10-year anniversary: Cross-cultural relationships have challenges most couples never experience

I remember early in our relationship, I wanted to give Marina what I felt was the ultimate compliment to a girlfriend. We had already said the “L” word to each other. I thought I was on safe ground. This would be a slam dunk. I prepared for a massive hug and kiss.

“I want you to know something, Marina,” I said in Italian, holding her and looking into her eyes. “You are my best friend.”

She looked at me as if I butchered the sentence and said something about rotting fish. Nope. She understood perfectly – unfortunately.

“I am NOT your friend!” she said. “I am your GIRLfriend!”

Turns out, the ingredients of a relationship are a bit different in Italy than in the United States. Kind of like how the ingredients of a pizza in Italy are a bit different than at Papa John’s. It wasn’t the first indication. I knew dating an Italian would present many unique challenges. And there were.

However, we overcame them all and then some. Because today, April 29, 2025, marks the 10-year anniversary of our first date.

How we met

In the relationship department, this is akin to spending a decade walking through a war zone – although in Italy the food is better. Cross-cultural relationships have so many barriers, so many potential landmines, so much misunderstanding, it’s amazing more world wars weren’t started in restaurants.

Language problems. Social mores. Family expectations. They all form a wall you must break down to really get to know and appreciate each other. We have. Somehow we have.

First, I should explain that 10 years ago today technically was not our first date. The first night we went out together we nearly exchanged gunfire. Second, I must explain how we met. It was the old-fashioned Italian way: Through friends.

When I retired to Rome in January 2014, one of the few friends I had was fellow sportswriter Alessandro Castellani, who works for ANSA, Italy’s wire service. Through him I met his friends. My circle grew. One of his friends was a former TV showgirl whose best friend was Marina.

Sometime in late 2014 the four of us went out for pizza at Vignola near Piazza del Popolo and I was quite taken by Marina’s natural beauty, stylish clothes and surprising travel experience. It also somewhat piqued my interest that she was named Miss Bikini Villasimius in Sardinia in 1998. 

We continued hanging out together in the group like close family members. Museums. Wine tastings. Restaurants. It was all very casual, very unaggressive. 

One night Marina and I discussed our mutual admiration for La Pratolina, a terrific pizzeria near the Vatican where they make pinsa, the original oblong-shaped pizzas invented during the Roman Empire. We agreed to meet there one night.

Keep in mind our language barrier reduced our conversation level to two toddlers in a sandbox. Few Rome schools taught English when Marina grew up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Italy ranks 32nd out of 35 European countries in English efficiency.  Marina’s lone English study was a two-month immersion program near San Diego in 1992.

I had lived in Rome on a sabbatical for 16 months from 2001-03 and could speak, read and write Italian efficiently but my comprehension was on the level of a dyslexic 5-year-old.

Gee, what could go wrong?

It came to a head at La Pratolina when we discussed 9-11. I thought she said she didn’t like Americans. I said, in Italian, “I’m American. You don’t like me?”

She chuckled. It went downhill from there.

I then thought she said 9-11 wasn’t a big deal. OK. Game. Set. Match. I would’ve walked out but the bill was coming. I replied something about wishing Osama Bin Laden’s head was kicked from Cape Cod to California and silently vowed never to go out with Marina again.

I gave her a light pat-pat on the back good night, void of any passion or future intent, and added it to my long, lifelong list of first dates from Hell.

However, we remained in the same group and over the course of a year we maintained a friendship. She showed an interest in future travel. She defended me against criticism of my Italian. After a few months, I gave it another shot.

I asked her out for an aperitivo, an Italian happy hour, on April 29, 2015.

At Zanzara, a hoity-toity cocktail bar near the Vatican, she explained that she didn’t hate Americans. She didn’t like arrogant Americans who wrapped themselves in the flag and knew little outside the U.S. I agreed. She said she did not say 9-11 was no big deal. She didn’t say anything like that.

With my comprehension level, she may have instead just asked for dessert.

Our lives now

In the 10 years since that night, we have had the kind of relationship that flickers through shuffled calendar pages, each month with a more romantic photo. We’ve been to 27 countries, bringing her total to 50, an astonishing number for an Italian. We’ve done everything from mush a dogsled in Lapland to sipping tea in royal gardens in Kyoto, from picnicking on a beach in Santa Barbara to smoking shishas in Beirut.

We’ve visited 13 of Italy’s 20 regions and, thanks to our TraveLazio blog Marina started two years ago, we’ve been to every corner of Rome’s Lazio region. 

We’ve sunbathed in Sabaudia, taken a gondola ride through an empty Venice after a Covid lockdown, gone winery hopping in Piedmont. 

The only thing missing has been a mandolin playing in the background.

Cross-cultural challenges

Fortunately, I caught a break with Marina. I haven’t faced many of the cross-cultural challenges crippling other couples. Her family has embraced me. Her parents are not the intrusive type people often think of Italian mothers. She is Catholic and attends mass but accepts my atheism without question. We both have a love for cats and her Coco has even learned to love me.

She also embraces my wanderlust. She has it, too. And she is a great traveler. Adventurous. Low maintenance. Inquisitive. Light packer. Her only requirement is a breakfast buffet at the hotel. I, in turn, have learned to embrace the joy of a high pile of smoked salmon at 9 a.m.

