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My husband and I come from drastically different families and cultures, we aren't even from the same part of the world!

I was raised in a two-parent home in the Midwest with two very unhappy parents and a very strict upbringing- which included being raised Baptist and being homeschooled. My husband was raised by his mother in the Pacific Islands- she was a single mother for most of his time growing up and raised him Catholic.

We come from very different backgrounds, and yet we share the same basic ideals and goals for our marriage and raising our children. We have managed to mesh our personal values and backgrounds, to ensure that raising our children together and being able to set goals for ourselves as a family- and a couple- is possible and will be successful.

Don't get me wrong, this hasn't been easy! It's taken the better part of five years, for us to be able to get on the proverbial "same page" about what we want for our marriage, our children, and our life together. It's not been a "walk in the park" and we certainly aren't over all of our hurdles yet!

It has taken many hours and days of discussion and compromise, to decide how we are going to get where we both want to be. You see, our biggest problem wasn't necessarily our goals or our ideas of what our life together should be, we had differing ideas of how to get there.

While he is more used to a specific ethnic style of cooking, I prefer to cook "whatever sounds good" at the time- be it Chinese, "Down-Home" Southern Cooking, Mexican, etc. We've had disagreements over silly things, such as laundry, dishes, vehicle maintenance, budgeting, etc. He prefers a less confrontational style of communicating, and I prefer the more direct style of communicating.

The best way to deal with family and background differences, is to start out by making sure you're both wanting to go in the same direction. Some differences can be almost impossible to compromise on or work through if they are unforeseen!

Be willing to view things from a different perspective besides your own- Try to understand and actually SEE where your partner is coming from, or at least respect that their viewpoint is different than yours. If you absolutely can not reach a "happy medium", whether it be what types of outings you want to do, which set of in-laws to spend the holidays with, etc- then the time has come for a compromise!

Try to find a suitable compromise which leaves neither of you feeling as though you got the raw end of the deal. Try to avoid "attacking" your partner's way of doing things or wanting to do things, and make sure that you respect them and their perspective.

Remembering that those differences are what made you the people you are can go a long way towards reminding yourself that if you were both from the same type of family and background; you wouldn't be the people you are and might not even have been interested in one another to begin with! This has certainly proven itself to be true in my marriage with my husband.
Our differences have only made us stronger, because we realize that each person's difference brings a unique strength to the relationship.

Learn more about this author, Julie Vincent.
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