead, you only notice the awkward silence. It is these subtle signs that hurt and remind us that we are not a "normal" couple.

Upon hearing of my new love, many frowned and expressed worries and warnings which were often disguised in well meant comments such as, "Oh, I know it must be hard, did you really think about it enough? Well, I wish you luck." This is not what you want to hear when you fall in love. In these moments you wish people would celebrate with you.

What makes people so worried and upset? It is the myth about race in which our world is soaked. We hear about race and related matters almost daily, on TV or in newspapers. The term "race," and its categories of Asian, American Indian, white European and black African, is still widely accepted today. In fact, this term goes back to the 18th century and long predates genetics and evolutionary biology. Most scientists today acknowledge that there is no scientific or genetic

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evidence that would confirm the idea of racial categories. There is no gene or trait that groups people together according to these widely accepted categories. Gene 11, for example, the hemoglobin gene, puts Swedes and South Africa's Xhosas together as one race, while Northern Africans, Greeks and Italians are another. The "Asian eye" would put the IKungSan Bushmen together with the Japanese and Chinese. The anthropologist Goodman says, "you won't get anything that remotely tracks conventional categories" (In Begley, 1995). And biologist Lewontin (1975) says that there is more genetic difference within any single race than between that race and another.

In spite of new theories such as the Bell curve (Herrenstein, 1994), the majority of scientists called the idea of race a mistake and abandoned the term at the beginning of this century. They prefer to explain the variation in human features, such as skin color, ear size and nose shape, as they explain culture: all of these things are the result of geographic grouping and the tendency to intermarriage. This is typically what we call ethnicity, not race. I myself have grown more careful with the term because it calls up incorrect assumptions and can contribute to cementing misconceptions. If race is genetic, we can't change it, but if it is ethnic, it is a conglomerate of things that leaves room for flexibility and change.

The idea of race is a powerful but strictly social concept. Throughout history, the falsely "biologic" sounding idea of race and the fiction of genetic purity have been used as tools for the oppression and elimination of others. These concepts played a large role in, for example, the French Revolution, the Jewish Holocaust and slavery. The need to differentiate between people like you and "others" serves to preserve privilege and power. In the United States, the call for racial purity and the prohibition of interracial marriages had to do with preserving certain privileges for whites, for example, the privilege of owning land. If interracial unions had been officially acknowledged, then the offspring of these unions would have been legal heirs and thus equal members of mainstream society.

When we remember that anti-miscegenation laws were in effect in certain states as recently as 1967, it is clear that times have changed. Since 1970, the number of interracial marriages has quadrupled, and a Newsweek poll (Morgantau, 1995) said that the "tolerance" for interracial

marriages has never been as high. But the word tolerance hides the deeper attitudes; tolerating. which means to bear or suffer something, is different than celebrating interracial marriage.

I credit the cry for political correctness for much awareness and sensitivity. I also see that it didn't always touch peoples' hearts. Deeper attitudes went underground. Unfortunately, rather than simply creating real change, the push for political correctness served in part to stifle opinions. People are afraid to say the wrong things, and prefer to avoid situations where the topic of race could come up. Currently the Civil Rights Act from the 1960s, and with it Affirmative Action, which made everybody believe that racial equality was soon to be reality, have been under intense attack. Some strong white backlash is on its way. I find this backwards movement hard to accept. But I see that it opens up the racial discussion again, and people feel more free to publicly admit to different kinds of beliefs and attitudes.

It can be lonely to see only people's frowns, which are like the shadows of their unspeakable thoughts. Sometimes I long not to bear the awkward silence and be left at the mercy of my fantasies. I wish people would tell me their true thoughts, stand for their prejudice, or ask me the forbidden questions on their minds.

In the web of the "isms"

As a black man in America, David has experienced ongoing oppression and marginalization. Fred Guidry (Lecture, May 5,1995) talked about his experience as a black male living in a society which is more interested in protecting itself against his potential behavior than in supporting his development as a young man. I believe white society's fear of black men is responsible for the widespread discouragement and hopelessness among black males. The lack of jobs for black males and underpayment in jobs that are available has been a huge problem for the black community since the end of slavery. Under- and unemployment create not only economic difficulties but are detrimental to self-image, physical health, and social relations over many generations. The black community is so rattled by drug problems, violence, and criminality that many young males are not expected to live past 30 (see Lusane, 1991). This places an incredible burden on black women, who are often forced to bear the full brunt of double roles as breadwinner and mother.