As a highly talented graphic designer and photographer, she has shot countless travel stories for my blog and freelance assignments. I got her in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and GoNomad.com. The TraveLazio blog is steadily growing. We’re a good team.

Our biggest challenge has been, obviously, language. We speak Italian about 95 percent of the time. We try to speak English a little every day for her improvement and she has improved tremendously. Today she understands English maybe better than I understand Italian.

However, due to my lousy comprehension, Marina can’t express herself as freely as she would like. She must dial down her vocabulary which can be difficult when discussing issues inside her soul and heart. When she speaks Roman dialect with her friends, she may as well be speaking medieval Bulgarian. I have no idea what they’re talking about.

However, I have also learned that it can be a tremendous boon to a relationship when a man doesn’t understand half of what a woman is telling him. We never fight.

The other challenge has been my own American-bred demons. As a sportswriter for 40 years, I am highly competitive. I can not accept failure. Although retirement in Rome has calmed me from days tearing through press boxes from San Diego to Beijing, I still have meltdowns.

Italians are very tranquilli (tranquil). They handle stress well. They know Italian food and wine await. 

Unlike me, they don’t scream to the heavens when they screw up a plane reservation online. They don’t threaten to throw appliances off their fifth-floor balcony when they can’t get an Italian blender to work. They don’t fall into deep depression when they can’t understand an immigration official’s explanation for their delayed visa. 

Marina struggles to comprehend the American mentality of competition, of comparing myself to others, even how I sometimes maniacally pursue freelance gigs. Her patience has been a godsend to our survival, but she remains on eggshells until she sees my mood that day. 

She knows she’s in for a long evening when she opens the door and a raven is on my shoulder.

Also, we are on opposite ends of the planet about drinking. Romans are teetotalers. Marina has never been drunk and can nurse one glass of wine for an entire weekend. My male Roman friends have never been drunk. And they are guys’ guys. They like their soccer. They like their women. They like their wine.

But they never get drunk. Why? The biggest social faux pas you can commit in Rome is public drunkenness. Roman women will not tolerate it. Women run the world. We’re just playing by their rules. This transcends cultures.

Me? I love to drink. I was a sportswriter for 40 years. There is no better way to unwind after a deadline. It remains one of my greatest passions. The taste. The social aspects. The cultural differences. I used to visit a Caribbean island just to try its rum. I only drink when I’m happy and want to be happier. Retired in Rome, I’m happy a lot.

However, in Rome I have cut my drinking in half. In front of Marina, that often isn’t enough. After my second glass of wine at her place, I am always impressed how she can re-cork a bottle as quickly as an enoteca bartender at last call.

Salute! To what makes us different, makes us close.

A counselor’s view

Angelo Mussoni is a couples counselor who specializes in cross-cultural relationships. Based in Rimini on the Adriatic coast, Mussoni deals mostly online with couples from different religions, countries and skin color. 

He is a follower of John Gottman, the American psychologist who became famous for his studies on divorce prediction and marital stability through relationship analyses. Gottman believes that every couple is cross-cultural, “even if you come from the same neighborhood,” Mussoni told me over the phone Monday.

“The culture where you grow up informs the family norms,” he said. “But families are very different, very, very different.”

But at least if you come from the same neighborhood, you speak the same language. You don’t have to ask your partner, “What’s Italian for ‘Die soon’?”

“The challenge is bigger,” he said. “Families come from a different environment. The difference could be wider.”

I asked about his own country and the differences in dealing with Italians and their foreign partners. He said the biggest problem isn’t necessarily language.

“Family is a big deal (in Italy),” he said. “On heritage, a Danish person goes out of the family in their 20s. Average in Italy is 30-35. The ties with the family of origin are big. That can create a problem. The non-Italian partner could feel that the family of origin of his Italian partner is quite intrusive.”

Next step after 10-year anniversary

It has been 10 years and we still don’t live together. Here’s where women are the same from Bastow to Bangkok:They all view a relationship as if it’s a shark. It must keep moving forward or it dies.

I prefer treading water in calm seas.

I never married and have lived with only two women. Both were disasters. I’m as gun shy as an amputee stepping back in the same shark-infested waters that turned him into an amputee. Marina knows this.

But I’m also 69. I’m running out of time, not to mention excuses. At 60 and never married, Marina is also running out of time. I have agreed to look at three apartments that my property manager said will open over the next three months.  

Until then, we will celebrate our decade together and the long, rough road we’ve traveled. Tonight we’re having drinks – well, one – on Terrazza Borromini, the romantic rooftop bar above Piazza Navona. Afterward we’ll dine al fresco across the narrow cobblestone road at Santa Lucia, featured in Julia Roberts’ 2010 film, “Eat, Pray, Love.” 

Then next week I’m taking Marina to Porto Venere, a pretty, seaside village in Liguria just south of Cinque Terre. I booked a room in a castle-like four-star hotel in the Scottish Highlands for her birthday in June.

Along the way, I’ll pepper our many conversations with the one phrase that needs no translation, one that has more meaning every day of our 10 years together.

Ti amo (I love you).