Cross-cultural Marriage: An American Marries an Italian!

I’m fascinated with cross-cultural marriages.

There is so much to learn from other relationships! How people handle language, cultural differences, children, passports, food. The list is enormous! Recently, I’ve been interviewing couples in cross-cultural marriages. I’m intrigued with how they manage differences and perplexities and all the funny, odd things that come along when a marriage is mixed.

Here is a recent Q&A with Kel and Enrico that I thought you’d enjoy.

Can you imagine your in-laws going on your honeymoon with you?

Well, here’s what happened when the USA and Italy married!

What countries make up your marriage?

Enrico is from Torino, Italy. When he was nine, his family moved to Munich where he attended school until he was sixteen. He came to the United States for college. He has a degree in political science from Stanford. Enrico speaks seven languages: Italian, French, English, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

I was born in Fargo, but grew up in New Mexico, Texas, Idaho, Utah, and Alaska. My maternal great-grandparents immigrated from Finland and my paternal great-grandparents immigrated from Norway.

How and when did you and your husband’s lives intersect?

We met in 1993 at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, where Enrico was an MFA student in fiction writing. I was an M.A. student in literature.

Our first date was in Idaho. We got married in 1995, three months after our first date.

Tell me something about your wedding.

We got married in Montana. Enrico knows how to juggle, and I remember watching him running through a field while juggling as all the children ran behind him, laughing.

Enrico’s sister, Egle, is really good at languages. She learned some Finnish to be able to talk with my grandmother in Finnish at our wedding. That was really special.

What language(s) do you speak at home?

Mainly English and Italian. Enrico’s always joking around with language, so the joke might also play off Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, or Russian.

Do you have children?

Tell me something about their experience being cross-cultural children.

We have two sons. Alessandro and Massimo. We picked Italian names with easy American nicknames. They went by Alex and Max at school.

At home, Enrico spoke only Italian to them. I learned Italian children’s songs and sang to them in Italian when they were little. I also read Italian children’s books to them.

The five years we lived in international student housing at the University of Michigan were the best years for the kids. We were one of only two American families, so they had playmates from Egypt, Korea, Japan, Portugal, Israel, and China. All those families also spoke their own languages at home, so the kids accepted learning Italian in our home. Once they got older, their Italian speaking abilities were better than mine.

Alessandro spent his junior year of high school on an AFS exchange in Rome, living with an Italian family. He attended an Italian school for future musicians and came back with much improved Italian and violin-playing skills. In college, he went on a semester-long exchange to Bologna, Italy.

Massimo was captain of his high school swim team and didn’t want to leave for an exchange. Later, he was supposed to go on a college exchange in Italy, but it was cancelled due to Covid-19. He’s exploring his Italian heritage through his senior project studying the history of the Italian Partisan song, “Bella Ciao,” which continues to be re-invented since it first became popular during World War II.

Tell me about a funny misunderstanding.

My in-laws came on our honeymoon with us!

They’d flown all the way from Italy for our wedding, so they wanted to travel around! We took a trip to Glacier National Park, then drove up to Canada to see Jasper and Banff. While I was driving, my in-laws started having an argument in the back seat. I didn’t know Italian very well at that time, and the discussion was getting really heated. Soon they were yelling and my stress levels were rising. I asked Enrico if I should pull the car over. He laughed and said, “No, they are just talking about politics.”

I tell Enrico he still owes me a real honeymoon!

What surprised you most being in an international marriage?

At our wedding, Enrico’s father gave a little speech in which he said he thinks it’s good when people of different races marry. I was surprised by this because in the United States, I think people would consider Enrico and I to be the same race: white. I didn’t know the history of racism against immigrants in Italy. There are still pockets where there is prejudice.

What parts of your husband’s culture have you embraced or chosen not to?

Enrico has embraced the freedom and efficiency in America and also the reliable customer service. Over here, you don’t have to “know someone” to get your utilities connected! He doesn’t like fast food, car culture, and wastefulness.

I enjoy hiking and skiing in the Alps when we are in Europe. I don’t care for the crowded beaches. I love visiting Rome. I went there at the end of our son Alessandro’s exchange year. He knew all the metro and bus routes really well, and it was a pleasure to be led around by my own child. I loved seeing the sites through his eyes.