David was raised by a strong mother who left the South with two children to get away from segregation and find a better job in the North. She was the main and sole reliable breadwinner in the family. His father's changing jobs just never brought in enough money. When David was 9, he saw how his mother, who had more power due to her earning capacity, threw his father out of the home. They divorced and his father died of alcoholism at a relatively young age. David, as a young boy, intimately experienced the tragedy and humiliation of the black man.

Whole generations of black men have been destroyed by being unable to provide for their families and thus being robbed of a main source of self-esteem and purpose. Society sees these men as failing to live up to the roles of breadwinner and head of the household; simultaneously, society does not provide possibilities for employment. It is understandable that men who have been systematically humiliated and undermined have an increased need to prove their manliness. If you have been put down a lot, you may well feel better if you step on somebody else. Unfortunately, this has often meant putting down women. It is my experience that even though the black community has less stereotypical gender roles, black males often behave in an increased sexist and chauvinistic way. It is common for black men to call women "bitches," to exclude women from many of their activities, and to not share domestic chores or responsibilities for children equally (McCall, 1994). Women have been the easiest and often the only group the black man could positively differentiate himself from, by putting women down.

My upbringing as a woman in Switzerland was strongly marked by sexist discrimination. During most of my childhood, until 1971, women in Switzerland were not allowed to vote. Swiss men feared that women would not be able to separate the emotional from the rational and therefore were better excluded from important decisions.

When I graduated from school in 1978,1 lost a job to a male competitor, although my test results were better. I was told that I would surely leave the company to get married, and was thus not the best person to hire. The Swiss school system sends children home for a two hour lunch break. After-school childcare is hard to get, and women who utilize it are frowned upon. This schedule makes

it almost mandatory for most mothers to stay home and live a life of service to others.

Choosing to stay home is a valid option: it is the lack of freedom and value that makes it oppressive. My mother had to abandon her career as a photographer to stay home with her children. She also did the extensive bookkeeping for my father's pediatric practice. While he ventured out into the world and successfully fulfilled his dream and calling, my mother stayed in the background and made his dedication and success possible. Her life revolved around serving him and his purpose. After all the children had left home, she couldn't quite find a way to pick up her life where she had left off. Like David's father, she died at a rather early age of an unusually aggressive kind of leukemia.

These two pieces of personal and collective history have influenced both of us and are constantly present as a background to our relationship.

I remember one particular incident between us which showed me how racism and sexism are intertwined. We were sight-seeing with some friends in Moscow, and had bought water, food and some souvenirs which were all stuffed in my large bag. After a while, my shoulder started to get tired, and I asked David if he would carry the bag. He strongly refused and marched on, talking to our tour guide. Immediately, I was hit by many painful memories of women serving men and not receiving any support in return, of men expecting women to do domestic chores while they are free to discover the world. I had expected David to treat me as equal, and suddenly my expectation was shattered.

It wasn't until later that I found out that David considered my bag to be a purse, and thus too feminine an article for him to carry around publicly. For him, it was too insulting and embarrassing as a man, and practically the only black man in Moscow, to be seen walking around with a purse. At the time, I was unable to see beyond my hurt and understand why appearances were so much more important than supporting me. I could only see how I was taken advantage of and teated unfairly. I hadn't considered that David didn't have my freedom to disappear anonymously in the mass of other tourists.

This was our first big fight. We had known each other barely a year, and it scared me to feel like a member of an oppressed group within our

relationship. I had expected David, especially as a black man, to understand what it means to be dominated and be part of an oppressed group. I wanted him to treat me as an equal and to help heal my wounds. I hadn't realized how difficult it would be for both of us to do this for each other simultaneously.

Knowing about being black in the United States, I want to be "in his corner" and fight with David against racism and its undermining effects on black men. I want to support him, admire him, and enable him to go into the world. It is also crucial for me that David feels like the full, strong man he is, fights for his cause, and follows his dream. I want to make it possible for him to travel, finish his degrees, hang out with friends, and believe in his talents. At times, this desire conflicts with my feeling of being devalued as a woman. Sometimes I can't afford to be selfless; it reminds me too much of my mother and other women who weren't appreciated for all they did. I have a burning need not only to be seen and acknowledged in the world, but to be supported and backed by David as a man. I need him to be interested in my path, and to help me follow my desires in terms of career as well as emotional needs. Sometimes I don't want to listen to his ideas or take care of our daughter. I want his attention on me—I want him to be my "wife." These feelings are not easy for me to admit, and sometimes I feel no different than white backlash when I ask to be given to.

