Cross-cultural Couples Therapy
Couples from different backgrounds often face greater challenges, but also have greater opportunities for growth. The complex challenges of coordinating different worldviews, lifestyles, communication styles, parenting approaches and relationships with family and community can strain cross-cultural relationships. There is often less support for couples in cross-cultural relationships. In some cases, family members and friends do not understand these challenges or are not entirely supportive of the cross-cultural relationship, making it tricky to talk about and get support for problems in the relationship.
Couples from different backgrounds often do not talk explicitly enough about their culture, identity in context of their culture, relationship expectations, parenting approaches, etc. As a result, misunderstandings can be more common than in couples from the same background. Different styles of communication and approaches to problem solving can make resolving misuderstandings more challenging.
My approach to cross-cultural couples therapy is to explore the couple's internal and external strengths and stressors, including communication styles and approach to conflict resolution. Building more collaborative problem solving while helping each person better understand the other's communication style, expectations, and perspective can result in restoring a greater sense of cooperation, trust and intimacy. Critical to the process is understanding each partner's identity in context of their family, community and culture, expectations for the relationship and style of communication.