What Every Intercultural Couple Should Know About Relationships and Marriage
(Dallas, TX)?The number of intercultural relationships and marriages between people from different countries, faiths, races, and ethnicities has skyrocketed over the past several decades. But these couples face unique challenges and relational complications due to varying worldviews, values, attitudes, customs, language barriers, and more. These cultural differences can wreak havoc on a relationship unless couples learn how to work through them in a healthy way.
Some of the problems these couples face include communication challenges, religious and political conflicts, value differences, varying gender expectations, different views on child rearing, economic adjustments and legal complications.
After falling in love and deciding to marry a man from Romania, Marla Alupoaicei (pronounced ah-loo-PWI-chay) searched for effective resources on the topic of intercultural relationships and marriage, but couldn’t find any. After performing extensive research and interviewing hundreds of multi-cultural couples, Alupoaicei wrote the definitive guide to intercultural marriage: Your Intercultural Marriage: A Guide to a Healthy, Happy Relationship (Moody Publishers, September 2009). Marla and her husband, Catalin, have been married for seven years. Marla serves as the Director of Leap of Faith, an intercultural marriage support organization in Frisco, Texas.
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not how compatible you are, but how you deal with incompatibility.” – Leo Tolstoy
Book Review: Your Intercultural Marriage: A Guide to a Healthy, Happy Relationship by Marla Alupoaicei
I chose to take part in this review as a part of the Blog Tour Spot, because I thought it would be an interesting read and I was right. Although I don’t have an intercultural marriage per say my husband and I do come from two very different backgrounds, he’s as American as can be and I’m first generation Italian American. Alupoaicei’s knowledge touches on subjects that can benefit any marriage that has religious, cultural, and race differences. Marla shares stories from her own marriage as well as those of others. Her advice includes issues such as, communicating, understanding each other’s values, agreeing on food, managing finances, and raising children.
Not only does Marla explain four different types of Intercultural marriage, but she provides discussion questions for you and your partner and provides a wide range of resources for improving your marriage. I love that she includes at the end of every chapter movies to watch and quotes for reflection.
Early in the book Marla tells a story about her husband, who is from Romania, and an incident that happened at the library. The librarian asks him why he writes his 4’s so funny and his answer was “Why do you?”. Sometimes as Americans we think that our way is the “right” way, Marla points out that she realized neither way is the “right” way. It is only different. I had a moment of enlightenment in that story. This book is a must read in any intercultural marriage, but if you have a chance to pick it up as I did I think it will open up communication amongst friends as well.
Meet the author of Your Intercultural Marriage, Marla Alupoaicei.
Author and speaker Marla Alupoaicei serves as the Director for Leap of Faith Ministries, an intercultural marriage support ministry in Frisco, Texas. Marla has authored or co-authored over twenty books and Bible study guides, including Taking the Intercultural Leap, Generation Hex: Understanding the Subtle Dangers of Wicca, and In the Flow: Spiritual Insights for Living a More Creative Life, as well as numerous nonfiction articles and poems. Marla has fifteen-plus years of ministry, teaching, and speaking experience with a variety of organizations. Currently she works as a staff writer for East-West Ministries, a grace-based church planting organization in Addison, Texas.
Marla and her husband, Catalin, whom she met while on a missions trip to Romania in 1998, have been married for 7 years and currently reside in Texas.
Learn more about Marla at http://marriageleap.com.
Go to Amazon.com to purchase a copy of Marla’s book.
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