The question is, who should support whom? Both of us need it, but who needs it more? Who is the one with higher rank and more privilege?

I'm white, and therefore society has provided me with more social rank, which means I receive more material, educational and social support and fewer negative stereotypes. But this is not the only power dynamic between David and me. According to Mindell, social privilege is not the only source of power: momentary situational circumstances can give a person power. Power can also come from having psychological strength, which often comes from having worked on yourself and knowing yourself well. Spiritual power is a strength that comes from feeling supported from the inside, and can make people feel stronger than most others (1995).

Rank is not only an enduring quality; it is also situational. There is no absolute ranking system. Between David and me, rank is negotiated anew

depending on each issue and situation. Sometimes David might have more rank because of his physical strength, or his ability to be more detached emotionally, or the spiritual strength that comes from life experience. I might have more power because of finances, my mainstream social support, or my education and psychological training. These and many other powers come from privileges which were either given to us, such as skin color or gender, or which we earned through our personal history.

With this in mind, the question probably wouldn't be, "Who needs more support?" but "Who can afford to help out? Who has enough strength to step out of personal history for the moment and serve the other?" In order to create a sustainable relationship, these roles have to change and be flexible. We both have to learn more about our privileges, and see how oppression has hurt the other and how we can either perpetuate that or work to stop it. Our lack of awareness of each other's situations created the problem in Moscow.

There are no quick and easy solutions. Like everybody, we are caught in the web of the "isms." I am beginning to see that sexism cannot be solved without simultaneously changing racism, and vice versa. Everybody has been put down in some way, and needs understanding and support to heal. Only when we learn to understand this will we be able to achieve lasting social change. It does make me feel better to understand that our personal struggles are much more than personal—they are deeply political. Our struggles around these social powers are revolutionary, and our attempt to change these "isms" is one way we as individuals change history and re-make society.

On the tracks of culture

Humans have a strange tendency to first assume that others think and feel just like we do. Social psychology refers to this tendency as the "false consensus bias" (Ross, Green, and House, 1977). As David and I got to know each other better, many of our dreams and stereotypes that had been based on superficialities such as looks or nationality had to be dropped or revised. We got to know each other as genuine people with very different personalities, lives and cultural backgrounds. When we moved in together, we were faced with the difficult task of learning to get along with someone different than ourselves.

I used to think that culture had something to do with foreign smelling foods, exotic cloth, and different music. I didn't realize how deeply culture affects all of us even in intrinsic ways of perceiving, thinking, and feeling. Culture is all around us, every second of our life, and we don't ever have to notice it unless we are confronted with another culture. Some experts say that you have to live for at least two years with a different culture to pick up on the relativity of your own (Bennet, 1994). It made me chuckle when I learned that, in a serious attempt to create culturally neutral intelligence tests, the creators came up with tests that actually made the culture gap in their results worse. This shows that it isn't easy to understand how culture influences us and what the cultural differences really are.

There are many definitions for culture. Most of them agree that culture has to do with values and deeply ingrained beliefs upon which we interpret the outer and inner world. Culture is much more subtle than even language—it is the deeper philosophical meaning, attitudes, and values that stand behind our words.

Something as simple as time has caused major battles between David and me. I had a marginal theoretical knowledge of other cultures' understandings of time, but in my experience I cannot conceive of time as not linear with a past, present, and future. I'm slowly learning, that time, as such, does not exist. Time is a purely abstract and deeply cultural concept.

Although the concept of time is abstract, the arguments David and I have had over the meaning of time are not of an intellectual or philosophical nature; they are clashes that involve deep emotions. It seems unacceptable to me that David sometimes arrives two or three hours late. I feel unconsidered and deeply disrespected. When this first occurred, I used to get scared that something had happened; then I started to feel lied to and taken advantage of. I suspected him of having secrets and accused him of not being honest with me. David feels that my insistence on punctuality infringes on his freedom. He feels controlled by me and wants to be able to follow his spontaneous nature. Time is elastic for him and depends on whatever happens on the way.

For a long time this conflict seemed unsolvable. Deep inside I knew that I could learn something from him, and that if I could open up and pick up some of his attitude myself we wouldn't have to

be so polarized. But I had trouble admitting my part in our time battles. I was stuck with my view and was too insulted by his behavior to understand his ways.

