International Marriage and Life Abroad: Discovering Yourself Between Cultures
- Locus of Life
- Apr 27
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 28
Introduction: Realising How Deeply Tied You Are to Your Roots After Moving Abroad
When you marry someone from another culture and move to their country — or even to a third country — there can be moments that catch you completely off guard.
Perhaps you find yourself sitting quietly at a lively dinner table with your partner’s family, offering only a polite smile.Perhaps, when asked for your opinion, you instinctively reply, “Whatever you prefer,” simply to keep the peace.Or perhaps you swallow a small hurt and tell yourself, “I’m probably just overthinking it.”
It is often only when we build a life abroad that the invisible cultural fabric of our home country begins to come into focus.
Being in an international marriage whilst living away from your home country means putting down roots in soil very different from the one you grew up in. It can be a deeply enriching experience that opens up a whole new world. At the same time, it can also become a quiet, ongoing journey that leads you to ask: Who am I, really?
This article is for anyone living abroad with a partner from a different culture who finds themselves questioning their sense of identity. Drawing on psychological perspectives, I hope to offer a gentle space to help you make sense of this quiet inner confusion.
How Living Abroad in an International Marriage Can Reveal Your Cultural Self
The small, everyday moments that reveal your cultural boundaries
Shifts in our identity do not usually begin with dramatic events. More often, they appear in the tiny, everyday misalignments of life abroad.
For example:When your partner asks you to be more direct about what you want, you suddenly realise how much you have always valued reading the room or maintaining harmony.Whilst watching your in-laws express affection openly — perhaps more openly than you are used to — you may find yourself remembering the quieter, unspoken love within your own family.Whether it is how to spend holidays, manage finances, or raise children, each difference can leave you wondering: Is this simply my personal preference, or is it my culture speaking?
I, too, have spent years grappling with these small misalignments since moving from Japan to the UK.
Once, whilst walking down the pavement, I saw someone coming towards me and instinctively moved aside to let them pass. My then husband said to me, “Why do you keep weaving in and out? If you just walk straight ahead, they’ll move around you. It’s easier for everyone that way.”
Another time, at the dinner table, I found myself remembering something from childhood. I said, “When I was little, my mother always told me that every grain of rice was the result of a farmer’s hard work, so I must not leave even a single grain on my plate.” He replied, “But farmers work hard to grow potatoes and carrots too. Why is rice so special?”
In his own way, he was right. And yet I could not find the words to respond. Something that had felt like an unquestioned truth in the country I grew up in simply did not translate here. I felt that realisation not just in my mind, but somewhere much deeper.
Each of these moments may seem very small. They may even sound trivial. But when these tiny misalignments build up day after day, they can gradually turn into a much heavier question: How am I meant to live in this country and still feel like myself?
My own stories are rooted in Japanese culture, but I know that if you are living abroad in an international marriage, you will have your own version of these moments. When you are far from the cultural foundation that shaped you, realising “I am more deeply connected to my roots than I realised” is a very natural awakening.
The moment you realise how much you have been adapting
Many people in international marriages have spent a long time quietly adapting to their partner’s culture and family in an effort to fit in.
You live in their language, learn the unspoken rules of their society, and try your best to be a “good” partner within your spouse’s family and culture. Because you are living abroad, you may carry a quiet determination that says, I simply have to make this work here. And without even noticing it, that can push you to adapt further and further.
That effort is deeply moving. It is beautiful, and it is real.
And yet there may come a moment — perhaps when talking to an old friend from home, watching a film from your own culture, or feeling your shoulders unexpectedly relax the moment you step off a plane in your home country — when you suddenly think, Ah… perhaps I have been suppressing a part of myself for a very long time.
That does not mean you have lost yourself. Rather, it may be the moment when a precious part of you, which has been quietly waiting in the background, begins to gently make itself known.
It Is Natural for Your Cultural Identity to Shift in an International Marriage
The psychology of cross-cultural adaptation and identity
When you live in a different culture for a long time, you may go through a psychological process known as cultural identity reconstruction.
In cross-cultural psychology, this refers to a natural process in which your sense of belonging can become blurred, and the values you once took for granted begin to shift or require re-examination. In an international marriage abroad, this can feel even more intense, because you are not only navigating a different culture within your relationship, but also living in a society that operates by different assumptions altogether.
