সোমবার, ২৭ মে, ২০১৩

Cultural barriers to relationships - Love and Dating - Wrong Planet

Long time, no post, I know. Various things happened...I won't bore you with the details.

Okay. Time to get on-topic.

I recently experienced the first 'crush' I've had for a number of years but since I didn't know the person all that well, I talked to one of the few coworkers who is trustworthy and not prone to spreading gossip...just to check that I wouldn't be causing problems by speaking out of turn. Apparently the person in question wasn't in any sort of relationship either (I said at the time: "if she's married or something, I really should check first!"), but her own circumstances are...difficult.

The area where I live is hardly the most culturally diverse or open-minded of places, but it's fair to say that if you're a young twenty-something adult, the idea of being barred from relationships altogether disappeared a generation or two ago, and among the people I know growing up it's completely unheard of. I do realise that some families are extremely strict on such things however, and it's theoretically possible that some people still raise their kids in that way. It turns out that I've sort-of fallen for someone who comes from one of those backgrounds.

The conversation with my sympathetic coworker was, as it turns out, a very good idea. From what I can gather, whatever feelings I have are not common knowledge. The person I've fallen for doesn't seem to have any particular dislike towards me, has no idea that I have feelings for her at all, and I've mercifully done nothing to upset or offend her. Because of her own home life - it's hard to tell, but I think it's a cultural/religious thing - any sort of personal relationship with me would be completely off-limits.

I've been thinking this over for days. I can accept that even in the part of the country where I live there are going to be different ways of life, and the last thing I want to do is be one of those people who is ignorant and disrespectful of other people's views and opinions. If they live their life in a certain way, the decent thing to do is respect that. In addition to that, if you care about someone, you wouldn't knowingly put them in a position that makes them feel hurt or awkward....so I've decided not to say or do anything further. Which still hurts like hell.

The problem I think is getting my head around the fact that, despite having done nothing wrong, the relationship would go nowhere: doing the wrong thing will cause all sorts of trouble and upset, but doing the right thing isn't exactly positive either. The weird thing is, I'm pretty open-minded as far as religious/cultural things go - I actually enjoy listening to people whose life experiences and points of view are completely different from my own (I think that a lot of problems that my home country has stem from ignorance: people from different backgrounds don't make enough effort to understand one another).

Even putting aside the usual ASD issues of communication problems and social anxiety, ordinary human nature can get in the way it seems. I'm not angry at anyone; I just feel so saddened that I won't be given the chance to be part of a certain person's life...all because of some divide that, to me personally, isn't an insurmountable problem. As far as I can see, we're all human beings and those things can be resolved through compromise and talking things over. And yet, I still have this nagging sense of guilt. I'm not sure why. I can accept the situation as it stands, but I won't pretend to understand it.

Who else has encountered issues like this, and how did you handle them?

Source: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt231761.html

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