Cross-cultural love thrives with awareness

Life wasn’t easy growing up brown in East Vancouver in the 1970s and 1980s, as Faizal Sahukhan can readily attest. Even though he is Muslim and his parents are from Fiji, he was routinely called a “Punjab” or a “Hindu”.

However, Sahukhan, a Vancouver sex therapist and counsellor, told the Georgia Straight in a recent interview that one of the most hurtful incidents came not from students but from a teacher. This occurred after his Grade 6 class was assigned to write a paper about career goals. He declared that he wanted to become a hockey goalie and a doctor.

Sahukhan, now 40, vividly recalled the teacher’s comment as he returned the essay: “some people have some unrealistic goals that they know that they will never, never achieve”.

“He wasn’t talking about being a goalie,” Sahukhan commented. “Being a child and facing this racism, I could have thought”¦”˜Here is this teacher who knows that I will never be a doctor. So who am I trying to fool myself?’”

As an adult, Sahukhan has dedicated his life to building bridges between people of different ethnic backgrounds, specializing in counselling couples in cross-cultural relationships. He teaches a six-week course at Langara College called Romance: East and West that is offered on consecutive Wednesday nights beginning on February 21.

Sahukhan, who has been in private practice since 1997, said he tries to help his students understand how to resolve conflicts, which sometimes arise out of differences between eastern and western philosophies. “In the West, we look at marriage as two people who fall in love—the man or the woman nowadays proposes—and then they go and tell their family that ”˜We are getting married,’” Sahukhan said. “They are not asking permission.”

He contrasted that with eastern cultures in which the parents’ consent is often essential. “There is a whole process of many weeks and months of events where the families get to know each other,” he noted. “And so the wedding is, in fact, the whole family and extended family getting together and offering blessings. In the West, we don’t understand that”¦.Men fear the mother-in-law, whereas in the eastern family, your mother-in-law is your mother.”

When it comes to premarital sex, he said, people in the West often think you should “test drive a car before you purchase it”. However, in other cultures premarital sex can result in a woman being ostracized from her family, her religion, and her society.

“This is a big fear that ethnic people have in their unconscious, which controls a lot of their behaviour and the people they associate with,” Sahukhan said.

He cited an example of a 39-year-old Caucasian female client who had been dating a Pakistani man for one year. The man claimed that he loved the woman, and everything appeared to be going well. The man had met the woman’s relatives but steadfastly refused to introduce her to his family. The female client wondered if this man was married.

Sahukhan told the Straight this wasn’t the case. The man just wanted to avoid focusing on marriage.

“We in the West don’t understand why men act like this or women act like this,” he said. “He knows unconsciously that he cannot marry this woman. He will meet so much adversity. The parents would refuse this relationship. The religion would refuse this.”

One might ask why the man would continue dating a woman outside his ethnic or religious group. Sahukhan cited many possible factors, including the freedom that comes with dating a woman without requiring parental approval. He said there might even be a genetic basis to attraction because the children of interracial couples may be better able to adapt.

He also pointed out that colonialism has promoted the view that the white race was the most intelligent, the most attractive, and the best off financially, which can affect people’s unconscious perceptions. “So by dating somebody who is white, that elevates the social status of the ethnic person,” Sahukhan said, “and they feel better about themselves.”

Sahukhan was raised in the West, whereas his wife was born and raised in Pakistan and moved to Canada nine years ago. He said that in his practice, he has seen conflicts arise between people of the same race when only one partner was raised in the West. That’s because that one is accustomed to having conflicts with a mother or father, whereas a partner raised in an eastern culture may not confront parents.

Sahukhan said that a western woman can improve her chances of getting married to a boyfriend from an eastern culture if she spends time getting to know his family. If she is with a man of South Asian descent, for instance, he said she might want to go to Main Street and buy traditional apparel for family functions. He also advised learning how to cook ethnic food. “It makes it much easier for your partner to go to the parent and say, ”˜Mom, I like her. I’m thinking about marrying her.’”

He also suggested celebrating cultural and religious diversity to help children from cross-cultural relationships become more accepting of their heritages. “Instead of looking at the dogma—where Muslims say Christ did not die on the cross and Christians believe in that crucifixion—stay away from that and look at what Christ and Mohammed both preached: humanity,” Sahukhan advised.

However, he also cautioned against trying to change yourself too much to attract a man or woman from a different culture. “I believe if you have a world-view stick with your world-view, be sincere to it,” he said. “Because if you try to change yourself to get this girl or get this guy, it will come back and haunt you”¦.because later on, resentment sets in.”