The most important thing to remember is that this fluctuation is not a sign that something is wrong with you. It may simply be a sign that your mind is trying to adjust, expand, and make room for a more complex version of who you are.
The question of “Which version of me is the real me?”
You may sometimes wonder which version of you is the real one: the person you were in your home country, or the person you are now, living abroad.
When you go back home, your family or friends may say, “You’ve changed.”And yet in your partner’s country, people may still say, “You’re so typical of where you come from.”
That can leave you feeling suspended somewhere in between, as though you do not fully belong in either place. Please know that this sense of being “in-between” is something many people living abroad experience. You are not alone in feeling this way. And the answer may not lie in choosing one version of yourself over the other.
The Loneliness of Not Feeling Fully Understood by Your Partner
The true nature of an unspoken discomfort
When your identity begins to shift within an international marriage, one of the most isolating parts can be how difficult it is to explain what you are feeling to your partner.
It is not quite loneliness.It is not exactly suffering.And yet there is a quiet heaviness that remains.
Very often, that discomfort comes from the sense that the cultural roots shaping your inner world cannot be fully shared with the person closest to you. When you live abroad, your chances to be immersed in your own culture are naturally limited.
There are emotional nuances that can only really be expressed in your mother tongue. When you try to translate them, something essential can get lost. It is not simply a matter of language. It is also about the absence of a shared cultural context — and that can create a very deep sense of solitude.
When you do not want it to be dismissed as “just a cultural difference”
Have you ever tried to explain your feelings to your partner, only to hear, “Well, that’s just a cultural difference,” and felt something sink inside you?
They may not mean any harm by it. But for you, what is happening may feel far more personal and far more delicate than something that can be tidied away under the label of culture.
It is entirely natural to think, Please do not reduce my feelings to a cultural label. Your emotions are your own. They are precious, and they deserve to be heard as such.
Integrating Your Identity, Rather Than Trying to “Get It Back”
You do not have to choose
When your identity feels unsettled, it is easy to feel as though you have to choose.
I need to try harder to fit in here. No, I need to hold on more tightly to the culture I come from.
But when you are living across more than one culture, you do not have to force yourself into a single box.
In cross-cultural psychology, holding more than one cultural identity and being able to move between them flexibly is sometimes described as having a bicultural identity. This is not about rejecting one culture in favour of another. It is about gradually finding a balance in which both can remain part of who you are.
Cultivating a “third self”
Perhaps it is not only about being from your home country. And perhaps it is not only about becoming someone fully adapted to your partner’s country either. Perhaps it is about growing into a third self.
This third self may not fit perfectly into either culture, but it is something uniquely yours — an identity shaped by the richness, tension, and complexity of both. It does not form overnight. It grows slowly, through uncertainty, adjustment, grief, discovery, and time.
And you do not have to carry that process on your own.
Sometimes, simply putting your feelings into words in a safe space where you feel genuinely understood can begin to loosen the knots inside you and help things make a little more sense.
Conclusion: You Are Allowed to Keep Walking, Even When Things Feel Unsettled
Realising the depth of your cultural roots whilst living abroad in an international marriage does not mean that something has been lost, nor does it mean that you must fight to reclaim something that has disappeared. It may simply mean that a precious outline of yourself is beginning to emerge more clearly through your life across cultures.
Identity is not fixed. It evolves slowly through our experiences. The fact that something in you feels unsettled may be a sign not of failure, but of growth.
You do not have to reject either version of yourself. You are allowed to keep walking, even when things feel uncertain.
Looking back on my own journey, I can see now that I spent a long time struggling with what it meant to carry my Japanese identity within me. I did not know what to do with the “Japan” inside me. At times, I think I believed I had to dilute it in order to survive in another country.
But having moved through that confusion, there is something I can now say from the bottom of my heart:
I am truly glad to be Japanese.
Those years of struggle were not wasted. Because of that inner fluctuation, I have come to cherish my own cultural roots and values more deeply than I ever did before.
If you are in the middle of something similar now, please do not rush yourself. Whatever your home country may be, there may come a time beyond this uncertainty when you can hold all parts of yourself — including your roots — with more gentleness, pride, and compassion.
And if you ever feel tired along the way, please remember that there can be a safe place to pause and rest.
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