What’s the best thing about having an international marriage?

It keeps us questioning our assumptions. There’s always another way to look at things. As Americans, we can forget how privileged we are in comparison to many people in the world. Enrico gets his news from European sources, so he often brings up perspectives that we overlook or avoid in our press. I think being in an international marriage helps me be a somewhat better citizen of the world.

Is food an issue?

What foods do you love from each other’s cultures?

Enrico doesn’t like to eat out. I like to eat out at different kinds of restaurants—Mexican, Indian, Thai, Chinese. Italians eat at home, and they prefer their cuisine. Early on, I told Enrico we have to watch our pasta portions. I gained weight when we got married because I wasn’t used to eating so many carbs!

Having a long meal at home every night was especially good when our children were growing up. It strengthened our family bond and the food was healthy. I’ve learned to cook different kinds of risotto, polenta, and, of course, pasta. I grow the vegetables and herbs that go into making Italian dishes.

Enrico loves the fresh tomatoes and Healthy Choice fudge bars from Costco, though he would rather have real Italian gelato any day.

I love gianduiotti chocolates from Enrico’s region of Italy. They have a hazelnut flavor.

Do you currently live in your home country or his?

Mine. I would be open to living in Italy, but Enrico prefers the United States.

How do you make your home feel like “home” when home is represented by

different art, style, and cultural norms?

The style of our home is an eclectic mix of our cultures and life experiences. We live in a 1908 home in the Hawthorne district of Fargo, so the oak trim, columns, and built-in bookcases are a dominant feature of the home.

Our dining room has Italian paintings that were in Enrico’s home growing up, as well as a few statues. In the living room we have paintings of Alaska as well as works by local artist Emily Williams-Wheeler.

I think that what really makes a home a home, is how one interacts with the people within it.

We prepare dinner together, talking all the while. We don’t rush to clear the table after eating but take time to have long conversations and maybe write together or play a game afterward. We’ve never had TV, so that has helped privilege our conversations with each other and reading. Enrico cleans the kitchen late at night while listening to audiobooks, so it’s always nice for the next day.

What are some of the difficulties related to living in a cross-cultural relationship?

Difficulties tend to arise when one of us makes an assumption about the other. Being in a cross-cultural relationship requires open-mindedness.

For example, I assume that Italians are very patriarchal (Enrico’s family certainly was) but I have to be careful in assigning patriarchal notions to Enrico’s specific behaviors. I got annoyed early on when Enrico wasn’t helping with the laundry. When I confronted him about it, (thinking he objected to doing laundry because he’s a man), he said he thought I liked that household chore. I said I did not! Since then, Enrico has done more than his share of the laundry!

Overall, I would say that love supersedes cultural differences.

How do you keep extended family connections healthy and alive

when you live far apart in different parts of the world?

Enrico calls his family every Sunday. We travel there about once a year. With Covid, that has not been possible, so we sometimes do zoom calls with everyone. When the Olympics were in Enrico’s birthplace of Torino in 2006, we all went over and had a wonderful time.

Is there anything else you’d like to say?

I notice you didn’t ask a question about religion, which can embody much of a country’s culture and also be a source of cross-cultural tension. Italy is almost 100% Catholic. Enrico’s parents and grandparents were atheists. I was baptized Lutheran, but my parents quit the Lutheran church and declared themselves atheists.

Despite our countries being very different spiritually, Enrico and I have the common experience of being raised by atheist parents who encouraged critical thought and questioning. I’m a minority in the United States, but at home, I have someone who understands me on a deep level. In his wedding speech, my father-in-law said he knew Enrico didn’t marry me because I could cook Italian food like his mother. He knew that Enrico really loved me for who I was. I think a good portion of the nature of love is being understood by someone. I’m grateful to experience love like this.

Many thanks to Kel and Enrico for answering these questions.

I found it very interesting. I am especially impressed with how they raised their boys to speak multiple languages and to feel at home in both the United States and in Italy.

If you’re in a cross-cultural marriage, leave a comment below. I’d love to hear about your ups and downs and maybe interview you for this blog.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed this peek into another cross-cultural life.

Love always,

Jill