Being married is challenging.

I love being married, don’t get me wrong, but I’d be lying if I said it was a piece of cake. I think all marriages have their challenges, and it is normal to have ups and downs- any real relationship does, and it’s how you get through those trials and tribulations that makes a marriage strong.

My husband and I have just begun our journey as a married couple but we dated for two years prior to tying the knot. In the combined time that we have been together, I have caught a glimpse of what might lie ahead for us in terms of challenges.

The thing that makes our relationship the most exciting, is also the thing that sometimes makes it most difficult. Aside from my partner being a man and me being a woman, (in my opinion that’s enough for a problem in itself) we each come from very different backgrounds. My husband is from Mexico and although he has been in the U.S. for 10 years, he is very much still stuck in a lot of his Mexican ways. I would like to consider myself, on the other hand, an all-American girl and so our differences show up in everything. From choice of music to thoughts on manners to what is expected of men versus women; a mixture of ideas and values surrounds us. We are nothing alike, and yet somehow manage to share a life together. I think with us, the saying “opposites attract,” couldn’t be more true.  There really was no logical reason for us getting together, but somehow, like two magnets with contrasting charges, we were pulled together and we have been stuck that way ever since.

A few weeks ago, my husband was sick with a sore throat. I woke up early to go get him some cough syrup, throat lozenges, and to make him some tea. To me this seemed like an obvious choice of remedies for his raw throat that he was complaining about so much. He took one dose of the medicine and went back to sleep. I went to work and called to check on him later and remind him to take another dose of medicine, for you can only take it once every four hours. When I reminded him that it was time to take it again however, he refused. He said it hadn’t worked and therefore he was going to send his mom to the Mexican store buy something stronger and that she was going to give him some massage to make his throat get better quicker.. 

I was surprised to hear this. “Huh?” was probably the first word that came out of my mouth. I had never heard of anything so absurd. First of all, I was a little annoyed that he wasn’t giving my knowledge of American medicine the time of day, literally. I mean, this is what I had been told by the doctor my whole life to do in such a case- and it had always worked, that is if I had given it time to work. Second of all, a massage for a sore throat? To me it didn’t make any sense at all. If this was a real remedy, wouldn’t a doctor have used it on me at some point in my 23 years of life? When I asked him about it, he said that when he lived in Mexico, people would always come to his house and pay his mom to give them this special massage when they were sick. She would rub their throat and insides of their elbows and wrists and that it made them recover faster.

Anyways, as frustrated as I was that he would go to his mother to take care of him, rather than his wife, I am a busy girl and so I let him do what he wanted. I figured, let him be sick and maybe he will figure it out for himself. When I came home however, he was feeling much better, and he swore he had been cured by the massage. He even suggested I watch next time so that I can know how to do it in the future. Inside, this drove me a little crazy.

Personally, I believe that his sore throat would have been gone within the three days no matter what. I think that the special massage did nothing in reality but I since he believed in it so strongly and he was better, I didn’t argue with him. If he was feeling better, what else really mattered?

This is just a silly example of how our cultural differences make an appearance in our daily lives. Having respect for each other is a necessity in any marriage, but having respect for each other’s cultures is also a necessity in ours. Sometimes we have to agree to disagree with things that come up or else we may very likely argue about things that are simply not worth the fight. Sometimes however, there are times that we cannot stick to our ways and when we must meet in the middle and compromise. Those are the times that are not as comical, but more serious. It might not be easy to abandon half of what we each know so that we can reach an agreement, but it is the only way to get through a problem sometimes. We have grown the most in our relationship during those hard times and they continue to shape us as we continue our journey.

I decided that I will learn how to give this specialmassage. Although I think that him miraculously getting better because of it was all in his head, I would prefer to be the one to cure him rather than someone else. I want to respect his culture to my best ability and for him to do the same with mine; even if it means keeping quiet when I don’t agree with some of his ways.