At this point I stumbled across Nichols' (1987) "model of the philosophical aspects of cultural difference." This simple model had a tremendous effect on me. According to Nichols, various understandings of time grew out of the different agricultural situations in Europe and Africa. Europe, with its cold climate, has a short farming period of about three months where food for the whole year has to be grown and harvested to avoid starving during colder months. Therefore, inhabitants of these regions had to plan ahead and have a certain consciousness of time. Cultures in hot climates, such as Africa, can farm year round. If starvation is not a main threat to life, Nichols concludes, the next big threat comes from people, people like jealous neighbors, insulted relatives or angry colleagues. Therefore, in hot climates, it is less important to get your seeds planted today than to take care of your relationships. African time, Nichols says, is spiral, while European time is linear.

I have to admit that spiral time is still a mystery to me. But even without understanding spiral time, the nonjudgemental attitude of Nichols' model relieved me. In previous discussions about time, David and I had debated which way of perceiving time was better. But suddenly I was not linear, organized, practical, fact and future-oriented because I was particularly uptight, materialistic or greedy. Instead, this way of perceiving time is part of my background and culture. Suddenly I felt my sense of time as ethnic, and ethnicity is something to be proud of. Swiss culture is not just cheese, chocolate, Alphorns and neutrality—it is also how I think and feel and perceive the world. In that, I'm not better or worse than anybody else, and I am as equally as limited as anyone who is exposed to only one culture. I learned that I first had to feel at ease with myself and accept my cultural ways of viewing the world before I could arrive at a more ethnorelative position (Bennett, 1994), a viewpoint that allows me to perceive the difference in David's way without being judgemental. He, by seeing my Swiss background as exciting, actually helped me accept my culture.

This acceptance opened me up to the possibility that what I had experienced as disrespect

might not be meant as such, but might have something to do with differences in perception. I discovered the cultural aspect of time awareness. I was suddenly more open to learning about David's elastic experiences of time, and I started to ask questions. We even joked about him drifting along with African time, and me being run by Swiss precision time. I have discovered that the more I learn to "be," the more he starts to organize and plan. There have even been moments when our roles have reversed.

Culture in conflict

Because I'm Swiss in my acculturation doesn't mean I'm less interested in relationships. The difference is that for me, the relational aspect is not intrinsic, unspoken and contextually present in everything I do. Although David and I might not differ much in our basic needs and love for each other, we differ a great deal in our styles of relating. For me, relating is an active, or direct behavior of focusing on the other, asking questions and participating in each other's deep and inner experiences. David is content to be there; he doesn't ask me to focus much on him personally and does not naturally ask me questions about my inner life. At times David seems to enjoy my close focus and interest on him; at other moments he can't stand it.

These differences in relating style become agonizingly more difficult in conflict situations. I try to solve a conflict by grabbing the bull by the horns, meaning I address it directly, explain how I feel and hope that the other person will do the same. I bring up difficult issues so they can be resolved. I never understood why David reacted so negatively and got so upset when I addressed something.

Our conflicts sometimes escalated with incredible speed to highly emotional levels. We both ended up exhausted without having solved anything. These interactions often ended when David picked up a newspaper and started to read, or left the room to do something else, or even fell asleep. For me his avoidance was the final insult and proof that he didn't care. He went against my unspoken understanding that if he cared about me he would be committed to finding a solution to the conflict. This background belief was part of my reason for hanging onto issues when David had long been ready to move on. For me, letting go of the issue would have implied letting go of

the relationship. I wasn't aware that this was just my understanding and not his.

After this kind of escalation and failure to find any satisfying result, we would often withdraw into a sulky silence. Sometimes I pleaded with David to hang in and deal with the issues. Often he tried hard; sometimes it worked and we got something out of it. But there was not that feeling of release or satisfaction that I hoped would bring us closer together. Deeply devastated and unable to explain the other's behavior, we started to lose faith in each other.

Switzerland is an extreme example of a low-context culture (Gudykunst, Ting-Toomey, and Chua, 1988). In low context cultures, issues are brought up directly and discussed in a matter of fact and focused way without jeopardizing the relationship. It is commonly understood that it is the particular issue that is at stake and not the person or the relationship. I'm straightforward and expect that you to be too. Being unaware of my "Swissness" in this, I assumed that David and I both shared the same idea about working towards solution.

