Culture and Boundaries and Taking Offense

I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to do so much traveling this year, in part because it’s made me more aware of how personal stuff and cultural conditioning often intermingle. On some level they are the same but because the cultural stuff is shared with so many others, we consider it normal, ie the norm. The good news is that when you are in another country, you are often cut some slack simply because you are a foreigner. Depending upon how xenophobic a person, or a society is, you’re likely to be viewed as an ignorant barbaric foreigner, or as an amusingly foolish innocent. Either way, there’s a good chance people will realize you’re not being deliberately rude when you’ve just done something totally unacceptable.

 The thing that most confuses people about relationships is that when something doesn’t feel good, when you are hurting, it’s hard to know whether a “legitimate” boundary has been crossed or whether a pet neurosis is being challenged. I put “legitimate” in quotes to suggest that while we generally think that if we’re triggered it’s because someone has violated us in some way, most often we’re triggered because we have misinterpreted or misunderstood another’s behavior. Very often the other person has innocently, out of ignorance, not disrespect, failed to comply with our expectations. We all know these kinds of misunderstandings are very common between people from different cultures. When you’re in another country, it’s quite obvious, but the USA is a melting pot where most of us are of mixed ancestry, and/or living somewhere and among people – sometimes even within our own families – who do not share our culture but we persist in thinking that they should. And because we live in the 21^st Century with so many constructed identities and subcultures, there are even more opportunities for confusion. Our beloveds, our friends, our family members may not share our cultural programming and yet we assume that they do.

 For example, when I was in Japan my American friend was telling me about the challenges she was experiencing with her Japanese mother-in-law. One incident had to do with the mother-in-law getting angry because my friend had not placed her shoes in the right direction outside the entry to her house. Now even foreigners who know nothing about Japanese ways quickly learn that shoes are left at the door. To wear shoes into someone’s home would be just as offensive as entering a temple without removing your shoes, or covering your head, or your bare arms and legs, or whatever the local custom. My friend knew a great deal about Japanese customs, but had no clue that there were proper and improper ways to place your shoes. Apparently, this fine point was not a big enough deal to anyone else for them to have corrected her. Most likely, for the mother-in-law this minor transgression became justification for her unhappiness about the perceived misfortune of having a non-Japanese daughter-in-law. From my friend’s perspective, it was very helpful for her to learn that it’s traditional for the Japanese mother-in-law to treat the daughter-in-law very harshly. This helped her not to take it so personally, and yet, she still felt hurt by the mother-in-law’s frequent attacks. What to do?

 When you’re not sure whether you’re dealing with a natural, healthy response or a neurotic reaction in yourself or another, it’s a good time to get an outside opinion – hopefully an enlightened, or at least objective, opinion. It does no good at all to share your dilemma with someone who has the same problematic conditioning and so mistakes your warped point of view for reality. But someone who is relatively free of cultural blinders can help clarify whether it would be best to yield as gracefully as possible or to say “no” to the other’s attempt to pass their issues off as your problem. Of course, yielding in the face of an insurmountable obstacle is usually the wisest course (and those of you who know me, know that this has been a hard lesson for me to learn), but there is no need to search your soul for the source of the conflict, or worse yet, blame yourself, when it has nothing to do with you.