People with partners from different cultures, what's been your biggest culture shock/relationship challenge?

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Light hearted!

People who married someone from a different culture: what was your biggest challenge? Did it change over time? What was the best thing about being with someone from a different culture?

At the start of our relationship my DH and I had so many differences to work through, e.g. the role of family members, language differences, navigating things like irony, etc. We have quite similar core values so luckily the differences turned out to be quite superficial in the end.

Nowadays I'd say the biggest challenge is the difference in sense of humour!

My favourite thing about DH's culture is the commitment to family and the unconditional support they offer one another.

DH and I are both white British but his family culture is very traditional working class. Men go to the pub and talk about only football. Women must stay at home and wait for men to return from pub usually late and pretend this hasn't fucked up the whole dinner they had been cooking since 8am. They cannot comprehend that I work. Not just not understand what I do, but that I work at all.

DH finds it difficult to navigate etiquette at my house in return. He finds cutlery arrangement and when he's allowed to start eating at the table quite perplexing. He also finds social rules difficult to pick up, like taking the host a bottle of wine.

His family are far more brutally honest which can be nice but often is quite challenging to take!

My husband is Israeli and thus very direct. He says what he means and expects that others do as well, and it has led to some interesting moments within the British system of extreme politeness!

Indian sense of timing eg wording on invitations. 2pm means sometime that day, 2pm prompt is a few hours either side, 2pm sharp means within an hour. There is no concept of 2pm equals 2pm.