In high context cultures such as the African American community, the style of conflict is more indirect, more concerned with saving face and tolerant of ambiguity. Linearity and logic in communication aren't as important. It is much more the African American style to "set a table" with many different aspects connected to the issue ([ean Gilbert-Tucker, Lecture, May 5,1995). Since saying "no" directly can be experienced as too rude and insulting, one hints or insinuates. For example, African Americans might agree to come to a gathering, already knowing that they will not, in order not to hurt or offend the host, to save face for both sides, and thus keep a good relationship atmosphere. The receiving party knows this and understands if the invited guests don't show up later.

In my culture, I have learned that it is very important to be truthful, especially if you value the other person. Swiss people would rather say nothing than say something that is not completely true. They are more committed to the relationship through being truthful and less by protecting the atmosphere. It is easy to understand how people's well meant intentions can be very misunderstood by and hurtful to someone from a different culture.

My transformation started when I noticed that David often changed after a fight, even though he didn't give an inch during the discussion. At first I was puzzled. Why didn't he say if he saw a point in what I said? Then it dawned on me that maybe it wasn't a question of the content, but the style that he disagreed with. I've discovered that effect and intent are often not the same. I also realized that he was not only protecting face for himself, but that he also approached me in an indirect way that allowed me to save face, too.

I started to experiment and didn't always insist that we clean it up "Swiss style" with a solution or compromise. I let things hang and started to consider tolerating uncertainties. It was very hard for me to drop an issue and the mood connected with it before it was solved. I had to on work on myself to not take David's changing the subject personally. This experiment has worked pretty well. I'm learning to appreciate my talent to be precise and to the point. I'm also appreciating David's talent to keep the humor, detachment, and a sense of the friendship between us as we deal with difficult issues.

David and I still struggle about time and other things. We sometimes get stuck in bad moods, but our fights have lost their hurtful intensity. There is more room to be different and still okay. I have learned that many of my misconceptions and hurts had to do with my ethnocentric attitude of assuming that we would have the same expectations and ways of being in the world. My perceptions and feelings have not changed, but I added a new and growing part that is detached and can accept that we are different, not right or wrong.

Growing beyond

I have read other reports about interracial relationships (Mathabane, G. and M., 1992; Craig, S. and K., 1995) and saw the movie Jungle Fever with great expectations of learning from others' experiences and troubles. Thus far, I haven't found much help. Rather, it seems to me that people are concerned with proving that interracial relationships either can or cannot work. This is why I wanted to write about my experience and learning in my relationship across nations, genders and races. I'm aware that this is my personal experience, and that for others it might be very differ-

ent. It wasn't easy to write about this in part because it is so personal, but also because I'm aware that I'm in the middle of the learning process and have found no final solutions.

At times I ask myself if our troubles might have less to due with the fact that we are an interracial and intercultural couple and more to do just with differences in personality, like in any other couple. But thinking of cultural, gender and racial differences has helped me tremendously and opened me up to David's experiences in a way that thinking only of personal psychology failed to do. Today I believe that we do not consider the effect of difference in culture enough. All couples are in one way or another intercultural, be it through gender, age, social status, or other differences. Thinking of culture and collective aspects of one's personality has been rather neglected in psychology. But in reality, culture, gender, race and other social realities are so inseparably interwoven with our personal psychology that we can never succeed in picking them apart. All our interactions, even our very personal ones, are political.

To come back to the original question of "What does love have to do with it?", I believe love has a lot to do with it. It is not easy to stay at the edges of these deep trenches that set us apart. It is long-term, hard work to build bridges across the gaps, and a commitment to love might be the only motivation that will make us stick through it. The task is big, but I know that the rewards are equally big. It is these trenches that in the end connect us.

I feel my insights are still fresh and I know more will come, but this new understanding is tender and I'm savoring it. I have not only learned more about a foreign culture from David, but have also discovered my culture and what it means to be Swiss. It is not a question of one culture being better or worse, but of knowing about the differences and understanding each culture's relativity, strength and limitations. This relationship has given me a chance to expand and grow beyond "my" culture. It has made me question things I never thought about before, and has pushed me more than anything else has to be myself, whatever that means at each moment.

Note

1. See videotape, Politics of Love in Black and White, for more on this topic.

Sonja Straub, Ph.D., has a private practice in Portland, Oregon and teaches Process Work in various places around the world. She has had a special interest in relationships and their dynamics for years, and is currently fascinated by her learning about issues of privilege, rank and power.

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Bibliography

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